Django started as an internal project at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper in 2003. The web development team there often had to implement new features or even entire applications within hours. Therefore, Django was created to meet the fast deadlines of journalism websites, whilst at the same time keeping the development process clean and maintainable. By the summer of 2005, Django became mature enough to handle several high traffic sites, and the developers decided to release it to the public as an Open Source project. The project was named after the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

Now that Django is an Open Source project, it has gathered developers and users from all over the world. Bug fixes and new features are introduced on a daily basis, while the original development team keeps an eye on the whole process to make sure that Django remains what it is meant to be—a web framework for building clean, maintainable and reusable web applications.