Following Malvern's prominence as a spa town in the earlier years of the nineteenth century, and the advent of the railway, the College was founded by a group of mainly local businessmen. It opened in January 1865 to two dozen boys and half a dozen masters. Initially, there were two Houses but expansion was rapid and by 1877 there were six Houses and 290 boys.

In the 1890s the number of pupils nearly doubled and a further four Houses were added, thus creating the broad outlines of the campus familiar to us today. Originally housed in the Main Building, a separate Chapel was also built during the 1890s.

The Chapel records over 600 Old Malvernians and Hillstonians who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars. Further expansion of pupil numbers and buildings continued after the Great War but during the Second World War the College suffered more than any other comparable independent school, being twice ejected and shrinking to half its former size. Required to make way for the Admiralty between October 1939 and July 1940, it found a temporary home at Blenheim Palace.The College underwent a further period of exile from May 1942 to July 1946. Ordered out at one week's notice, the school was housed with Harrow School.

The College's premises were then occupied by the Telecommunications and Radar establishment, and there is more than a grain of truth in echoing Eton's Waterloo claim that the Second World War was won on the playing fields of Malvern College; indeed, the modern Defence Research Agency is still sited on former College land.

Since 1946, the College has continued to build new facilities - Medical Centre 1967, Arts Centre 1974, Sports Hall 1977, Technology Building 1992 - and has also played a significant role in the development of educational projects. In 1963 it was the first independent school to have a language laboratory, it pioneered Nuffield Physics in the 1960s, Science in Society in the 1970s, and the Diploma of Achievement in the 1990s. Today's coeducational College came about in 1992 when three successful schools (Malvern College, Ellerslie Girls’ School and Hillstone Prep) were brought together.

Also at the beginning of the 1990s, Malvern continued to be at the forefront of innovation by being one of the first schools in Britain to offer the International Baccalaureate in the Sixth Form.

Over the last decade Malvern College has shown itself to offer all that is best in coeducation. The ratio of boys to girls has settled at 2:1. Whilst remaining a proper boarding school with over 350 pupils on campus during the weekends, in recent years it has established a day house for both boys and girls.