The oldest towns in the region, dating back over 1,000 years, include Trzciel, Skwierzyna, Iłowa, Szprotawa, Jasień, Krosno Odrzańskie, Międzyrzecz and Żary, with most other towns also founded in the Middle Ages, including the current regional capitals of Zielona Góra and Gorzów Wielkopolski.

The youngest towns are Łęknica, Czerwieńsk, Nowa Sól, Szlichtyngowa and Zbąszynek, all either first mentioned or established in the later periods.

After Brandenburg passed to the Bohemian Crown in 1373, Poland made a peaceful attempt to regain the northern portion of the area.

The southern part of the current voivodeship remained part of the duchies of Żagań and Głogów, ruled by the houses of Piast and Jagiellon, with the Żagań duchy eventually passing to houses of foreign background, including Czech, Saxon and French, whereas other areas were gradually incorporated directly into the Kingdom of Bohemia.

[14][15] In 1998, the government of Jerzy Buzek decided to introduce an administrative reform, with its principles including the restoration of counties and a steep reduction in the number of voivodeships.

Many of the people opposing the draft reform initially demanded retaining as many as 25 voivodeships (including the 2 ones seated in Gorzów and Zielona Góra), a number nevertheless widely regarded as a demand intentionally excessive to serve as an initial negotiating bargain, actually aiming to restore the 17 voivodeships existing prior to 1975 as an ultimate compromise.

In order to salvage the reform from being killed altogether, the government was, in the face of lacking the supermajority required to overturn the veto at the time, forced to reconsider the original shape of the reform and to reconcile it with the reservations of the President and his political background, with the result of a compromise adjustment increasing the number of voivodeships to 16, with Lubusz Voivodeship included among the four additional ones created according to the agreement.

The government made an effort to highlight and exploit the decades-long animosity between the approximately same-size two principal cities, spreading scare against its inevitable re-ignition and explosion in any of these two cities after designating the other one as the voivodeship capital, and hoping to use the engineered scare as the main argument in the ongoing discussions against creating the Lubusz voivodeship, The animosity, existing indeed between the cities, has been historically rooted in a widespread perception among Gorzów inhabitants that the 1950 decision to designate Zielona Góra as the voivodeship capital instead of their larger and more populous city, was taken by the anticlerical communist government due to a hidden motivation of punishing Gorzów for becoming the see of the newly established Roman Catholic apostolic administration governing the majority of the Recovered Territories, with the ensuing discrimination of the city by the voivodeship authorities in the years 1950–1975 in terms of establishing any new public cultural and educational institutions, other public investments or public funds allocations, in vivid contrast to the unjust favoring of their own seat, the city of Zielona Góra; a sentiment reinforced further by the surprise relocation of the see of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Gorzów to Zielona Góra in 1992, renamed as a result the Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów, and finally and perhaps most importantly, by the historical, perpetual and almost sacred rivalry between the motorcycle speedway clubs located in both cities.

The objective of the local elites in Zielona Góra was in turn to become a single capital centre, reverting to the situation before 1975, while any prospect of sharing the governing institutions was for a long time treated with their hostility.

In spite of that, the looming threat of a "everybody lose" scenario set to materialize in case of a possible implementation of the original reform draft, paved the way for neutralizing this argument through forcing both rival sides into the breakthrough reconciliation accord known as the Paradyż Agreement, brokered by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Zielona Góra-Gorzów and formalized in a document signed during a highly publicized local summit in the Gościkowo-Paradyż Abbey on 13 March 1998.

On the basis of this broadly supported agreement, an effective public pressure endorsed jointly by the two centers was successfully exerted on the central government which ultimately acquiesced to the demand of establishing Lubusz Voivodeship.

The 19th century Muskau Park, located on both sides of the Polish–German border, has entered the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of the province was 10.8 billion euros in 2018, accounting for 2.2% of Polish economic output.

Of the historic town halls, the one in Kargowa was the site of an armed defense against the annexation by Prussia in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793.

There are also numerous palaces, including at Brody, Dąbrówka Wielkopolska, Glisno, Jędrzychowice, Kalsk, Mierzęcin, Trzebiechów, Żary.

[7] In Żagań, there is a memorial to the victims of the Stalag Luft III murders of Allied POWs, perpetrated by Nazi Germany in World War II.

[13] The garrison town of Żagań hosts Poland's oldest monument of Wojtek, the soldier bear of the Polish II Corps.

Motorcycle speedway enjoys a large following in the province with the Stal Gorzów Wielkopolski and Falubaz Zielona Góra clubs being among the most accomplished in the sport in the country.