Lund University traces its origin to 1666, when the Swedish Crown established an academy in Lund shortly after the Treaty of Roskilde transferred the province of Scania from Denmark to Sweden. Teaching was intended partly to bind the new province to the Swedish realm. It was established beside Lund Cathedral, on the site of an earlier medieval studium generale, and first bore the name Academia Carolina after Charles X Gustav. Four faculties, covering theology, law, medicine and philosophy, shaped it for more than two centuries, and the Scanian War forced a closure from 1676 to 1682. It is the second-oldest university still operating in Sweden, after Uppsala, which dates from 1477.

The university is now organised into nine faculties, spanning humanities and theology, engineering (LTH), fine and performing arts, law, medicine, science, social sciences, aviation, and economics and management. Alongside them sit more than twenty institutes and specialised research centres, including the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law. The teaching portfolio covers roughly 265 degree programmes and some 1,500 freestanding courses, with about ten bachelor's and over 130 master's programmes taught in English. Lund is a member of the League of European Research Universities and of the Universitas 21 network.

Research concentrates in fields such as neurology, nanotechnology, stem cell biology and climate science, and the university is among Sweden's leading recipients of European Union research funding. Two large facilities anchor its materials science profile: MAX IV, a synchrotron radiation facility that opened in 2016, and the European Spallation Source, a neutron facility on the city's edge due to reach full operation in 2028. Innovations developed in Lund include diagnostic ultrasound, the artificial kidney and Bluetooth. Most departments cluster north of the Lundagård park in central Lund, with further campuses in Malmö, about 15 kilometres away, and in Helsingborg; Copenhagen lies roughly 50 kilometres off across the Öresund region.