Kees Zegers, Sacha Prins, Merien ten Houten and Robert Klep were the site's founders and Joost Boermans and Charlotte van Berne were its first editors.

The site was a joint venture of Ilse Media Groep and Virtual Industries Online Marketing Solutions.

In 2001 NU.nl changed hands to Sanoma, when Ilse Media Groep was bought by VNU.

NU&toen is a continually expanding historical image library where events from the past are recalled via old photographs.

NUlive was made to filter news from the big number of Dutch tweets that are published daily.

On 18 November 2011, editor-in-chief Laurens Verhagen suddenly left NU.nl due to an internal disagreement, and was succeeded on May 11, 2012, by Wouter Bax, who came from the Dutch newspaper Trouw.

[2] Op 10 December 2019 DPG Media announced the acquisition of Sanoma's Dutch activities, barring the Finnish firm's educational ventures.