It was founded in December 2000 by Tomi Lintelä and Jari Jaanto as a photo gallery for the Finnish users of Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

[4] By December 2009, the officers had received about 50,000 comments and questions, including crime tips and reports of bullying in schools.

[5] In 2014, IRC-Galleria was purchased by Herdifier Oy, a company owned by some of the creators and early workers of the website.

At the time, the website was reportedly visited by 30% of Finnish young adults, and had about 100,000 weekly visitors.

Some of the communities are representations of actual IRC channels, and joining them requires IRC-based identification.