It is an important rail hub, with two major lines crossing there – east-west (from Częstochowa to Opole) and south–north (from Katowice to Poznań) – and a site of light and chemical industry.

According to old folk tradition the name comes from the Polish sentence lubi mi się tu kościół i miasto budować, which refers to the erection of the church and the town by Duke Władysław.

Under the name Lubliniec it was mentioned in a 1612 Polish poem Officina ferraria, abo huta y warstat z kuźniami szlachetnego dzieła żelaznego by Baroque poet Walenty Roździeński [pl].

By the turn of the 13th to the 14th century it had obtained the status of a town according to Magdeburg Law by Władysław's son and successor Duke Bolko I.

[4] Duke Jan II the Good granted the citizens many privileges, including brewing and market rights as well as the permit to form guilds.

Upon Jan's death in 1532, Lubliniec with the Duchy of Opole fell as a reverted fief to the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, which since 1526 were ruled by the Austrian House of Habsburg.

During the German occupation, the Polish population was subjected to mass arrests, imprisonment, deportations to Nazi concentration camps and executions.

[9] The Germans also established and operated a Nazi prison in the town,[10] and the E609 forced labour subcamp of the Stalag VIII-B/344 prisoner-of-war camp in the present-day district of Kokotek.