In this work, we study numerically two-dimensional nonlinear spatial fractional complex Ginzburg–Landau equations. A centered finite difference method is exploited to discretize the spatial variables and leads to a system of the ordinary differential equation, in which the resulting coefficient matrix is complex symmetric and possesses the block Toeplitz structure. An exponential Runge–Kutta method is employed to solve such a system of the ordinary differential equation. Theoretically, the proposed method is second-order accuracy in space and fourth-order accuracy in time, respectively. In the practical implementation, the product of a block Toeplitz matrix exponential and a vector is calculated by the shift-invert Lanczos method. Meanwhile, the sectorial operator (the coefficient matrix) guarantees the fast approximation by the shift-invert Lanczos method. Numerical experiments are carried out to testify the theoretical results and demonstrate that the proposed method enjoys the excellent computational advantage.