Immediately following the end of French colonialism, Cambodia played its first home game against Malaya in 1956.

The Cambodians managed to qualify for the 1972 AFC Asian Cup in its first qualification attempt, a major success up to date.

[10] In the tournament as Khmer Republic, the Cambodians lost to Iran and had to play in group B along with South Korea and Kuwait.

Despite early loss to the South Koreans, they had qualified to the semi-finals thanked for a resounding 4–0 win over Kuwait, only got beaten later by Iran, again, and Thailand, and won the 4th place overall.

The resurgence of Cambodia had begun with the arrival of South Korean Lee Tae-hoon, who had introduced a significant development of football in the country, with the change of its tactics, as well as youth development and promotion of Cambodian youngsters to the national team, has given hopes of change.

[17] During 2019 AFC Asian Cup qualification, Cambodia finished bottom in a group where they suffered losses to Jordan and neighbour Vietnam.

[18] Following its failure to qualify for the 2019 AFC Asian Cup, Cambodia participated in the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification first round where it beat Pakistan 4–1 on aggregate over two legs to reach the second round[19] being drawn with Hong Kong, Bahrain, Iraq and Iran.

On 5 September 2019 in the first fixture, Cambodia obtained a 1–1 draw at home to Hong Kong, 5 days later, it lost against Bahrain 1–0.

In August 2020, Félix Dalmás left their post after completing their contract while on 7 April 2021, fellow countrymen, Ryu Hirose was unveiled as the new head coach of the Cambodia taking the team whenever manager Keisuke Honda is unavailable.

Hirose task is to guide Cambodia for the remaining matches of the second round qualifiers of the FIFA 2022 World Cup qualification.

Cambodia was then placed in the 2027 AFC Asian Cup qualification play-off round where they would face Sri Lanka in September 2024.

The Khmer sportswear company, Varaman established in February 2022 sponsored them with designs by HCD football agency Clan United.