The inaugural edition launched in 2009 from Kazan, Russia, to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, covering 4,500 km over nine days with 3,900 km of special stages. Carlos Sainz won the car category in what he described as a rehearsal for his subsequent Dakar Rally victory. In the truck class, Firdaus Kabirov — a two-time Dakar winner — took honours for KAMAZ in what proved his final major international victory.
From 2009 to 2011 the event held a place on the ASO's Dakar Series, giving it international prestige from the outset. Subsequent editions shifted the route progressively, with departures from Moscow's Red Square becoming a signature spectacle in 2011 and 2012. In 2011, Polish driver Krzysztof Holowczyc claimed the biggest win of his career, edging out Stéphane Peterhansel.
The 2016 edition marked a major expansion: the route extended to more than 10,700 km across 17 days, crossing Russia, Kazakhstan, and China, with over 1,100 participants and team members representing 41 countries.
The Silk Way Rally follows the rally raid format used at Dakar and similar events. Competing crews — typically a driver and navigator in cars, a driver-navigator-mechanic trio in trucks, and solo riders on motorcycles — race against the clock on selective special stages while travelling liaison road sections within target times. The crew accumulating the lowest total time across all specials is declared the winner.
Since 2012, a crew that fails to complete a special stage may continue the event with a 50-hour time penalty applied once. The competition is divided into car, truck, and motorcycle classes, with the motorcycle category added in 2019. All vehicles also fall into FIA-defined competition groups with their own classifications.
The 2020 race was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2021 edition ran with the Mongolian leg removed due to health restrictions. The 2022 and 2023 events were held solely in Russia with limited international participation following sanctions imposed in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The 2024 race marked a return to multinational routing with Mongolia re-added to the itinerary. The 15th edition in 2025 ran from Irkutsk through Ulaanbaatar to Gorno-Altaysk, covering 4,811 km across Russia and Mongolia, with 101 crews representing 15 nations. Highlights included the first truck victory on alternative (gas-diesel) fuel by Anton Shibalov driving a KAMAZ, and the first motorcycle win by a Mongolian rider, Murun Purevdorj.
KAMAZ, the Russian truck manufacturer, has been a dominant force throughout the event's history, with multiple drivers winning the truck category in its colours.
The Silk Way Rally has attracted serious investigative scrutiny over its ties to Russian state intelligence. A 2023 joint investigation by Bellingcat, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, and The Insider revealed internal Silk Way Rally Association documents outlining plans to use the race to extend Russian soft power across Eurasia. The association's director, Bulat Yanborisov, was identified as a GRU agent who maintained communications with members of GRU Unit 29155 and received medals from agency leadership.
Multiple GRU agents were found to have used the rally's logistics infrastructure to facilitate cross-border movement. Alexander Mishkin, linked to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, reportedly travelled to China with the 2016 and 2017 rally groups while disguised as a mechanic.
In June 2024, the United States Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on the Silk Way Rally Association, Yanborisov, and his son Amir, describing the organisation as a Russian intelligence procurement network that used the event's logistics to source anti-UAV and electronic warfare equipment for use in Ukraine.
Despite its political controversies, the Silk Way Rally has established itself as a technically demanding and scenically spectacular event on the global rally raid calendar. It has served as a proving ground for KAMAZ and other Russian manufacturers, and its transcontinental routes across Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China offer terrain and distances that few other events can match.