The FIA Rally Pyramid is the collective description and organisation of championships, car performance classes and driver aptitude in international rallying. In 2019 the FIA rally commission presented a radical overhaul to the rally pyramid to introduce common nomenclature and structure of the international championships and car classes used across the sport in a similar way to terminology used in formula racing. At the top of the pyramid, Rally1 describes elite level of driver aptitude and car performance in the World Rally Championship (WRC). At the foot of the pyramid is Rally5, designed for cost effective introductory rallying competition.

Each of the new tiers of the pyramid align numerically with the existing FIA sporting classes introduced in 2014. Existing rally cars not in the new Groups Rally and within their homologation period are still eligible to compete and thus are still included in the rally pyramid even if not actively promoted by the FIA. It may be that a particular group or class will be removed from the pyramid when all those cars' homologation periods ends. All the car groups and classes permitted in FIA competition are described in this article under the sporting classes RC1 to RC5 as per the FIA sporting regulations.

Groups A, B and N were introduced in 1982 to replace the numbered groups in existence. Each had 4 classes based on engine capacity which was corrected by x1.4 when a turbo or supercharger was used. N1 to N4, A5 to A8 and B9 to B12 were each based on less than 1400cc, 1401-1600cc, 1601-2000cc and greater than 2000cc respectively. Group B were banned from the WRC in 1986 on safety grounds, with the planned introduction of Group S abandoned, and the correction factor for turbocharged engines was increased to x1.7. From 1987, only Group A and Group N were permitted in the WRC, with a new Production Cup introduced solely for the often lower performance Group N cars. The cup was later renamed to the Production World Rally Championship.

The World Rally Car formula was introduced in 1997 for use at World Rally Championship level and not in championships elsewhere. The formula was to level the competition in the manufacturers championship by replacing the many different forms of car permitted by Group A. Two-wheel drive Group A kit cars, used in the 2-litre Cup from 1993 to 1999, could often outpace the four-wheel drive World Rally Cars in asphalt stages, including winning two rallies outright. The relaxed rules in the kit car category also resulted in unfair competition and high development costs with some manufacturers using it to promote their two-wheel drive models instead of entering the main WRC manufacturer class. This resulted in the ending of the cup.

In the 2000s, Super 2000 (S2000) and Super 1600 (S1600) cars became popular across motorsport and were also accepted into rallying as replacements for the kit-cars. The FIA introduced a new Junior World Rally Championship in 2001 solely for the Super 1600 cars. In 2010 a new SWRC championship was introduced for the S2000 cars which were in between Group N and the World Rally Car in terms of performance.

Group R was created to replace Groups A and N and was specifically for rally cars. It had 5 basic classes but not all were equally successful. The two wheel drive classes (R1, R2 and R3) arrived in 2008, 5 years before the four wheel drive classes (R4 and R5) and each had their regulations changed over time. At first R1, R2 and R3 (and sub-classes) were split between N and A sporting classes which did not fit the ethos of Group R being a replacement for those Groups. R3 cars, though not hugely unsuccessful, were often overlooked after R2 presumably because a driver was looking to progress to four wheel drive, or R1 and R2 were overlooked if a driver went straight to R3 which was the case when Citroën ran JWRC.

In 2011 an entirely new class structure was employed with the simultaneous introduction of a new 1.6 L World Rally Car based on S2000 body-kits, and SWRC and PWRC rules were also relaxed to allow cars from Groups R, N and A to compete. There were then 11 classes, ten being numbered from 1 to 10, and WRC. The classes were based on car performance, rising from 10 to 1, then WRC. The 4 classes of Group N stepped from 10,9,8 to 3 whilst Group R rose from 10,9,6,5,2. Group A rose from 7 to 5 as the A8 group over 2000cc were banned. New R-GT were in their own class of 4 whilst S2000 were split between 2 and 3. Some events ran without enough entrants to justify the class competition. Class 8 was only for Group N cars which were intended to be replaced. Their names no longer apt, SWRC and PWRC became WRC2 and WRC3 in 2013.

During the years 2006 to 2012, the Intercontinental Rally Challenge ran featuring the same mix of cars as the World and European championships. The challenge was made for TV and attracted fans and top drivers alike. In 2013 it effectively merged with the European Rally Championship when promotor Eurosport took on the promotion rights for the latter.