Sodobnost was founded in 1933 after the collapse of an earlier magazine, Ljubljanski Zvon, and has now been published since 1933 (it was not published for three years during World War II). Sodobnost has always been regarded as the central and most important Slovenian literary magazine, open to writers and poets of all aesthetic persuasions. It has launched practically all Slovenian literary generations, and there is no writer or critic of note in Slovenia whose work has not, at one time or another, appeared in Sodobnost.

In the 1980s, its importance declined somewhat with the rise of the dissident journal Nova revija. However, with Nova revija having lost the context for its politically charged contents, and with the old editorial board of Sodobnost finally stepping aside in favour of a younger, more cosmopolitan crew, Sodobnost quickly regained the lost ground and is now a truly contemporary literary journal, publishing poetry, prose, and essays by Slovenian and foreign authors; new Slovenian drama (the only magazine publishing plays); lengthy critical reviews of new books (by Slovenian and translated authors); polemical essays with a social, political, or philosophical angle; round-table discussions about matters of national, cultural, and literary interest; interviews with writers, critics, theatre directors, architects, etc; as well as longer blocks of translated poetry and prose from other languages on an exchange basis. It is open to younger authors, who are increasingly beginning to see it as "their" literary journal. Thus the continuing future of the longest surviving magazine in Slovenia (if not in the whole of central Europe) remains assured.