The village was mentioned in 1257 as a property of the Cistercian abbey of Gościkowo.

[3] The church was plundered by the Swedish troops which Field Marshal Arvid Wittenberg led into Poland during the Second Northern War in 1655[2] and afterwards was rebuilt in a Baroque style.

In the 1793 Second Partition of Poland Kaława was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia.

After the successful Greater Poland uprising of 1806, it was regained by Poles and included within the short-lived Duchy of Warsaw, and after the duchy's dissolution in 1815, the village was reannexed by Prussia, and made part of Kreis Meseritz in 1818.

In the 1930s the central parts of the German Festungsfront Oder-Warthe-Bogen military defence (Werkgruppe Scharnhorst) were laid out west of the village, they were overcome by Soviet Red Army forces during the Vistula–Oder Offensive on 29–30 January 1945.