The Dakar Rally's 2008 edition was cancelled by the A.S.O. due to security concerns along the original African route. To fill the competitive calendar and maintain momentum within the rally raid community, the organisation launched the Dakar Series as a collection of Dakar-affiliated events that would culminate in qualifying competitors for the following year's rally. The inaugural event was the Central Europe Rally, quickly joined by the PAX Rally, with the series covering cars, motorcycles, quads, and trucks from the outset.
In its early years the series expanded cautiously. The 2009, 2010, and 2011 seasons were each effectively anchored by a single major event: the Silk Way Rally, a cross-border race held across Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. That event brought high-profile media attention and safety standards comparable to the Dakar itself.
In 2012 the Silk Way Rally departed the calendar and was replaced by the Desafio Litoral, a rally raid set entirely in Argentina — reflecting the Dakar Rally's own relocation to South America in 2009. A year later in 2013 two new South American events joined the series: the Desafio Ruta 40, held in Argentina as the successor to the Desafio Litoral, and the Desafio Inca, based in Peru.
By 2014, the addition of the Desafio Guarani brought the calendar to a record three concurrent events, reinforcing the series' role as a South American preparation circuit ahead of the Dakar.
Attrition set in from 2015 onward. The Desafio Inca was cancelled after 2015, and the Desafio Ruta 40 migrated to the parallel Dakar Challenge circuit in 2016, leaving just one event on the Dakar Series calendar: the Merzouga Rally, a five-day race held in Morocco that made its series debut that year. In 2017 the newly formed Dakar Series China Rally briefly brought the number of active events back to two, but it departed after a single year.
In 2018 the Desafio Ruta 40 and Desafio Inca returned to the calendar while the China Rally exited. When the Dakar Rally itself relocated from South America to Saudi Arabia for 2019, the calendar contracted again to just the Merzouga Rally. The COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of the 2020 Merzouga Rally; though postponed to 2021, it never took place. No rally has been held under the Dakar Series label since.
The Merzouga Rally, held in Morocco's Erg Chebbi sand dunes, became the series' longest-running fixture in its latter years. Among notable Merzouga Rally winners were Kevin Benavides (Honda) in 2015 and 2016 on motorcycles, and Joan Barreda (Honda) in 2018. In the quad category, Nicolas Cavigliasso (Yamaha) and Axel Dutrie (Yamaha) featured among the top finishers across multiple editions.
Selected overall winners from the series' active years include:
2015 Desafio Ruta 40 (motorcycle): Paulo Goncalves on Honda; (automobile): Orlando Terranova/Bernard Graue in a Mini.
2015 Desafio Guarani (motorcycle): Kevin Benavides on Honda; (automobile): Peter Jerie/Laurent Lichtleuchter in a Toyota.
2019 Merzouga Rally (motorcycle): Adrien van Beveren on Yamaha; (Side-by-Side): Nasser Al-Attiyah/Matthieu Baumel in a Can-Am.
Running alongside the Dakar Series from 2011 was the Dakar Challenge, a parallel amateur-focused circuit that could overlap with Dakar Series events — the Desafio Inca, for example, hosted Dakar Challenge stages within the same race. The Dakar Challenge was rebranded as the Road to Dakar in 2018.
Eligibility for the Road to Dakar category required competitors to have never previously participated in the Dakar Rally itself, to have never finished in the top ten positions of an FIM rally, and to be absent from the FIA, FIA SXS, and A.S.O. Elite SXS priority driver lists. Successful performers in the category received free Dakar Rally entries or automatic selection consideration for the following year's event, positioning the Road to Dakar explicitly as a talent discovery and development programme for amateur and debut competitors.
The Dakar Series represented A.S.O.'s most sustained attempt to build an ecosystem around the Dakar Rally brand beyond the flagship event itself. While the series never attained the global footprint its founders had envisioned, it provided a structured competitive pathway for rally raid competitors at all levels and introduced several events — particularly the Silk Way Rally and the Merzouga Rally — to wider international audiences. The series' contraction and eventual dormancy mirrored the broader pressures on the rally raid calendar as the Dakar Rally's own geographical relocation reshaped the sport's logistics and sponsorship landscape.