Districts have formed an integral part of civil administration in the subcontinent since colonial times.

When the North-West Frontier Province (the former name of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) formed in November 1901, it was divided into five "settled districts": Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Hazara, Kohat, and Peshawar, and a "trans-border tract" of land which encompassed five "Political Agencies": Khyber, Kurram, Malakand, Tochi, and Wano.

[5] The One Unit policy ended in 1970 and the provinces returned with their original forms (which also meant that the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North-West Frontier Province were separate once more, and that the Frontier Regions regained their status as administrative units).

The divisions that had been created as a result of the policy stayed in the North-West Frontier Province, but were abolished entirely in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

By the time of the 1972 Census of Pakistan, many changes had been made to the administrative map:[6] This meant that at the North-West Frontier Province was divided into three divisions and ten districts, while the Federally Administered Tribal Areas were divided into six Political Agencies and four Frontier Regions.

[6][7] The agency of Orakzai was created out of parts of the Frontier Region Kohat (which still existed, but was smaller) in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

On the other hand, no changes occurred to the 1998 district setup for over a decade, until 2010, when the North-West Frontier Province was renamed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

[9] This meant that by the time of the 2017 Census of Pakistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had 25 districts (one more than in 1998) organized into seven divisions and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas had seven Political Agencies and six Frontier Regions.

The districts are initially listed in alphabetical order, but they can be sorted in different ways by clicking the headers of the table.