The city has a very favorable geographic position as it passes through the motorway link connecting Albania with Greece via the Kapshticë customs that is 7 km east of it.

The precipitation in Bilisht is lower than in other cities of Albania as a result of the strong continental and mountain ranges that surround this area.

[10] During the Great Eastern Crisis, the Treaty of San Stefano nearly placed Albanian areas such as Bilisht in a proposed large Bulgarian state.

[11] Shortly thereafter it was superseded by the Treaty of Berlin that left the town and its surrounding area in the Ottoman Empire.

In the late Ottoman period, the nahiya (sub-district) of Bilisht was a centre of revolutionary activity for Albanian and Aromanian cheta groups, whom collectively numbered some 150-200 individuals.

[12] Until the early twentieth century, Bilisht experienced population growth from the surrounding rural area, as it was a centre for artisan activities and trade located on important transport lines.

Some Muslim Albanian villages on the Greek side of the border had Bilisht as their market town until their inhabitants were sent to Turkey during the Greco-Turkish exchange of populations (1923),[14] based on religious criteria.

[3] During the interwar period a tekke of the Rifa`i Sufi Order existed in Bilisht[15] and part of the surrounding Muslim rural population emigrated to Australia.

[3] In the 1960s, the area around Bilisht and neighboring Korçë had the highest densities of population in mountainous districts within the country (500 metres and above).

[19] The town in post communist Albania has also been a recipient of in-migration by a small number of people from other parts of the country, due to pre-existing family connections.

[18] Built in the late 2010s, the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) transporting Azerbaijani gas to Europe runs through Bilisht.

[23][24] Ottoman geographer Hadji Khalfa (1609–1657) wrote that during the mid seventeenth century the nahiya (sub-district) of Bilisht was populated by a mixed Albanian and Bulgarian population and the Christian element was declining due to local disturbances and inhabitants converting to Islam.

[27] In the early nineteenth century, the ethnic border between Albanians and the neighbouring Slavic (Bulgarian) population ran close and to the east of Bilisht.

[27] Between 1805 and 1807, the British traveller William Martin Leake passed through the area, referred to the ethnic border and stated that the people of Bilisht spoke Albanian.

[7] Twelve years later it closed down due to a decrease of students and poor quality teaching from its lone educator.

[35] In the early 1990s, the Greek political party Omonia in Albania fielded a local candidate from Bilisht in elections, however it was later withdrawn after threats of violence.