The site has been a place of Christian gathering since medieval times, when local people are said to have met around a cross to hold open-air services. It is unclear when the first church was built here, though some sources suggest a building may have existed as early as the 1400s or 1500s. A small shingle-clad church is documented on the site in 1624, and despite repeated repairs it was eventually declared beyond saving.
Financial hardship and wartime conditions delayed rebuilding for decades. A new church, designed by C. Ståhl, was finally completed in 1842, though it was plain in appearance, poorly built, and left without heating. By the 1890s calls for a replacement resumed, and in 1914 a striking red cross-shaped church with a tall central tower, designed by architect G. Améen, was consecrated on a nearby hillside. This building burned down just eleven years later, in November 1925.
After considerable debate, it was decided to return to the historic site by Idresjön for the next church. Designed by architect Knut Nordenskjöld, the current timber church was consecrated on 19 November 1933. Its design, echoing the earlier 1914 church, reflects the post-classical style common in Swedish architecture of the preceding decade. The building consists of a nave with a narrower chancel to the east, a west tower, and a sacristy on the north side.
All furnishings inside date from the time of the current building, including a font with a stone basin in the chancel. The organ was built in 1971 by the Gothenburg firm Hammarbergs Orgelbyggeri.
In the summer of 2022 the Sámi artist Tomas Colbengtson exhibited a cast-glass ceremonial drum inside the church, with a service held in South Sámi and music, joik and food provided by members of the Idre Sámi community.
Idre did not become an independent parish until 1916; before that, from 1651, it was a chapelry under the mother church at Särna.