The first event in what became the Rally GB lineage was the 1932 Royal Automobile Club Rally, drawing 367 entries from nine starting points around Britain. There was no outright winner declared; competitors were judged on tests at the finish in Torquay. Annual runnings continued through the 1930s until the Second World War forced a suspension.
The RAC International Rally of Great Britain resumed in 1951 with an itinerary spanning Scotland, Wales, and England. The event remained in this touring-test format through much of the 1950s, with criticism that it was little more than a navigational exercise compared to the harder Alpine events being run on the continent.
The transformation into a true stage rally began in 1960, when organizer Jack Kemsley secured access to a closed forestry road — Monument Hill in Argyll — for a competitive speed test. Erik Carlsson won that year without penalty points, and from 1961 the Forestry Commission opened rough gravel roads across the country for competitive stages. With over 200 miles of forest stages by the mid-1960s, the event's character was established: fast, unpredictable, held in challenging autumn weather.
From 1973, the RAC Rally became a round of the newly established World Rally Championship, a status it would hold for the next 47 seasons. Lombard North Central took over title sponsorship in 1974 and their name became synonymous with the event for nearly two decades; subsequent title sponsors were Network Q and then the Welsh Assembly Government.
The event moved its operational base to Cardiff in 2000 as the new WRC promoter David Richards condensed the format into a compact spectator-friendly structure. From that point, competitive mileage was concentrated almost entirely in Wales, and the event was rebranded as Wales Rally GB. The Millennium Stadium in Cardiff hosted an indoor super special stage in 2005.
Organizationally, the rally moved its service park to Deeside in North Wales from 2013, centering the competitive stages there.
British forest stages are defined by their wet conditions. Running in November, rainfall is almost guaranteed, and the distinctive character of the stages — a mix of smooth-based gravel roads with hard cores, varying widths and alternating long sweeping corners with angular man-made sections — creates fast, slippery conditions. Water and mud that builds up across a day's stages heavily penalizes later starters. Ice and snow are not uncommon; editions in 1971, 1988, and 1993 featured heavy snowfall, and the 2008 event saw significant stage cancellations due to ice.
Studies tyres with metal studs are banned by the Forestry Commission to prevent road damage, complicating tire choice in freezing conditions. Double world champion Walter Rohrl was among the most prominent drivers to publicly state his dislike for the event's conditions.
Rally GB's traditional position as the season finale — or close to it — produced many memorable title deciders. In 1991, Juha Kankkunen edged Carlos Sainz for the championship after the Spaniard went off in Kielder Forest. The 1992 title went to Sainz after Kankkunen damaged his steering on the final day. In 1995, Colin McRae became the first British world rally champion at the event, winning in front of a crowd estimated at two million fans lining the stages. McRae narrowly missed the title again in 1997, losing by one point to Tommi Makinen.
The 1998 event produced one of the most dramatic sequences in WRC history: championship leader Makinen crashed on a spectator stage when his Mitsubishi hit a patch of oil, seemingly handing the title to Carlos Sainz — only for Sainz's engine to fail 300 meters from the finish of the final stage, returning the championship to Makinen.
In 2003, Petter Solberg clinched his only world title by winning Rally GB, beating Sebastian Loeb by a single point after Richard Burns withdrew from the event for health reasons.
Sebastian Ogier holds the record for most victories at the event with five wins between 2013 and 2018, surpassing the four wins apiece of Hannu Mikkola and Petter Solberg.
The 2020 event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ending Britain's unbroken streak of WRC rounds dating to 1973. Subsequent attempts to establish a replacement event in Northern Ireland failed, and Rally GB did not appear on the WRC calendar for 2021 through 2026. Rally Scotland was announced as a revival event for the 2027 season.