The Belarusian Premier League was organized in
1992. The first participants were:
Dinamo Minsk, the only Belarusian side in the former
Soviet Top League, five teams from the lower tiers of the Soviet league system and represented other five regional centers of Belarus, and ten teams who were previous competitors in the
Belarusian SSR First League. After the league creation, it was decided to change its schedule from a Soviet-style summer season to a European-style winter season. In 1995, the winter season experiment was proven unsuccessful due to poor weather and field conditions in Belarus in the late autumn and early spring. The season was changed back to summer. Every season since 1996 has been played in the summer. Throughout the 2000s, the number of competing teams has changed several times. 2012 season was played with only 11 teams due to last minute withdrawal of
Partizan Minsk. In its earliest years, the league was dominated by
Dinamo Minsk, who won the league five times in a row between 1992 and 1995. During the next ten seasons, seven different teams finished as champions:
Slavia Mozyr (1996 as MPKC Mozyr, 2000),
Dinamo Minsk (1997, 2004),
Dnepr-Transmash Mogilev (1998),
BATE Borisov (1999, 2002),
Belshina Bobruisk (2001),
Gomel (2003),
Shakhtyor Soligorsk (2005). Since 2006, BATE Borisov has dominated the league, winning 13 championships in a row (2006–2018). In March 2020, due to the
COVID-19 pandemic, all the other football leagues in Europe were postponed, and by the end of the month, the Belarusian Premier League was the only top-flight league in the continent that was still playing. Due to this, the league gained substantially increased viewership from abroad, with fans from all over the world watching the games online, due to the league being the only significant professional football available; the league signed new television rights deals with networks from countries including Russia and India. Matches were also streamed on the
Belarusian Football Federation's
YouTube channel. British betting companies also offered odds for the various matches, as the league's profile, previously relatively unknown outside of the country, grew a larger audience due to sporting inactivity elsewhere. ==Premier League in 2025==