The Royal Danish Academy of Portraiture, Sculpture, and Architecture in Copenhagen was inaugurated on 31 March 1754, and given as a gift to the King Frederik V on his 31st birthday.

Its name was changed to the Royal Danish Academy of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1771. At the same event, Johann Friedrich Struensee introduced a new scheme in the academy to encourage artisan apprentices to take supplementary classes in drawing so as to develop the notion of \"good taste\". The building boom resulting from the Great Fire of 1795 greatly profited from this initiative.

In 1814 the name was changed again, this time to the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. It is still situated in its original building, the Charlottenborg Palace, located on the Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen. The School of Architecture has been situated in former naval buildings on Holmen since 1996.

The academy is larger and better funded than the Jutland Art Academy and Funen Art Academy, which offer similar programs.

It teaches and conducts research on the subjects of painting, sculpting, architecture, graphics, photography, and video and in the history of those subjects.

The academy is under the administration of the Danish Ministry of Culture.

The academy’s School of Architecture offers education in the fields of architectural design and restoration, urban and landscape planning and industrial, graphic and furniture design. The school has nine study departments, four research institutes and six affiliated research centres. The undergraduate course, leading to the Bachelor of Architecture diploma, lasts three years while the Master of Arts in Architecture is a two-year graduate course. Notable Danish architect Arne Jacobsen, a major influence behind the Architectural Functionalism, studied at the Academy, as did Bjarke Ingels, the rising star in the world of architecture and design. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal named Ingels the Innovator of the Year for architecture.