Little progress was made on the project until 1508, when King Henry VII began to take an interest in the college, probably as a political move to legitimise his new position.

It has the world's largest fan vault, while its stained-glass windows and wooden chancel screen are considered some of the finest from their era.

Every year on Christmas Eve, the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols (a service originally devised for Truro Cathedral by Edward White Benson in 1880, adapted by the college dean Eric Milner-White in 1918) is broadcast from the chapel to millions of listeners worldwide.

[6][7] On 12 February 1441, King Henry VI issued letters patent founding a college at Cambridge for a rector and 12 poor scholars.

His original modest plan for the college was abandoned, and provision was instead made for a community of 70 fellows and scholars headed by a provost.

Work proceeded sporadically until a generation later in 1508 when the Founder's nephew Henry VII was prevailed upon to finish the shell of the building.

Later building work on the chapel is marked by an uninhibited branding with the Tudor rose and other symbols of the new establishment, quite against the precise instructions of the Founder's Will.

Although his design was for the courtyard to be closed by three similar detached Neoclassical buildings, due to lack of funds only the western of these was constructed.

In his 1930 memoir As We Were, A Victorian Peep Show,[26] E. F. Benson, an alumnus of King's,[27] recollected the peculiar behaviour of some of the surviving Life Fellows from his undergraduate years of 1887–1890 and before.

Although St Catharine's had been founded by Robert Woodlark (sometimes spelled Wodelarke), a Provost of King's, the college declined the invitation to combine.

[29] Eventually, in 1893, the east and south wings of another new courtyard within King's – designed by George Frederick Bodley and overlooking the river – were completed.

[31] On 1 September 1939, the day of the German invasion of Poland and the cause of the UK's entrance into World War II, permission was sought from the College Council to remove the stained glass from the east window of the chapel.

[6][32] In 1961, the property millionaire Alfred Ernest Allnatt offered King's the Adoration of the Magi by Peter Paul Rubens, which he had purchased in 1959 for a world-record price.

The painting was initially displayed in the antechapel but a significant faction of the fellowship – including Michael Jaffé and the Provost Noel Annan – were determined for the painting to become the focal point of an entirely redesigned east end planned by the architect Sir Martyn Beckett, who was "philosophical about the furore this inevitably occasioned – which quickly became acceptance of a solution to a difficult problem.

"[33] As the first stage of this project, the Edwardian reredos and 17th-century wood panelling were removed and the Rubens installed in their stead behind the altar in April 1964.

The newly refitted east end opened in 1968 and proved highly controversial, with the Architects' Journal criticising it as "motivated not by the demands of liturgical worship but by those of museum display.

The Chapel features the world's largest fan vault ceiling; 26 large stained-glass windows, 24 of which date from the 16th century; and Peter Paul Rubens's painting the Adoration of the Magi as an altarpiece.

Additionally, there is a mixed-voice Chapel choir of male and female students, King's Voices, which sings evensong on Mondays during term-time.

The unofficial Tompkins Table comparing academic performance ranked King's 12th out of a total of 29 rated colleges at the University of Cambridge in 2019.

The main bar at King's is the site of many social events, open mic nights, and informal meetings and debates between students, whilst a venue known as the Bunker (formerly the Cellar), a second bar in a basement of the college, acts occasionally as a music or dance-night venue and most recently the set for a King's Drama productions including Sartre's No Exit[47] and a series of monologue showcase events.

This takes place annually on the Wednesday night of May Week (usually around 20 June), and is attended by around 1,500 students, occupying the Front Court, bar, Hall and Chapel.

[48] After several years of poor performances, the boat club has returned to success in the Lent and May Bumps, with blades being awarded four times in 2023, including twice to the first women's VIII.

The college has had a number of notable alumni in business, including Alfred Allen Booth, Phil Vincent, Nancy Zhang and famous innovators such as Charles Townshend.

In a list of one hundred names, King's claimed two: Alan Turing and John Maynard Keynes who had been both students and fellows at the college.

[57] Heads of State and Government educated at King's include the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, Robert Walpole.

Alumni in religion include William Thomas, the 16th-century Protestant martyr John Frith, the 16th Century Russian Orthodox Priest Rex Phillips-Dibb, the Chassidic Rabbi George O'Rourke, the Archbishop of Canterbury John Sumner, and Richard Cox, who served as Chancellor of Oxford before appointment as Dean of Westminster and eventually Bishop of Ely.

Notable alumni in literature and poetry include the authors Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, Martin Jacques, J. G. Ballard and E. M. Forster, the Nobel Prize winner Patrick White, the poets Rupert Brooke, Walter Raleigh and Xu Zhimo, and the playwright Stephen Poliakoff.

The author and translator of Aristotle Sir John Harington is also an alumnus, and a benefactor of mankind for having invented the flush toilet.

In the arts, alumni include the philosopher George Santayana; the historians Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm and Tony Judt; composers George Benjamin, Judith Weir (Master of the Queen's Music), Thomas Ades, and Julian Anderson; the original members of the Grammy Award-winning a cappella group King's Singers; the folk musician John Spiers; the comedian David Baddiel; the model Lily Cole; the tenor James Gilchrist; and the countertenor John Whitworth.

[58] In the sciences and social sciences, King's alumni include the British sociologist Anthony Giddens, the physicist Patrick Blackett, the chemist Frederick Sanger, The psychologist Edgar Anstey, the palaeontologist Richard Fortey, the economist John Craven, the political theorist John Dunn, the engineer Charles Inglis, and the mathematician and eugenicist Karl Pearson.