The first "40 Friends of Beppe Grillo" meetups began with the initial aim to "have fun, get together, share ideas and proposals for a better world, starting from one's own city, and discuss and develop my posts, if you believe them".

[56] During the fourth national meeting held in Genoa on 3 February 2007, Grillo announced his desire to provide an autonomous space during his touring shows for local meetup activists.

[57] On 14 July 2007, some civic list representatives who participated in local elections the previous spring met in Parma to establish a national coordination between associations, movements, and organisations.

V-Day was meant to mobilise the collection of signatures to submit a popular initiative seeking to introduce preferences in the current electoral law and to prevent parliamentary candidate nominations for the criminally convicted and those who have already completed two terms in office.

The second refers to the motion picture and graphic novel V for Vendetta, which the M5S frequently relates with its principles of political renewal (the logo of the movement shares the use of a red V symbol with the franchise).

In April 2009, Grillo announced he had received a letter from Nobel Prize winner in economics Joseph Stiglitz in which he declared he would look carefully at the experience of local civic lists promoted through the blog.

[108] The movement's founder and main strategist Gianroberto Casaleggio died on 12 April 2016 in Milan, at the age of 61, after a long period of illness due to brain cancer.

[112] The formation of the cabinet initially failed on 27 May as President Sergio Mattarella did not agree on the appointment of Paolo Savona as the Italian Minister of Economy and Finance due to his perceived Euroscepticism.

[135][136] Many political analysts believe the no confidence motion was an attempt to force early elections to improve the League's standing in the Italian Parliament, ensuring Salvini could become the next prime minister.

On the same day, the national direction of the PD officially opened to a cabinet with the M5S,[138] based on pro-Europeanism, a green economy, sustainable development, the fight against economic inequality, and a new immigration policy.

[161] On 15 June, the conservative Spanish newspaper ABC reported that then-Foreign Minister of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro paid Gianroberto Casaleggio €3.5 million in 2010 to finance an "anticapitalist, leftist movement in the Italian Republic".

[179] On 21 June, Di Maio announced a split over foreign policy disagreements with Conte's faction,[180][181] leading the formation of the Together for the Future parliamentary group,[182] joined by 51 deputies and 11 senators formerly of M5S.

[183] During 2022, rumours arose around a possible withdrawal of M5S's support to the national unity government, including allegations that Draghi privately criticised Conte and asked Grillo to replace him.

[198][199][200] Some early opinion polling for the 2022 Italian general election showed that the only way to avoid a right-wing alliance victory was the formation of a large big tent coalition including the M5S, minor left-wing and centrist parties, and their 2019–2021 government ally, the PD.

[206][207] Under Conte's leadership in 2022, the M5S declared themselves to be part of the progressive pole and to be to the left of the PD;[208] their campaign centered around the minimum wage and in defence of the citizens' income from right-wing criticism.

[213][214][215] Conte said he would lead an "uncompromising opposition" and added: "We will be the outpost for the progressive agenda against inequalities, to protect families and businesses in difficulty, to defend the rights and values of our Constitution.

[225] It has promoted left-wing issues, such as a basic income and green-inspired policies,[226] and has been compared to the anti-austerity movement in Spain, Pirate parties, and Occupy Wall Street.

[17][16] In the M5S, themes are derived from ecology and anti-particracy, promoting the direct participation of citizens, who converge in the management of public affairs through forms of digital democracy, such as e-democracy.

[251] From the economic point of view, it embraces the theories of degrowth, supporting the creation of "green jobs", and the rejection of polluting and expensive "great works", including incinerators and high-speed rail, aiming for an overall better quality of life and greater social justice.

[255] The "progressive" label has been questioned by some Italian politicians due to Sahra Wagenknecht's invitation, along with the ambiguities of current and past issues,[256] and Conte continued to define the party as "not left-wing".

[99][265] Andrea Ballatore and Simone Natale wrote about how digital utopianism plays a pivotal role in M5S's worldview, saying that Grillo and Casaleggio describe the web as a "transparent, unified, coherent entity", with its own logic, laws, agency and disruptive agenda.

[268] Paolo Natale says that in the first years of the party's major success around 2012, the M5S was made up of mainly younger generations of people, and for the most part males who had received high levels of education as well as having left-wing political stances.

He states that these people were searching for alternative ways of participating in politics besides the regular scheme of what existed, and especially to achieve good administration, high-quality public transport, and green spaces, but with sensitivity to problems linked to local crime.

[286] Grillo's campaign has an unwillingness to form alliances as a result of his refusal to be associated or characterised like any of the older political families including the centre-left and centre-right coalitions.

On 23 December 2016, Grillo wrote in his blog that all illegal immigrants should be expelled from Italy, that the Schengen Agreement should be temporarily suspended in the event of a terrorist attack until the threat has been removed, and that there should be revision of the Dublin Regulation.

[292][293] On 21 April 2017, Grillo published a piece questioning the role non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating rescue ships off Libya are playing in the migrant crisis, asking where are they getting their money, and strongly suggesting they may be aiding traffickers.

Conte later claimed credit, when he first signed the law, for having moderated and made them less extreme than they originally were at the time, and criticised them in an interview to the Corriere della Sera, blaming them on Salvini.

[304][305] A M5S demonstration inside the Chamber of Deputies against a law approved by the government, which happened in January 2014,[306][307] caused a brawl between the M5S, the centrist Civic Choice, the right-wing Brothers of Italy, and the centre-left Democratic Party.

[308] Following insults to the president of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini,[309] Italian journalist Corrado Augias stated on 31 January 2014 that the violence used by the M5S reminded him of fascism.

Despite an initial agreement, ALDE leader Guy Verhofstadt refused the M5S' admission to the group due to insufficient guarantees to come to a common position on European integration.