The town was founded in 1926 on the site of a settlement named Oleksiivka (). After the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, 45 km far from Vilcha, the town was not included into the "Exclusion Zone" before 1993. During 1993 to 1996, most of the 2,000 residents moved to Kharkiv Oblast, where they founded a "New" Vilcha (709 km away), few kilometres south of the town of Vovchansk.