Before the modern WTCR, the FIA hosted an annual Touring Car World Cup from 1993 to 1995, bringing together drivers from national Super Touring championships around the world for a single-round invitational event. Paul Radisich won the 1993 race at Monza in a Ford Mondeo, with no manufacturer title awarded, and won again in 1994 at Donington Park with BMW taking the manufacturer award. Frank Biela won the 1995 edition at Paul Ricard in an Audi A4 Quattro, with Audi also taking manufacturers honours. A 1996 edition planned for the A1 Ring in Austria was cancelled due to insufficient entries and the concept was not revived.
On 6 December 2017 the FIA World Motorsport Council approved the formation of the World Touring Car Cup beginning with the 2018 season. The series adopted TCR regulations — the same technical package in use across numerous national and international series including the TCR International Series — and both the WTCC in its existing form and the TCR International Series were discontinued immediately to make way for it.
The WTCR used a two-day format on each event weekend: a single qualifying session on day one followed by one race, then a three-phase qualifying session on day two with the top ten grid positions reversed for the first race, followed by a second race from a conventional grid.
The series faced persistent criticism over its regulatory framework. The compensation weight system, designed to penalise better-performing cars by adding ballast, was widely considered redundant given the series also used a Balance of Performance system to equalise car performance. Teams found ways to exploit the system by deliberately managing their pace in qualifying and race sessions to minimise the weight penalties they would carry into subsequent rounds, and the practice reduced overtaking as drivers were sometimes constrained from going faster by weight penalty calculations. Several teams and drivers voiced frustration at what they saw as gaming of the system by rivals.
A further source of controversy was the political atmosphere surrounding the Balance of Performance negotiations, particularly involving BRC Racing Team running Hyundai machinery and Cyan Racing representing Lynk and Co. The politicking around BoP reached a peak when Hyundai directed its customer teams to withdraw from the 2020 Race of Germany, and Cyan Racing withdrew entirely from the series partway through the 2022 season citing unsatisfactory BoP outcomes.
In October 2022 it was reported that the WTCR would fold in its current format following the conclusion of the 2022 season. The decision reflected the accumulated difficulties with the compensation weight and BoP systems, the competitive atmosphere, and broader questions about the series' viability. A future revised format was to be evaluated and announced separately.
From 2023 the series was restructured into the TCR World Tour, a format that draws its rounds from existing regional and national TCR series around the world rather than maintaining an independent calendar. This contrasted with the WTCR model, which had operated its own standalone calendar. The TCR World Tour retains the TCR technical regulations and the international scope of the WTCR while distributing the promotional effort across existing national series infrastructures.
The WTCR's five seasons demonstrated both the strengths and limitations of the TCR platform at world championship level. The technical regulations produced close and entertaining racing with a genuinely diverse field of cars from manufacturers including Honda, Hyundai, Lynk and Co, and Audi. Champions across the series' run included Yvan Muller, Norbert Michelisz, Esteban Guerrieri, Yann Ehrlacher, and Mikel Azcona. However, the regulatory complexities around weight penalties and Balance of Performance undermined the sporting credibility of results, and the series was unable to sustain consistent manufacturer engagement on the terms it needed to thrive.