Speculations over a new party led by Renzi date back to 2012, when he was defeated by Bersani in the run-off of the centre-left primary election.

[14] He led the party to huge electoral success in the 2014 European Parliament election (40.8%), but badly lost the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum (59.1% to 40.9%), which caused his resignation as Prime Minister.

[19] Zingaretti focused his campaign on a clear contrast with Renzi's policies and, according to pundits, his victory opened the way for a major shift in the character of the Democratic Party.

[20][21] In August 2019, tensions grew within the coalition supporting Giuseppe Conte's first government, leading to a motion of no-confidence by the League.

[26] On 16 September, in an interview to la Repubblica, Renzi announced his intention to leave the PD and create new parliamentary groups.

[40] Additionally, Il Foglio revealed that internet domains italiaviva.eu and italiaviva.org were created on 9 August 2019, hinting that the split had been prepared in advance.

[41] The following day, la Repubblica revealed that the domains were bought by Alessandro Risso, a former member of Christian Democracy and the PPI from Piedmont.

[43] Italia Viva's backbone was largely based on the Committees of Civil Action of Back to the Future, launched by Renzi during the 2018 Leopolda convention in Florence[44] and seen by some people as the initial step of a new party.

[51] Conte subsequently won confidence motions in both houses of Parliament, with the abstention of IV, but could only reach a plurality in the Senate, rather than an absolute majority.

[52][53][54] In the wake of this, Conte tendered his resignation to President Mattarella, who then began a round of discussions with various parties to form a new government.

[57] In the run-up of the 2022 general election, the party, which refused to join, or was refused entry to, the PD-led centre-left coalition,[58][59] joined forces with the National Civic List[60] (put forward by Federico Pizzarotti of Italia in Comune and Piercamillo Falasca of L'Italia c'è) and the Italian Republican Party (PRI).

[81] In March 2024, the party dropped the idea of "The Centre" list in favour of a broader, liberal and pro-Europeanist list named "United States of Europe", which will include also More Europe, the Italian Radicals, the Italian Socialist Party and the European Liberal Democrats, in order to overcome the 4% electoral threshold.