Rétság is located 55 km (34 mi) north of Budapest on the E77 European main road, halfway between Vác and Balassagyarmat.

Big landowners was in Rétság: Mehmed Daud 1562–1563, Ottoman from liva of Hussein pasha 1566–1567, Bosna Hassan 1583–1584, Gábor Lónyai 1656, Paul Sréter and his family 1770, widow count Mrs. Béla Benyovszky, Sándor Rosenbach, Frigyes Herzfeld in 1910.

Presidential Council of Hungarian People's Republic pronounced Rétság to be town in 1989.

It was desolated during the Ottoman conquest, after it was settled again and the population was larger than in Rétság in the 19th century.

Szabolcs Fényes (1912 Nagyvárad-1986 Budapest), abroad known as Peter Fényes, Hungarian operetta and musical composer and director of the Budapester Operetta Theatre in the 1940s and the 1950s lived in Rétság between 1927 and 1931 and here composed his first celebrated operetta Maya in 1931, which would be played in twelve European countries later.