The TCR concept was developed by Marcello Lotti's World Sporting Consulting organisation as a cost-effective alternative to the top-tier WTCC, built around production-based hatchbacks. As TCR's reach spread globally from 2015, Lotti announced in October of that year plans to establish a European-level competition drawing on the emerging national TCR championships in Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Russia, and Benelux. The aim was to give the best drivers from those domestic series a route to compete against each other.
The first European-level competition ran in 2016 as the TCR European Trophy, comprising six rounds drawn from national series calendars. The Spanish championship was excluded from that initial structure since it lacked its own standalone series, while the Benelux series contributed two rounds. An additional round from the German series was incorporated during the season. After a 2017 one-off event format using two-race weekends at a single venue, the series was formally elevated to the TCR Europe Series for 2018, with seven event weekends, five of which ran as support to the International GT Open. That support role with the GT Open continued into 2019, with approximately thirty cars competing across seven European venues.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the planned 2020 schedule, delaying the season start until late August. The series ran that year under the organisational support of the SRO Motorsports Group, which provided infrastructure and commercial backing during the compressed calendar. Twenty-five cars made up the starting grid for the truncated 2020 campaign.
For 2026, Lotti's organisation announced a companion competition called the TCR Europe Cup, designed to reduce cost barriers and broaden the grid. The Cup pairs amateur or semi-professional drivers with established professionals in shared-car entries over a reduced calendar. A professional is defined as any driver who ranked within the top fifty of the Kumho TCR World Ranking in 2024 or 2025, finished in the top five of the TCR Europe drivers' standings, or has won a national TCR title. Champions of the Cup — both the professional and the amateur — earn a fifty percent discount on entry fees for the following season of the main TCR Europe series, creating a deliberate stepping-stone pathway into the premier championship.
The series has visited a wide range of European venues across its history, with several circuits becoming regular fixtures. Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, and Monza Circuit have appeared most frequently and form the backbone of the calendar. Other circuits used at various points include Circuit Paul Ricard, Red Bull Ring, Hockenheimring, Hungaroring, Nurburgring, Zandvoort, Zolder, TT Circuit Assen, Norisring, Misano World Circuit, Algarve International Circuit, and Adria International Raceway, among others, giving the series broad geographic reach across western and central Europe.
The TCR Europe series occupies an important position in the European touring car ecosystem as a bridge between the national TCR championships and the global World Touring Car Cup. Its relatively accessible regulations and the balance of performance system that governs cars from multiple manufacturers — including Audi, CUPRA, Honda, Hyundai, Lynk and Co, Peugeot, and Volkswagen among others — have made it attractive to both manufacturer-supported programmes and privateer teams. The series has functioned as a proving ground for drivers targeting the WTCR or other international TCR competitions, and its long-running partnership with the International GT Open has given it exposure at some of Europe's most prominent race weekends.