The championship began in 2011 as the Blancpain Endurance Series, centred on long-distance GT3 racing with the 24 Hours of Spa as its flagship event. A sprint-format companion series launched in 2014, initially called the FIA GT Series and later the Blancpain Sprint Series. In 2016, the two formats were consolidated under the Blancpain GT Series banner, creating a unified championship with separate Sprint Cup and Endurance Cup sub-titles.
The Blancpain name departed after the 2018 season when the Swiss watchmaker's sponsorship agreement ended. In 2019, SRO rebranded the European series as GT World Challenge Europe, aligning it with new regional championships in Asia and America under a global GT World Challenge umbrella. The following year, Amazon Web Services became the series' official presenter and global technology partner, appending the Powered by AWS subtitle to the name. Fanatec served as an additional title sponsor from 2021 through the end of the 2024 season.
The series is split equally between the Endurance Cup and the Sprint Cup, each comprising five rounds that together feed a single overall championship for drivers and teams. All cars comply with FIA GT3 regulations, and a Balance of Performance system applies across manufacturers.
The championship fields four driver-rating classes. The Pro class carries no driver restrictions and contests the overall title; Pro cars are limited to three drivers at the 24 Hours of Spa. The Gold Cup pairs Gold-rated drivers with one Silver driver per car. The Silver Cup requires an all-Silver driver line-up. The Bronze Cup permits a maximum combination of one Platinum and one Bronze driver at Sprint rounds, with additional Silver drivers eligible at Endurance rounds.
Endurance Cup races typically run for three or six hours, with the 24 Hours of Spa standing as the single highest-points event of the season. Sprint Cup weekends feature two one-hour races, each shared by two drivers, with a mandatory driver change during a designated window.
Qualifying follows a three-segment format, and from 2026 sessions are split into two groups — Silver and Bronze Cup cars in Group A, Pro and Gold Cup runners in Group B — to accommodate expanding grids. The 2026 Sprint Cup entry set a series record of 45 cars.
Laurens Vanthoor became the first overall champion when the Sprint and Endurance formats were unified in 2014. The Pro-Am and Am Cup subsidiary titles were introduced in 2016; the Am Cup was discontinued after 2018, and the Pro-Am Cup concluded at the end of 2023. The Silver Cup for young Silver-rated drivers was added in 2018, with Nico Bastian and Jack Manchester winning the inaugural title.
In 2023, the Gold Cup and Bronze Cup were introduced alongside the existing overall and Silver Cup titles. Niklas Krütten and Calan Williams won the inaugural Gold Cup, while Alex Malykhin took the first Bronze Cup. That same year, SRO announced that the Bronze Cup winner would earn an automatic invitation to compete in the LMGT3 class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, provided the team completed all ten combined Endurance and Sprint rounds. Pure Rxcing became the first team to claim that Le Mans invitation and duly entered the 2024 edition.
GT World Challenge Europe is one of the most prominent GT3 championships in the world and a frequent reference point for sim racing titles. GT3-specification cars from the series — including machinery from Porsche, Ferrari, Mercedes-AMG, Lamborghini, Audi, and BMW — appear across major simulators. The series' format, with its driver-rating class structure and mixed amateur-professional grids, has influenced how GT3 content and online multiplayer driver-rating systems are designed in sim racing titles such as Assetto Corsa Competizione, which was developed with official SRO licensing and models the championship's regulations and calendar in detail.