[2][3] University of Tampere was founded in 1925 as the Civic College in Helsinki teaching public administration, organisation management and journalism.

As the institution grew, it expanded to municipal administration, public law, child protection, and civic education.

Urho Kekkonen, the President of Finland, signed an edict for establishing a Tampere-based branch of the Helsinki University of Technology in 1965.

[5] The two universities always had close relations and co-operation was common in the fields of economics, computer science, biotechnology, and medical technology.

The Tampere3 merger process began in 2014 when vuorineuvos Stig Gustavson invited the higher education institutions in Tampere to discuss a reform.

In 2016, the Ministry of Education and Culture appointed a steering, and a working group to prepare the establishment of a new foundation university.

The announcement was met with protest from faculty staff and students as they felt that there is a lack of transparency in the design of this decision, and that their voices were not heard in the matter.