The design of supported Co‐based Fischer–Tropsch (F–T) catalysts with suitable reducibility, dispersion, loading, and nanoparticle structure is necessary so that high catalytic activity and selectivity for C5+ hydrocarbons can be achieved. Herein, we report that pyrolyzing a Co‐metal–organic framework‐71 precursor can provide porous carbon‐supported Co catalysts with completely reduced, well‐dispersed face‐centered cubic (FCC) Co nanoparticles (∼10 nm in average size). The catalysts can be further tailored dimensionally by doping with Si species, and the FCC Co nanoparticles can be partially transformed into hexagonal close‐packed Co via a Co2C intermediate. All the as‐prepared catalysts had extremely high Co site density (>3.5 × 10−4 mol/g‐cat.) because they had a high number of Co active sites and low mass. Aside from having high F–T activity and C5+ selectivity, with diesel fuels being the main constituents, they showed unprecedentedly high C5+ space time yields (up to 1.45 g/(g‐cat. h)) as compared to conventional Co catalysts. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 2935–2944, 2017