He was born Ivan Urbančič in Robič near Kobarid, in what was then the Italian administrative region of Julian March to a peasant Slovene family.
[2] Urbančič's family spent six years in the village of Bistrica in southwest Vardar Macedonia, where a colony of Slovene immigrants from the Julian March was established.
In 1937, they moved to Slovenia, to the village of Črešnjevec near Slovenska Bistrica, where young Ivo met with Jože Pučnik, with whom he established a lifelong friendship.
In the late 1980s, he worked as an editor at the publishing house Slovenska matica, where he supervised the translation and first edition of many major Western thinkers in Slovene.
[5] In 1987, he was among the authors of the Contributions to the Slovenian National Program, an intellectual manifesto demanding a democratic, pluralistic and independent Slovenia.