Francesco Zampini was born in Prato in 1993 and started on guitar at ten. After secondary school he enrolled in 2012 at the Conservatorio "Luigi Cherubini" in Florence, where his jazz teachers were guitarist Umberto Fiorentino, drummer Fabrizio Sferra and bassist Raffaello Pareti. He graduated cum laude in July 2015 with a thesis built on a complete transcription of Martijn van Iterson's album The Whole Bunch, then moved to the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague for a master's degree, finishing in May 2017. His Hague teachers included van Iterson himself, Eef Albers, John Ruocco, Eric Ineke and Jarmo Hoogendijk, and he took master classes with Peter Bernstein, Lage Lund, Jonathan Kreisberg and Jeff Ballard.

Competitions came early. In 2016 he won second prize as best soloist at the Premio Chicco Bettinardi and reached the finals of both the Vittoria Jazz Festival and the Premio Marco Tamburini. In 2018 he won first prize at the national guitar competition named for Davide Lufrano Chaves. In December 2019 he was chosen as the only Italian semifinalist at the International Guitar Competition (the former Monk Competition) run by the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in Washington, DC, and in December 2020 his group was among the winners of the Nuove Generazioni Jazz 2021 call promoted by the Italian culture ministry and I-Jazz.

His debut as a leader was Early Perspectives (2019, AlfaMusic), a trio record with bassist Raffaello Pareti and drummer Walter Paoli, both credited on Discogs. One of its tracks, "Song For Alba," is remade with a quintet on his second album. That record, Unknown Path (released October 6, 2020, self-produced), pairs Zampini with Russian trumpeter Alex Sipiagin, Spanish pianist Xavi Torres, bassist Michelangelo Scandroglio and drummer Bernardo Guerra. It was recorded at Jambona Lab in Pisa and mixed and mastered in New York by Mike Marciano. Seven of its eight tracks are Zampini originals; the fourth, "Cyclic Episode," is a reading of a Sam Rivers piece. Musica Jazz's Giuseppe Piacentino called it a real surprise and heard a "frenetic and angular" swing recalling the Miles Davis quintet with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock.

Somewhere, Everywhere (released March 27, 2026, Red Records, Milan) narrows the group to a trio: Zampini, Michelangelo Scandroglio and American drummer Jeff Ballard, recorded at Maxine Studio in Milan on September 12 and 13, 2025. Seven of the eight tracks are his own; the standard is "I Hear A Rhapsody." Reviewer Flavio Caprera of Jazz Convention called it a marked technical step forward from the quintet record, with the trio format letting him play with more confidence and freedom.

Outside his own bands, Discogs credits him on guitar on bassist Francesco Pierotti's Strange Slightly Romantic Memories (2025, WoW Records), with saxophonist Giovanni Benvenuti, trumpeter Cosimo Boni and drummer Bernardo Guerra, and on Camerock, a folk and world-music release led by accordionist Riccardo Tesi and flutist Paolo Zampini on Visage Music.

His official biography lists a wide circle of collaborators, among them Alex Sipiagin, Darcy James Argue, Ben van Gelder, Fabrizio Bosso, Scott Hamilton, Alessandro Lanzoni, Emanuele Cisi, Giovanni Falzone, Roberto Tarenzi, Stefano Cantini, Fabio Morgera, Nico Gori, Ares Tavolazzi, Pietro Tonolo, Duccio Bertini and Dario Cecchini, and concerts across Europe and Russia. Those are named in his biography and are not tied to specific recordings.

Zampini plays clean, lightly processed guitar in a modern post-bop and modal setting, and the writing on Unknown Path moves between hard bop, modal writing and open, angular passages. He names Adam Rogers, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mark Turner and David Sanchez as compositional influences. Reviewers of the trio record hear a sparing, melody-first approach: long reflective phrases, harmonically unexpected resolutions and very little reverb, with comparisons to Bill Frisell and John Abercrombie for the tone and space. Emanuele Cisi has written of his "never a note too many" restraint, and Alex Sipiagin describes him as a young guitarist with his own ideas who draws on both traditional and modern jazz.