Beckett wrote Footfalls in English, between March and December 1975 and directed its world première (with Billie Whitelaw as May, for whom the drama was written) during the Samuel Beckett Season (celebrating the playwright’s seventieth birthday) at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in May 1976. Later that year, he directed his German translation of the play at the Schiller-Theater Werkstatt, Berlin, with Hildegard Schmahl playing May.

During theatrical rehearsals of the play, Beckett regularly revised his original script, altering, for example, the number of May's steps from seven to nine. However, when director Deborah Warner attempted to transpose a few lines of dialogue from one character to another in her 1995 London staging of Footfalls, the production was forced to close. Beckett’s Estate insisted "life is too short, but she will not be doing Beckett again".

The American première, at the Kreeger Theatre in December 1976, was staged by Alan Schneider (who directed most of Beckett's American premières).

Footfalls was first published in 1976, by the Grove Press, New York. Beckett’s French translation – Pas – was published by Éditions de Minuit in 1977.