The FIA's International Sporting Code defines a rally as a road competition with an imposed average speed run entirely or partly on roads open to normal traffic, with the route potentially including special stages — sections closed to normal traffic on which outright speed determines the classification. Between stages, competitors travel on open road sections, where maintaining a prescribed average speed rather than going flat-out is the requirement.
In most cases rallying differs from circuit racing in that competitors do not run directly against each other but leave the start at regular intervals, competing individually against the clock. The crew with the lowest aggregate time across all special stages wins. Terrain varies enormously: flat asphalt and mountain passes, rough forest tracks, ice and snow, and desert sand are all used across the World Rally Championship calendar.
Road rallies subdivide into regularity rallies (where matching a prescribed average speed matters rather than absolute pace), time-speed-distance events, and navigational rallies where route-finding skill is itself the challenge. Special stage rallying — where timed speed sections determine the result — is the format of the WRC and most national championship events.
The word rally derives from the French verb rallier, meaning to reunite or regroup urgently. The first known use of the word to include a road competition was the 1911 Monaco Rally — later known as the Monte Carlo Rally — organised by the Sport Automobile Vélocipédique Monégasque and backed by the Société des Bains de Mer. Competitors started from various cities across Europe, as reaching Monaco in winter was itself a challenge. The competitive elements included the condition and elegance of the cars judged by a jury.
Rallying as a form of road competition can be traced back to the very origins of motorsport, including the 1894 Paris–Rouen Horseless Carriage Competition, which introduced elements later central to rallying: individual start times with cars running against the clock, time controls at intervals along the route, roadbooks, and driving over long distances on ordinary gravel roads.
The introduction of closed-road special stages, pioneered in Sweden and Finland during the 1950s, transformed the sport by allowing timed speed competition away from open traffic. This innovation enabled the creation of national championship-level events with verifiable, comparable results, and laid the groundwork for a properly constituted World Rally Championship.
The Group B regulations, introduced in the early 1980s, required only 200 road-car units for homologation and imposed loose technical restrictions. This freedom allowed manufacturers to build machines far removed from production models — lightweight spaceframe chassis with fibreglass bodies, four-wheel drive, and power outputs exceeding 500 hp. The most radical and successful of these were the Peugeot 205 T16, the Renault 5 Turbo, and the Lancia Delta S4.
The era ended abruptly. At the 1986 Rallye de Portugal four spectators were killed. Two months later at the Tour de Corse, Henri Toivonen and co-driver Sergio Cresto went over the edge of a mountain road and were killed in the resulting fire. The FIA changed the regulations immediately: from 1987 rallying would be contested in Group A and Group N cars, far closer to production models.
The Group A Lancia Delta Integrale dominated world rallying from 1987 through 1992, winning six consecutive manufacturers' world rally championship titles. During the 1990s, Japanese manufacturers Toyota, Subaru, and Mitsubishi also dominated the WRC.
Cross-country rallies — also known as rally-raid or baja — take place mostly off-road over terrain navigated using GPS waypoints, though competitors cannot use GPS for navigation itself. The Dakar Rally is the most prominent example. The World Rally-Raid Championship was inaugurated in 2022, incorporating the Dakar Rally in its calendar under joint sanctioning by the FIA and FIM.
Rallying has spawned a range of derivative disciplines including hillclimbing, autocross, rallycross, and ice racing. Historic rallying, typically run as regularity events without speed tests, has attracted former professional drivers back to the sport.