The alternative transliterations of the name include Khmelnitskiy, Khmelnitsky, and Khmelnytskyy. The city is served by Khmelnytskyi Ruzhichnaya Airport. As of 2009, the city's population is 290,100. Khmelnytskyi should not be confused with Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi, a city in Ukraine's Kiev Oblast. The football team FC Dynamo Khmelnytskyi is based in Khmelnytskyi.

The city was founded in 1431 as Ploskyriv or Ploskyrivtsi, and later came to be called Proskuriv, but in 1954 was renamed Khmelnytskyi on the 300th anniversary of a treaty negotiated by Bohdan Khmelnytsky.

A series of pogroms were carried out in the region known in the history as the Proskurov pogrom. Particularly, that event was brought up during the Schwartzbard mistrial after which the Petliura's assassin was pardoned on the grounds of self-trail. According to Vinnytsia's city archives the pogrom was conducted on the Friday night February 15, 1919 by one of the otamans (generals) of the Ukrainian People's Army Otaman Semysenko. 1,200 Jewish victims of different age and gender died directly from being slaughtered by stabbing and/or cutting with use of military shashkas, another 600 were heavily wounded out which less than 300 survived. The chief Otaman Petliura was appointed the head of state just two days prior to the tragedy on February 13. Petliura issued the Order 131 in which he mentioned the fact that numerous Jewish parties in Ukraine (Bund, Poale Zion, Folks-Partei, Unificationists) rose to the sovereignty of the Ukrainian Republic and cooperating with the Ukrainian government condemned such actions calling those initiators deserters, enemy of the State and must be liquidated out of the social coexistence. The order was also cosigned by the Chief of staff Otaman Yunakiv. That order was published in the Ukraina newspaper on February 20 (March 4, old style). Later Petliura issued a special order to execute Semysenko as the pogrom-initiator, which was accomplished on March 20, 1920.

The city was home during the Cold War to the 19th Division of the 43rd Army of the Strategic Rocket Forces, formed from the 7th Zaporizhia Order of the Red Banner. The intercontinental ballistic missile silos of the division were removed and destroyed, partially with U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction funding, during the 1990s.

Khmelnitskyi city is an important cultural center. Khmelnitskyi educational and cultural facilities include a technological institute, theater and philharmonic hall.