Yisrael Beiteinu was founded in 1999 by Avigdor Liberman, together with Michael Nudelman and Yuri Stern, two former members of the Yisrael BaAliyah party. Its creation responded to the disappointment of part of the Russian-speaking electorate over Netanyahu's signing of the Wye River Memorandum, which provided for a new territorial division in Hebron and was perceived as a retreat from the commitments made to that electorate.
The party won four seats in its first election in 1999 and established itself as the voice of a secular Russian-speaking right, more radical than the Yisrael BaAliyah party. It allied with the National Union, a religious-Zionist political formation, before breaking off that alliance on February 1, 2006; their electoral bases, secular Russian-speaking for one and national-religious for the other, had proved too different. Running independently, the party increased its representation to 11 seats in the 2006 elections.
The party has been led since its foundation by Avigdor Liberman, a former minister of Foreign Affairs, Defense and Finance, who is now a declared candidate for prime minister in 2026.
The list was unveiled on September 6, 2026, before more than 1,000 people at Expo Tel Aviv: Liberman at the top, followed by Rafi Ben Shitrit (former mayor of Beit Shean), then incumbent Knesset members Oded Forer and Yulia Malinovsky, and Sharon Sharabi (brother of former Hamas hostage Eli Sharabi). The party submitted a full list of 25 candidates.