The IFCS was founded in 1985, it is composed of 18 national, regional or linguistically-based data science and classification societies al around the world. These societies are:

• Associação Portuguesa de Classificação e Análise de Dados (CLAD)
• British Data Science Society (BDSS)
• The Classification Society (CS)
• Gesellschaft für Klassifikation (GfKl)
• Ελληνική Εταιρεία Ανάλυσης Δεδομένων – Helenic Society for Data Analysis (GSDA)
• Hungarian Statistical Association (HSA-CMSG)
• Irish Pattern Recognition and Classification Society (IPRCS)
• Japanese Classification Society (JCS)
• Korean Classification Society (KCS)
• Moroccan Classification Society (MCSo)
• Multivariate Data Analysis Group of the South African Statistical Association (SASA-MDAG)
• Multivariate Statistics and Classification Group of the Spanish Society of Statistics and Operations Research (SEIO-AMyC)
• Sekcja Klasyfikacji i Analizy Danych PTS (SKAD)
• Sociedad Centroamericana y del Caribe de Clasificación y Análisis de Datos (SoCCCAD)
• Classification and Data Analysis Group of the Italian Statistical Society (ClaDAG-SIS)
• Société Francophone de Classification (SFC)
• Statistično društvo Slovenije (SdS)
• Vereniging voor Ordinatie en Classificatie (VOC)

Periodically, the IFCS organizes conferences where the most recent developments of classification, data science, data analysis, data mining, machine learning and applications using these tools are presented and published. There have been seventeen conferences

1. Aachen, Germany (1987),
2. Charlottesville, USA (1989),
3. Edinburgh, Scotland (1991),
4. Paris, France (1993),
5. Kobe, Japan (1996),
6. Rome, Italy (1998),
7. Namur, Belgium (2000),
8. Cracow, Poland(2002),
9. Chicago, Illinois(2004),
10. Ljubljana, Slovenia(2006),
11. Dresden, Germany(2009),
12. Frankfurt, Germany(2011),
13. Tilburg, The Netherlands(2013),
14. Bologna, Italy(2015),
15. Tokyo, Japan(2017),
16. Thessaloniki, Greece(2019),
17. Porto, Portugal(2022).