The Czech Geographical Society was established inside of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1894. During 1920-1939 and 1945-1990, it was Czechoslovak Geographical Society.
Since 1896 it has been publishing a scholarly quarterly entitled “Sborník”, which last name from 1996 is “Geografie” (Geography). It is one of the Czech (as well as European) oldest scholarly journals. The journal for geography teachers is named “Geografické rozhledy” (Geographical horizons).
From the beginning, the Czech Geographical Society has been university-based. Initially, it was Charles University of Prague, the oldest university in the Central Europe.
Very beneficial to the Czech Geographical Society was its co-operation with the Academy of Sciences. The Institute of Geography of the Czechoslovakian Academy of Sciences had its headquarters in Brno between 1952-1993 (at a former monastery where, in the mid-19th century, Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of genetics) and was originally so closely linked with the Geographical Society, especially under director Jaromír Demek, who was also the head of the Geomorphological Map Section of the IGU in the 1970s. Unfortunately, the Institute of Geography did not survive the transformation period and it was dissolved in 1993.
The most spectacular international achievement of the Czech Geographical Society after fall of communism was the regional International Geographical Union Conference, organised in Prague in 1994 – the Society’s centenary.
The Czech Geographical Society has 498 members organized in nine local branches (Prague, Brno, Olomouc, Ostrava, Plzen, Ceské Budejovice, Ústí nad Labem, Hradec Králové and Liberec). It is divided to the seven sections according to system of geographical sciences: Physical Geography, Socio-Economic Geography, Regional Geography, GIS and Cartography, Historical and Environmental Geography, Geographical Education, and the smallest (but very active) Polar Section.
Congresses of the society are organized every four years. The last one was held in Liberec in 2008, next one will be held in Ostrava at 2010.