Launched on 1 April 1963, it is run as an independent nonprofit institution, and was founded by all federal states of Germany (Bundesländer).

[2] The broadcaster is well known for its famous programmes heute, a newscast established in 1963, and Wetten, dass..?, an entertainment show that premiered in 1981, with a suspension from 2014 to 2021.

[3] In 1959, the government of Konrad Adenauer began preparations to form a second nationwide television network with the intention of competing with ARD.

Adenauer perceived ARD's news coverage to be too critical of his government, and believed that two of the organizations primarily responsible for its news reporting – the Deutsche Presse-Agentur and Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, which produced the nightly Tagesschau – were too close to the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) to ever be able to report neutrally on his Christian Democratic Union government.

The Deutsche Bundespost began constructing a second transmitter network on UHF channels, which required new reception equipment.

As with the earlier ARD television network, the location of the transmitters was carefully planned to ensure the entire country would be able to receive the programming.

The SPD-led states of Hamburg, Bremen, Lower Saxony, and Hesse appealed to the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, which on 28 February 1961 in the First Broadcasting Judgment blocked the plan.

After this decision, in March 1961, the states decided to establish a central nonprofit public television network independently of Adenauer's effort.

The station began broadcasting from Eschborn near Frankfurt am Main on 1 April 1963, with a speech by the first director general (Intendant), Karl Holzamer.

ZDF is financed by a license fee of €18.36 per month, which must be paid by all households in Germany except handicapped people and persons on social aid.

A commercial subsidiary called ZDF Studios GmbH manages programme sales, acquisitions, international coproductions, and a growing number of important activities in new media.

ZDF's animated station-identity mascots, the Mainzelmännchen (a play on the words "Mainz" and "Heinzelmännchen"), created by Wolf Gerlach for the channel's launch in 1963, quickly became popular and are still shown between commercials.