The town, once a stronghold of the Principality of Bayreuth, is renowned for its University of Life Sciences, a branch of the University of Bayreuth, the massive Plassenburg Castle, which houses the largest tin soldier museum in the world, for its brewery, its vivid food industry, which hosts some of the world's biggest food businesses, and for its sausages, or Bratwürste.

Kulmbach is located in the middle of the Bavarian province of Upper Franconia, about 25 kilometres (15.5 miles) northwest of the city of Bayreuth.

As a result of its favourable location on the historic and 'escorted' roads to Bamberg, Nuremberg, Eger, Hof and Leipzig trade in the town flourished - guilds were formed for the weavers, dyers and silk embroiderers.

As a result of the transfer of the princely privilege in 1363, and the electorate and the March of Brandenburg in 1415, all subsequent Franconian Hohenzollerns called themselves Margraves of Brandenburg-Kulmbach.

From 1411 to 1529 Kulmbach townsfolk stood as chancellors at the head of the administration for the March of Brandenburg (Dr. Frederick Sesselmann, Sigismund Zehrer and Sebastian Stublinger).

The belligerent margrave of Brandenburg-Kulmbach, Albert Alcibiades, wanted to bring all Franconians under his rule and set up a reconstituted Duchy of Franconia.

The sack is recreated in the German Tin Soldiers Museum at the Plassenburg, this diorama constitutes the largest of its kind in the world.

However, George Frederick's successor, Margrave Christian, moved the location of his Residenz in 1604 to neighbouring Bayreuth as the Plassenburg no longer fulfilled the ideas of courtly absolutism, and the expansion of the castle came to an end.

Nevertheless, the margravial residence returned to Kulmbach several times, once, in 1605, due to a fire in the city of Bayreuth and then again, for safety, during the Thirty Years War.

When Margrave Charles Frederick Alexander sold the March of Brandenburg-Bayreuth to his cousin, the King of Prussia, on account of his lover, Lady Elizabeth Craven, Kulmbach, too, became Prussian, and the Plassenburg was used in the years that followed as a camp for French prisoners of war.

Since the Plassenburg represented an obstacle to French and Bavarian forces advancing against Prussia in 1806, the town of Kulmbach was occupied in October and November that year.

In 1933, the NSDAP seized power in Kulmbach and the Imperial School of German Technology (Reichsschule der deutschen Technik) was established in the Plassenburg.