The first issue of Slobodna Dalmacija was published on 17 June 1943 by Tito's Partisans in an abandoned stone barn[2] on Mosor, a mountain near Split, while the city was occupied by the Italian army.

Many of the most popular Croatian humourists, like Miljenko Smoje, Đermano Ćićo Senjanović and the trio that later founded the Feral Tribune, began their careers there.

[citation needed] Another reason for this success was the editorial policy of Joško Kulušić, who used the decline of Communism to allow the paper to become a forum for new political ideas.

In the early 1990s Slobodna Dalmacija established a reputation as a newspaper with a politically diverse group of columnists, both left-leaning and those who supported the government.

However, it retained its distinctively hard-line nationalist stance, even during the first year of Prime Minister Ivica Račan's left-of-center government.