Embodiments of the invention relate to transforming a program-event-recording event into a run-time instrumentation event. An aspect of the invention includes a method for transforming a program-event-recording event into a run-time instrumentation event. The method includes enabling run-time instrumentation for collecting instrumentation information of an instruction stream executing on a processor. The method also includes detecting, by the processor, a program-event-recording (PER) event, the PER event associated with the instruction stream executing on the processor. The method further includes writing a PER event record to a collection buffer as a run-time instrumentation event based on detecting the PER event, the PER event record identifying the PER event.