[3] It was founded in 2011 by James Butler and Aaron Bastani, who met in the same year during the protests against the increase in UK university tuition fees.

[3][10] In January 2018, Novara Media Ltd was dissolved by Companies House after it failed to file an overdue confirmation statement that had been due in August 2017, though kept running.

[17] An incident in 2018 which received particular attention was when Novara Media contributor Ash Sarkar said during a discussion on Good Morning Britain of protests against US President Donald Trump's visit to the UK that she had also criticised Barack Obama and the Democratic Party because she was 'literally a communist'.

[18][19][20] This clip achieved more than 6 million views on Novara's YouTube channel, and members of their leadership team were invited on to Newsnight to discuss the incident.

"[27] Novara Media was the first to report of a leaked internal presentation given to the executive team of Avanti West Coast and its managing director Andy Mellors, which had described government subsidies as "free money".

[28] The report was raised by Labour MP Ashley Dalton in the House of Commons, prompting Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden to state that he would look into the matter.

[2][3] A July 2015 interview with Jeremy Corbyn on the day he became the bookmakers' favourite to win the 2015 Labour Party leadership election attracted 60,000 views in its week of publication.

[9] By September 2017, the organisation's YouTube videos were frequently gaining 100,000 views, and, according to its self-reported figures, it had reached 3 million Facebook users over the 2017 election period.

[45] In response, advocacy group Big Brother Watch, Chief executive Ed Proctor of the Independent Monitor for the Press, and Novara contributor Ash Sarkar criticised YouTube for online censorship.

[44][46] Libertarian journalist and columnist Brendan O'Neill opined that Novara Media "fell victim to the cancel culture the radical left fuels and too often supports".

[47] Both O'Neill and James Bloodworth of the New Statesman wrote that in 2020, Gary McQuiggin, Novara's video editor, defended Twitter's right as a private company to remove accounts.

[48] In April 2024, Novara posted a video stating that one of the Labour Party's top donors was a supporter of the Israeli government and had profited from South Africa's apartheid rule.

Novara disclosed they had made charitable donations to the World Central Kitchen organisation and the Community Security Trust in the donor's name.