In the early 1920s, ADAC Eifelrennen races were held on a 33.2-kilometre public road circuit near Cologne. Around 1925, construction of a dedicated racing facility was proposed around the village of Nürburg, inspired in part by the challenging Targa Florio course in Sicily. Construction began in September 1925, designed by the Eichler Architekturbüro from Ravensburg under architect Gustav Eichler.
The track opened on 18 June 1927, with the first events featuring motorcycles and sidecars. The original layout, known as the Gesamtstrecke, combined the 22.835-kilometre Nordschleife (north loop) and the 7.747-kilometre Südschleife (south loop) for a total distance of 28.265 kilometres, one of the longest race circuits ever used for major competition. From 1929 onward, Grands Prix were contested exclusively on the Nordschleife. Pre-war Ringmeister — drivers who achieved mastery of the circuit — included Rudolf Caracciola, Tazio Nuvolari, and Bernd Rosemeyer. The circuit hosted 13 editions of the German Grand Prix between 1927 and 1939.
Racing resumed after World War II in 1947, and in 1951 the Nordschleife became a fixture of the Formula One World Championship as host of the German Grand Prix. A new generation of Ringmeister emerged: Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss, Jim Clark, John Surtees, Jackie Stewart, and Jacky Ickx. On 5 August 1961, Phil Hill became the first driver to lap the Nordschleife in under nine minutes, setting a time of 8 minutes 55.2 seconds in a Ferrari 156 during practice for the German Grand Prix.
The ADAC 1000 km Nürburgring endurance race was introduced in 1953 as a round of the World Sportscar Championship, and the 24 Hours Nürburgring for touring cars was added in 1970. By the late 1960s drivers and the FIA were growing increasingly concerned about the circuit's safety. In 1968 the circuit was partially reconstructed, and further modifications were made in 1970 and 1971 to remove the most dangerous jumps and install Armco barriers throughout. These changes allowed the German Grand Prix to return for six more seasons, from 1971 to 1976.
The defining moment of the Nordschleife's final Formula One chapter came during the 1976 German Grand Prix. Niki Lauda, the reigning world champion, crashed at the fast left-hand kink before Bergwerk when a component on his Ferrari's rear suspension failed. His car caught fire and he was badly burned; fellow drivers Arturo Merzario, Guy Edwards, Brett Lunger, Emerson Fittipaldi, and Harald Ertl pulled him from the wreck. The 1976 race was the last Formula One Grand Prix held on a circuit of 10 or more kilometres in length. The German Grand Prix moved permanently to Hockenheim from 1977 onward.
The Nordschleife is defined by a series of iconic sections that test every aspect of a driver's skill. The Caracciola Karussell, a 210-degree banked concrete bowl named after Rudolf Caracciola — who reportedly discovered that dropping his inside tyres into a drainage ditch helped carry speed through the corner — remains the most photographed and immediately recognisable feature of the lap. The Pflanzgarten is a sequence of blind compressions and massive jumps at high speed, described as having virtually no room for error. Fuchsröhre plunges downhill through a forest corridor where only two to three metres of grass separate the track from Armco barriers backed by trees. Bergwerk, a tight right-hander following a long fast section, was the site of Lauda's 1976 accident and the fatal crash of Carel Godin de Beaufort in 1964. Flugplatz features a short uphill crest that has launched cars clear of the track surface at racing speeds.
Since its opening in 1927, the Nordschleife has been open to public driving on a toll-road basis, a tradition known as Touristenfahrten. Any road-legal car or motorcycle can access the circuit during designated periods, making it uniquely accessible among major racing facilities. Over the decades, automotive manufacturers adopted the circuit as the definitive benchmark for production car development. A car's lap time at the Nordschleife became a standard measure of overall performance, used to compare vehicles across different manufacturers and eras.
In qualifying for the 1983 1000 km Nürburgring, Stefan Bellof set an absolute lap record of 6 minutes 11.13 seconds in a Porsche 956, averaging 199.8 km/h around the 20.832-kilometre circuit. That record stood for 35 years until Timo Bernhard lapped the slightly longer version of the track in 5 minutes 19.546 seconds in the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo on 29 June 2018, averaging 233.8 km/h.
A new Grand Prix circuit, the GP-Strecke, was built adjacent to the Nordschleife's pit area and opened in 1984. Formula One returned with the 1984 European Grand Prix. Between 1995 and 2006, the Nürburgring hosted a second German race known variously as the European Grand Prix and Luxembourg Grand Prix, providing Michael Schumacher with a home venue at which he won five times. The circuit most recently hosted a Formula One race in October 2020 as the Eifel Grand Prix, won by Lewis Hamilton, who equalled Schumacher's all-time record of 91 wins on the day.
The Nordschleife has been featured in numerous sim racing titles, including Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport, Assetto Corsa, iRacing, Project CARS 2, and the historic simulator Grand Prix Legends. The annual 24 Hours Nürburgring endurance race on the combined Nordschleife and GP circuit attracts around 220 cars and up to 290,000 spectators, one of the best-attended motorsport events in Europe. The circuit's first corner was renamed the Sabine-Schmitz-Kurve in honour of German racing driver Sabine Schmitz, who died in 2021.