Our journal was created in 2008 to communicate the results of the scientific work at MGIMO-University. The authors mostly from the university published here on international relations, political science, economics, international law, philology, philosophy, pedagogy and science studies. In addition, the journal published book reviews, as well as reports on the scientific life in the university. High quality of publications was provided due to the high professionalism of the authors, as well as the practice of blind peer review. In 2009, the journal was included in the Russian Scientific Citation Index (RINC) and in the list of journals of the Higher Attestation Commission of Russia.

Editor-in-chief of the journal is Rector of MGIMO-University Academician A.V. Torkunov. In 2015 with the approval of the editorial board, the editor-in-chief decided to change the journal's mission so that its publications would reflect the scientific results of the Russian school of international relations. From a multidisciplinary journal it was transformed into a journal focused exclusively on international relations with an emphasis on the problem of overcoming the opposition of the Western and non-Western perspectives.

Despite the change in the editorial policy, the Russian-language name of the journal remained the same (MGIMO Review of International Relations), because the Russian school of international relations was formed mainly at MGIMO. The University hosts annual meetings of the Russian Association of International Studies, its president being the Rector A.V. Torkunov.

Now the composition of the editorial board and the authorship of the journal has moved from the regional to international level. In 2015, the journal was included in the international databases ERICH and EBSCO. In 2017, after re-registration in the  Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications the Journal  obtained the right to publish articles in English. The English version of the title is MGIMO Review of International Relations.

In 2017 the Journal joins CrossRef community.