Today, the growing impacts of climate change have prompted considerable attention toward the application of adaptive agricultural technologies, such as shading nets. This study aimed to investigate the effects of different shading levels and drought stress on soybean yield. A factorial experiment was conducted in a randomized complete block design with three replications during the 2024 growing season at Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, Mazandaran, Iran. The treatments included four shading levels (0 (control), 80% (SH-80), 50% (SH-50), and 30% (SH-30) light transmission) and three drought stress levels (no stress (NDS), irrigation withheld at flowering stage (DSF), and irrigation withheld at pod development stage (DSP)). The interaction between shading and drought stress significantly influenced key agronomic traits, including the number of pods per plant, number of empty pods, 1-seed and 2-seed occurrence, 100-seed weight, and grain yield (P ≤ 0.01). The combination of SH-30 and NDS resulted in the highest pod number (79.1), hundred-seed weight (16.7 g), and grain yield (1170.2 kg/ha). Moreover, the greatest chlorophyll a and b content (0.9 and 0.33 mg.g-1, respectively) was observed under the same treatment. Additionally, the highest water productivity index (WPI) was recorded under SH-50 and DSF treatments (2.4 kg.m-³), while the highest water productivity of evapotranspiration (WPET) was achieved with SH-30 and NDS treatments (1.8 kg.m-³). Overall, these findings highlight that applying shading nets, particularly SH-30 and SH-50, can enhance soybean yield and physiological performance under both normal and drought-stressed conditions. Therefore, the use of shading technologies is recommended as an effective strategy to alleviate the adverse effects of drought stress in soybean cultivation.