The river buffalo (Bubalus bubalis bubalis) is currently farmed in Italy for milk production. The dairy buffalo industry is currently increasing due to the high market value of the most famous product, the mozzarella cheese. A breeding program based on AI and progeny test exist even if its impact is constrained by technical and logistic problems. Aim of this work is the study of the lactation curve of the Italian river buffalo during a 3-year period to look for possible modification and to analyze its modifications during the last 30 years. Data were test day records of 221,350 lactations of 124,015 buffalo cows, born in the period 1980–2011 recorded by the Association of Buffalo breeders (ANASB). Lactations with at least 7 records between 6 and 300 d in milk were considered. Individual curves were fitted with 4 mathematical functions: the Wood incomplete gamma function (WD), the Wilmink function (WIL), a fourth-order Legendre orthogonal polynomials (LEG4), and a quadratic spline with one knot (QSPL). As expected, individual variability resulted in a huge variation of goodness of fit: only 25% of lactation showed an adjusted R² for the LEG4 larger than 0.83. According to the sign of the b parameter of WD, curves were classified as standard (88%) or atypical (12%); that is, without the lactation peak. Looking at the main parameters of the lactation curve shape, they exhibited a small variation during the considered period, even though with a quite irregular trend. The peak production showed an initial increase, from about kg 4.9 in 1980 to 5.11 in 1995, followed by a slow decrease that led to a value of 4.98 in 2011. The time at peak occurrence and the persistency of lactation did not show relevant variability in the 1980–2011 decades.