The game was originally developed in 1971 by Merle Robbins in Reading, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati.

Robbins later sold the rights to Uno to a group of friends headed by Robert Tezak, a funeral parlor owner in Joliet, Illinois, for $50,000 plus royalties of 10 cents per game.

Tezak formed International Games, Inc., to market Uno, with offices behind his funeral parlor.

On a player's turn, they must do one of the following: Cards are played by laying them face-up on top of the discard pile.

Earlier English versions can be recognized by the absence of the white rim that surrounds the edge of most Uno cards.

On September 16, 2017, Mattel released Uno ColorAdd, which was designed specifically for those suffering from color blindness.

[11] On October 1, 2019, Mattel released a Braille version of their game with Mark Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind.

Play is identical to the standard pre-2018 Uno game, with the addition of two types of "Wild Downpour" cards.

The initial group of sets in this series included those based on all 32 NFL teams and several fictional properties, including Star Trek, Harry Potter, Masters of the Universe, Avatar: the Last Airbender and Monster High.

[22] On February 13, 2018, Mattel released a spin-off of Uno entitled Dos; the game is differentiated primarily by having a "center row" of discard piles, where pairs of cards that add up to the sum of a card on the top of one of the piles may be discarded.

In the following two years, additional properties were tied into the pod, along with the Video Slot versions of both UNO and Magic 8 Ball.

[27] In March 2013, it was announced that Mattel and the Gurin Company[30][31] were teaming up to create a game show based on the card game, produced as a half-hour daily strip with a $100,000 cash jackpot along with a primetime version in which contestants competed for 1 million dollars.

On February 4, 2021, an action heist comedy film based on the game was announced to be in development for Mattel Films with Lil Yachty of record label Quality Control Music developing and being eyed for the lead role alongside the label's managers Kevin "Coach K" Lee and Pierre "P" Thomas, and Brian Sher for Quality Films producing, Marcy Kelly writing, and Robbie Brenner and Kevin McKeon leading the project as executive producer and supervising producer, respectively.