Pro Tour

The first major Magic: The Gathering tournament was the 1994 World Championship held at Gen Con '94. It was a single-elimination 512-person Constructed event run over three days of competition. The winner, Zak Dolan, received a trophy, a number of booster packs from expansions ranging from Arabian Nights to Ice Age, a deck of Magic: The Gathering poker cards, and a T-shirt. Another World Championship was organized in 1995.

In 1995, Brand Manager Skaff Elias suggested that organized play needed to be expanded. He worked to create a yearly tournament structure to allow players a chance to compete for cash prizes.

Pro Tour

The Pro Tour debuted in 1996 under the name The Black Lotus Pro Tour, featuring events only in the United States. A tournament was held in New York on February 16–18, 1996. The series included three more Pro Tour events, culminating in the final Pro Tour, the World Championship, held in Seattle. After this first season, Pro Tour events began to be held in Europe and Asia.

In the following years Pro Tour seasons (one year each from August to August the next year) always consisted of five and later six Pro Tours. From 2003 to 2005 Wizards of the Coast made an effort to bring the Pro Tour seasons in accordance with the calendar year. This resulted in the '03-'04 and '04-'05 seasons being composed of seven Pro Tour events. The 2006 and subsequent Pro Tour seasons were reduced to five and later four Pro Tours per year. In 2012, the season schedule was again adjusted, now starting and ending in May. Additionally, the World Championship lost its status as a Pro Tour event, resulting in three Pro Tours to be held each season. In 2014, the amount of Pro Tours went back up to four a season.

Cash prize pools gradually increased from around $150,000 per tournament in 1996–97 to $250,000 in 2012. In the first Pro Tour season each Pro Tour event awarded more prizes than the previous one. Afterwards prize payouts had only minor fluctuations throughout a season with the exception of the World Championships, where additional prizes are awarded.

Pro Tours started as single-format events in 1996, alternating between Constructed and Limited, with the exception of the World Championships which have been multi-format events since the inception of the Pro Tour. In 2010 Pro Tours were changed to always have several rounds of Constructed and Limited play.

Pro Points and Pro Club

MTG Pro Tour players benefited from a point system that granted tiered awards called the Pro Club. Points were earned based on performance in the Pro Tour events. The tiers were Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, and provided players with bye-games in tournament play, automatic invitations to Pro Tour events, and complimentary travel expenses to the tournaments. Platinum level players received cash bonuses for participating in tournaments and were given custom Players cards. This program ended on December 22, 2019.

Transition to Players Tour

In December 2018 Wizards of the Coast announced that the Pro Tours would be renamed to Mythic Championship in 2019. This was done in an effort to include the digital MTG Arena in the competitive scene. Tabletop and online MTG had individual versions of Mythic Championship, and the prize pool was increased to $500,000 per event. Along with this restructure, a "Magic Pro League" (MPL) was created. The Mythic Championship was intended to feed players into the MPL. This system was discontinued after the 2019 season.