Bladder cancer (BC) can be divided into two subgroups depending on invasion of the muscular layer: non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) and muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). Its aggressiveness is associated, inter alia, with genetic aberrations like losses of 1p, 6q, 9p, 9q and 13q; gain of 5p; or alterations in the p53 and p16 pathways. Moreover, there are reported metabolic disturbances connected with poor diagnosis—for example, enhanced aerobic glycolysis, gluconeogenesis or haem catabolism.Currently, the primary way of treatment method is transurethral resection of the bladder tumour (TURBT) with adjuvant Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) therapy for NMIBC or radical cystectomy for MIBC combined with chemotherapy or immunotherapy. However, intravesical BCG immunotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors are not efficient in every case, so appropriate biomarkers are needed in order to select the proper treatment options. It seems that the success of immunotherapy depends mainly on the tumour microenvironment (TME), which reflects the molecular disturbances in the tumour. TME consists of specific conditions like hypoxia or local acidosis and different populations of immune cells including tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes, natural killer cells, neutrophils and B lymphocytes, which are responsible for shaping the response against tumour neoantigens and crucial pathways like the PD-L1/PD-1 axis.In this review, we summarise holistically the impact of the immune system, genetic alterations and metabolic changes that are key factors in immunotherapy success. These findings should enable better understanding of the TME complexity in case of NMIBC and causes of failures of current therapies.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00262-023-03376-9.