In recent years, the calendar of the WTA Tour has been growing gradually as the Tour has expanded to many new countries, and one of those is also Romania, a country from which the former world no. 1, Simona Halep, comes.
The country has previously hosted Romania Open, which was an ATP 250 tournament held between 1993 and 2016, and it also had a WTA 250 event, the Bucharest Open, which was held between 2014 and 2019, and was won by Halep two times.
However, after 2019, the country didn't have any Tour-level tournament, but Romanian fans had to wait only for one season without any event, as in 2021, the inaugural edition of the Transylvania Open was held in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
The event was held at the BTArena, which can hold up to 10,000 and became its venue, and it proved to be a great success, with the passionate Romanian fans supporting their own Simona Halep, who made it all the way to the final before losing to the tournament's first champion, Anett Kontaveit.
It remained in the calendar also for the following seasons, and even though the Transylvania Open was initially held in October, it was moved to February in 2024, occupying a new spot in the WTA calendar after the first three editions of the tournament.
The tournament is part of the early indoor part of the season, and it's naturally played on the hard courts. In 2023, the tournament was chosen as the WTA 250 Tournament of the Year by the WTA.
