The organization was started by James Roy, playwright Anne Chislett and local newspaper editor Keith Roulston in 1975.
[6] The Blyth Memorial Community Hall had an upstairs auditorium which had been little used for decades; this was refurbished to provide a venue for the festival.
[9] By 2014, the festival had premiered 120 original plays, including Alice Munro's How I Met My Husband, and the Governor General Award-winning Quiet in the Land, by Anne Chislett.
[9] In 2017, Blyth Festival's original production, Pigeon King, was chosen to be restaged in Ottawa as part of the National Arts Centre's 2018-2019 season.
[10] After the founding of Blyth Festival, Memorial Hall grew into a year-round centre of cultural activity for Huron County and southwestern Ontario.