AbstractIt is conjectured that every edge‐colored complete graph on vertices satisfying contains vertex‐disjoint properly edge‐colored cycles. We confirm this conjecture for , prove several additional weaker results for general , and we establish structural properties of possible minimum counterexamples to the conjecture. We also reveal a close relationship between properly edge‐colored cycles in edge‐colored complete graphs and directed cycles in multipartite tournaments. Using this relationship and our results on edge‐colored complete graphs, we obtain several partial solutions to a conjecture on disjoint cycles in directed graphs due to Bermond and Thomassen.