The series was conceived as part of the FIA's 2013 initiative to establish standardised, cost-controlled Formula 4 championships across multiple countries. Gerhard Berger, president of the FIA Single-Seater Commission, led the creation of the FIA Formula 4 framework with the aim of making the ladder to Formula One more transparent and accessible. The FIA's intention was to cap the cost of a competitive season at €100,000 and cap the car purchase price at €30,000.
ADAC announced the championship on 16 July 2014, contracting Italian constructor Tatuus to design and build all cars for the series. ADAC Formula 4 was among the second wave of FIA Formula 4 championships to launch, following the Italian F4 Championship and the Formula 4 Sudamericana which had debuted in 2014.
The championship used the Tatuus-built car throughout its existence. The chassis was a carbon-fibre monocoque, and the engine was a 1.4-litre turbocharged Abarth unit — the same engine used in the Italian F4 Championship — calibrated to produce around 160 bhp while meeting FIA equalisation requirements. The series ran at prominent German circuits including the Nürburgring, Hockenheimring, and Red Bull Ring, frequently as a support series to the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM).
By 2022, the championship was suffering from significantly reduced grids. At the final race of the season at the Nürburgring, only eleven drivers were registered — a stark contrast to the forty-one who entered the final race of the Italian F4 Championship at Scarperia e San Piero the following week. The high cost of competing in ADAC Formula 4 relative to other national F4 championships was a central factor in the attrition of the driver pool.
On 3 December 2022, ADAC announced that the championship would not be held in 2023. The organisation indicated that German junior drivers would be directed toward the French F4 Championship instead, which offered a more competitive field and better cost structures. The announcement coincided with ADAC's acquisition of the DTM, suggesting a broader strategic shift in the organisation's motorsport priorities.
ADAC Formula 4 produced a number of drivers who went on to compete in Formula One. Several champions and podium finishers from the series graduated through Formula 3 and Formula 2 to reach the top level of the sport, demonstrating the series' effectiveness as a developmental platform during its eight seasons of operation.
ADAC Formula 4 served as Germany's primary karting-to-single-seater bridge through the second half of the 2010s, filling the role previously held by the ADAC Formel Masters. Its closure in 2022 reflected wider structural pressures on national Formula 4 championships in Europe — the tension between the FIA's cost-control ambitions and the practical economics of running a national series, particularly in high-cost markets — and pointed toward a consolidation of junior single-seater competition into larger regional or international F4 championships.