[3] Initially a royal city of Poland, in 1365 it was granted by King Casimir III the Great to knight and noble Wierzbięta z Paniewic [pl].

[3] Administratively located in the Sieradz Voivodeship in the Greater Poland Province of the Polish Crown, it became a village again.

Kempen (Kepno) immigrants were the first Jews to settle in Guatemala, and formed the basis of the German-Jewish community there.

In response the Germans placed over 1,000 Grenzschutz troops in the town and persecuted the local Polish population.

[12] The town was annexed by Nazi Germany, renamed Kempen and administered as part of the county or district (kreis) of the same name within Reichsgau Wartheland.

Its population was subject to segregation, Germanisation, confiscation of property, arrests, expulsions, deportations to forced labour, imprisonment in concentration camps and executions.

The Polish resistance movement remained active in the town, and in September 1945 it captured the local communist police station and liberated the prisoners.

[17] Kępno is one of the production sites of the Greater Poland liliput cheese (ser liliput wielkopolski), a traditional regional Polish cheese, protected as a traditional food by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Poland.