In 1947 Giulio Bergmann, who would later serve as senator for the Italian Republican Party, launched the Movement for Local Autonomies in the province of Bergamo.

Calderoli would later form a short-lived Lega Lombarda[6] and the Union of Autonomists of Italy, which obtained 0.06% of the vote in the 1970 regional election.

Consequently, he started a series of publications and organisations, notably the Lombard North-Western Union for Autonomy, along with his brother Franco and Roberto Maroni, an activist of Proletarian Democracy.

On 12 April 1984 the Lega Autonomista Lombarda (Lombard Autonomist League, LAL) was officially established by Bossi, who used the resonance of the name of the historical Lega Lombarda when choosing the name, Giuseppe Leoni, Manuela Marrone (Bossi's future wife), Pierangelo Brivio (Marrone's brother-in-law), Marino Moroni and Emilio Sogliaghi, but not Maroni who had taken a hiatus from politics and would return in 1989.

The break-up of the coalition supporting the government and its replacement by Lamberto Dini's "technocratic" government, thanks to the LN's support, led Negri and others to defect to the Federalist Italian League[17][18] or the Federalists and Liberal Democrats, while Maroni, despite disagreements with Bossi, chose to stay in the party and was warmly re-welcomed by Bossi.

After the 2001 general election, three LL members joined Berlusconi's government as ministers: Bossi (who would later have health problems and be replaced by Calderoli), Maroni and Roberto Castelli.

[31] The Lombard delegates elected six members to the federal council: Giacomo Stucchi, Paolo Grimoldi, Andrea Mascetti, Gianni Fava, Simona Bordonali, and, on behalf of the minority, Marco Desiderati.

[33] In November 2013 Salvini succeeded to Maroni as Lega Nord's federal secretary and, later on, he appointed a commissioner, Stefano Borghesi, to fill the post.

[36][37][38] In May 2017, after Salvini's re-election as LN federal secretary, five LL members (Bordonali, Fabrizio Cecchetti, Giulio De Capitani, Simona Pergreffi and Jacopo Vignati) were elected to the federal council with Salvini, a sixth (Giorgetti) was elected as an independent and a seventh (Gianni Fava) on behalf of the minority.

The founding members of the new LL were Attilio Fontana, Paolo Grimoldi, Daniele Belotti, Stefano Borghesi, Fabrizio Cecchetti e Gian Marco Centinaio.

[47] The Committee was inspired by Umberto Bossi and, under the leadership of Grimoldi and Angelo Ciocca, it attracted more than one thousand members in a couple of months.

[48] The inaugural event of the Committee, held in early December, was attended by some 600 people, including former ministers Roberto Castelli and Francesco Speroni.

[49][50][51][52] Contextually, provincial congresses were held in some of the party's strongholds: critics of Salvini affiliated with the CN narrowly won in Bergamo and Brescia, while the pro-Salvini wing retained Varese for a handful of votes.

[57] Right after the 2024 European Parliament election, long-time internal critic Grimoldi was ejected from the party;[58] he would later organise his own platform, Pact for the North.

In the 2018 regional election it won 45.8% in Sondrio, 34.4% in Brescia, 36.7% in Bergamo, 33.4% in Lecco, 32.6% in Como and 30.9% in Varese (the party's cradle and original stronghold).