We introduce a level-set formulation for the mean curvature flow with obstacles and show existence and uniqueness of a viscosity solution. These results generalize a well known viscosity approach for the mean curvature flow without obstacle by Evans and Spruck and Chen, Giga and Goto in 1991. In addition, we show that this evolution is consistent with the variational scheme introduced by Almeida, Chambolle and Novaga (2012) and we study the long time behavior of our viscosity solutions.