The Bryansk State Local History Museum opened its doors to visitors in September 1921, originally named the Bryansk Provincial Museum. Its founder and first director was the talented local historian and archaeologist Sergey Sergeyevich Deev. At that time, the museum had about 2,000 exhibits.

In 1921, the museum's exhibition had two departments. In 1933, it was renamed the local history museum. In the pre-war years, the museum's exhibitions were popular among workers and the youth of Bryansk.

During the occupation of Bryansk by German fascist troops, exhibits, scientific materials, and the museum's library, which contained over 8,000 volumes of historical literature, were lost.

On September 17, 1943, Soviet troops and Bryansk partisans liberated the city, and on October 8, the Bryansk City Council decided to create a city museum.

It took five years of hard work to restore the collections and create a new exhibition. Therefore, 1949 can be considered the museum's second birth, as it reopened to visitors as the Bryansk Regional Local History Museum.

Since 1980, the museum has been headed by an association of regional museums, which includes 13 branches: 7 local history, 5 military-historical, and 1 literary-memorial. The staff of the association assists in the creation of school and departmental museums.

In 2016, the Bryansk Planetarium became part of the museum.