The Big Sky includes in its history the preceding six years of the Mountain West Athletic Conference, a women's athletic league consisting mostly of Big Sky members that operated from 1982 to 1988, so the inaugural tournament was in March 1983.
(The MWAC of the 1980s is not affiliated with the current Mountain West Conference (MWC), launched in 1999).
Prior to the 1982–83 season, Big Sky members with women's basketball programs housed them in several different conferences.
On September 18, 2017, the Big Sky Conference announced that its men's and women's basketball tournaments would move to Idaho Central Arena for three years, starting in 2019.
In 1989 (the first under the Big Sky name), the conference added all-conference team honors, in addition to the MVP.