With an average of 2,600 to 2,800 students, the TH München was Germany's largest technical university, ahead of the TH Berlin.

In 1906, Anna Boyksen became the first female student to enroll in electrical engineering, after the Bavarian government had allowed women to study at technical universities in the German Empire.

During the Weimar Republic, the TH München faced the challenge of limited resources and was drawn into radical political conflicts during the November Revolution, the Great Depression, and the rise of Adolf Hitler.

For instance, Heinz Henseler, a professor in charge of animal breeding at the university, headed a new "Colonial Science Seminar" from 1940.

The seminar focused on exploring how to "Germanize" the landscapes of Poland and Russia for future colonization and settlement during the war.

Notable professors during this time included aircraft designer Willy Messerschmitt and physicist Walther Meissner.

Despite the war, high-level basic research continued to be conducted in some institutes, as some professors, staff members, and students dared to disobey and resist.

Between 1868 and 1870 the architect Arnold Zenetti oversaw the construction of several hospital buildings which are today attached to the Munich universities or form part of the TUM campus.

[7] In 1967, a TUM School of Medicine was founded with campuses in the buildings of Rechts der Isar Hospital.

The historic Main Campus (Stammgelände) is located in Maxvorstadt, the central borough of Munich.

The TUM Department of Sport and Health Sciences is located in the Olympiapark, the former site of the 1972 Summer Olympics.

In the last decades, the departments of Physics, Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Informatics and Mathematics have all relocated from their former buildings in the Main Campus.

They have since been joined by numerous research institutes, including the Max Planck Institutes for Plasma Physics, Astrophysics, Extraterrestrial Physics and Quantum Optics, the Forschungsreaktor München II (FRM II), the headquarters of the European Southern Observatory (ESO), and the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, one of the fastest supercomputers in Europe.

Additional TUM facilities are located in Ottobrunn (Department of Aerospace and Geodesy),[10] Straubing,[11] Heilbronn,[12] and Singapore.

In 2010, TUM Asia started offering bachelor's degrees in collaboration with the Singapore Institute of Technology.

In 2010, TUM and the Nanyang Technological University founded TUMCREATE, a research platform for the improvement of Singapore's public transportation.

[18] Under the German Universities Excellence Initiative, TUM has obtained funding for multiple research clusters, including e-conversion (energy technology), MCQST (quantum mechanics), ORIGINS (astrophysics, biophysics and particle physics), and SYNERGY (neurology).

[19] In addition to the schools and departments, TUM has set up numerous research centers with external cooperation partners.

[27] The same year, TUM held the 28th position globally (also first in Germany) in the Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings.

[32] In the Times Higher Education's Impact Rankings 2024 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), TUM tied for first place worldwide.

[1] Various initiatives are run by students, including TEDxTUM, the TUM Speaker Series (past speakers having included Ban Ki-moon, Tony Blair, Bill Gates, Sam Altman and Eric Schmidt),[36] and IKOM, a career fair.

[37] A notable student group is the Workgroup for Rocketry and Space Flight (WARR), which won all SpaceX Hyperloop pod competitions in 2017 through 2019.