The village of Scoregast, which dates back to a Slavic settlement and already had a parish church and a market, was used in 1109 to furnish the Bamberg Collegiate Monastery of St. Jakob. During the dispute in the succession of Merano, Vogt Heinrich von Weida appropriated the bailiwick through Marktschorgast, and King Adolf's arbitration was awarded to Bishop Arnold von Bamberg. Marktschorgast therefore belonged to the imperial diocese of Bamberg since 1293. In 1323 the place is documented as a fortified episcopal market (oppidum). From 1337 the episcopal neck court is occupied. In addition to the bishop, several noble families also owned the site.
Until the secularization in 1803, the village belonged to the bishopric of Bamberg, which up until then had been imperial and was part of the Franconian Empire from 1500. In 1802, in anticipation of secularization, Bavaria occupied the bishopric of Bamberg alongside other ecclesiastical properties. In the Prussian-Bavarian country comparison, the former Bamberg areas (and thus also Marktschorgast) fell briefly (1807–1810) to the Prussian Principality of Bayreuth, until it was first occupied by Napoleon after the devastating defeat of Prussia in the Fourth Coalition War and then in the course of the Peace of Tilsit was sold for 15 million francs to Bavaria, allied with Napoleon. Bavaria, which rose from the electorate to a kingdom in 1806 with Napoleon Bonaparte's help, was able to keep the Franconian territories gained through the support of Napoleon even after the Congress of Vienna, because it had changed sides shortly before the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 and from that point on against Napoleon fought. A precondition for this change of sides was that Bavaria was allowed to keep the annexed areas. Marktschorgast has belonged to Bavaria since that time.