Professional football is run by the spin-off organization VfL Wolfsburg-Fußball GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group.

The city of Wolfsburg was founded in 1938 as Stadt des KdF-Wagen to house autoworkers building the car that would later become famous as the Volkswagen Beetle.

[citation needed] The first football club affiliated with the autoworks was known as BSG Volkswagenwerk Stadt des KdF-Wagen, a works team.

[citation needed] In late November 1946, the club played a friendly against longtime Gelsenkirchen powerhouse[tone] Schalke 04 at the stadium owned by Volkswagen, emerging as the successor to BSG as the company sponsored side.

When Germany's first professional football league, the Bundesliga, was formed in 1963, Wolfsburg was playing in the Regionalliga Nord (II), having just moved up from the Verbandsliga Niedersachsen (III), reaching the German Amateur Championship Final that same year (0–1 vs. VfB Stuttgart Amat.).

The team advanced to the final of the German Cup in 1995 where they were beaten 0–3 by Borussia Mönchengladbach, but then went on to the top flight on the strength of a second-place league finish in 1997.

In the 1998–99 season, Wolfsburg, under Wolfgang Wolf, were holding onto[vague] the fifth spot in the 33rd round of fixtures, and they had hopes of[tone] making fourth place, to gain UEFA Champions League participation.

Losing 6–1 away to MSV Duisburg in the final fixture, Wolfsburg finished in sixth place with 55 points and qualified for next season's UEFA Cup.

In the 2008–09 season, under Magath, Wolfsburg claimed their biggest success by winning[vague] their first Bundesliga title after defeating Werder Bremen 5–1 on 23 May 2009.

During this campaign, Wolfsburg equalled the longest winning streak in one Bundesliga season with ten successive victories after the winter break.

In the 2009–10 season, Wolfsburg dismissed their newly appointed trainer Armin Veh after the winter break due to lack of success,[vague] with the club sitting tenth in the league.

In the Champions League, they came third in their group, behind Manchester United and CSKA Moscow, losing the chance for a place[tone] in the competition's successive round.

On 18 March 2011, Wolfsburg confirmed that Felix Magath would return as head coach and sporting director, almost two years since he led them to the Bundesliga title and just two days after being fired from his position at Schalke 04.

[7] With a reinforced squad, the club finished as runners-up in the 2014–15 Bundesliga behind Bayern Munich, thus automatically qualifying for the 2015–16 Champions League group stage.

At the end of the 2015 summer transfer window, Wolfsburg sold the 2014–15 Footballer of the Year (Germany) Kevin De Bruyne to Manchester City for a reported[by whom?]

In January 2017, Wolfsburg signed a letter of intent to partner the American side Chattanooga FC, which includes women's football, youth development and local social responsibility.

[9] Wolfsburg struggled through the 2016–17 season, rotating through several managers and eventually finishing in 16th place in the Bundesliga with only 37 points, putting them in a playoff against Eintracht Braunschweig, which they won 2–0 on aggregate to remain in the top flight.

The amateur squad and the women's association football section is playing since 2015 at the newly built AOK Stadion with a capacity of 5200 people.