Resident Evil in Order: The Series Has Four Timelines, and a Fifth Arrives in September

Just before sunrise on October 1, 1998, Raccoon City was erased by its own government with a single missile, after a viral outbreak (the strain that reached the water supply was the t-Virus, not the G-Virus). More than a hundred thousand people died. Nearly every major character in this series passes through that city.

Now go back to the six live-action films with Milla Jovovich. The first one rewrites that same disaster as a 2002 leak underneath Raccoon City, in a facility called the Hive. Then look at the new live-action Resident Evil arriving next month. Its director, Zach Cregger, says the story runs concurrently with the outbreak from Resident Evil 2 — but in “an alternate timeline to the video game series set in a contemporary period.”

None of that is a continuity error. Those are separate continuities, each internally consistent, none of them acknowledging the others. Add 2021’s Welcome to Raccoon City and the 2022 Netflix live-action series, and this franchise is currently running four sets of rules at once by this article’s count, with a fifth arriving September 18. Which means the phrase “the Resident Evil timeline” is missing a premise: you have to say which one. This piece separates them, tells you how to take Resident Evil in order once you have picked a line, and settles something most watch-order lists miss — more screen work sits inside the game canon than people think.

The top half is the game canon. The five entries in orange are the CG works Capcom helped produce, and each of their years is fixed by pointing at a game event. None of the four lines below can be nested that way.
Chart: made by loreradar, from in-game date stamps, official material books, Capcom’s own timeline page, and the director’s statements

Pin down what “canon” means first

English-language fan wikis use prime continuity for the line Capcom itself recognizes: the mainline games, the spin-off games, and the CG productions Capcom helped make. Live-action films and live-action series are not in it.

You can verify that boundary two ways, without taking anyone’s word for it.

One: check who produced it. Of the four CG films, Degeneration and Damnation list Capcom, Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan, and Digital Frontier. Infinite Darkness was announced on Capcom’s own BIOHAZARD portal. The September film is produced by Constantin Film, Davis Films, Vertigo Entertainment, and PlayStation Productions, distributed by Columbia — Capcom is not on that list.

Two: check whether the in-universe years interlock. This is the harder test. The CG works are dated against specific game events. The live-action works are not. Both are laid out below.

And the hardest evidence comes from Capcom. Its official portal hosts a page looking back over the series that puts games and screen works on one axis, each tagged with a Game Timeline year: Degeneration 2005, Infinite Darkness 2006, Damnation 2011, Vendetta 2014. The live-action films are pulled out on that same page into a separate block headed Parallel World Live-action Movies, carrying the note “* A different timeline from the videogames.” That is not a fan taxonomy. Capcom wrote it.

That page has limits worth stating. It stops at Village in 2021: no Death Island from 2023, no Requiem. It is not exhaustive on spin-offs either, though it does carry the Javier incident from Darkside Chronicles and the Caucasus facility incident from Umbrella Chronicles. So what Capcom gives you is an official skeleton that is neither complete nor current. The chronology below fills that skeleton in using the dates each work stamps on itself — the filling in is mine, and I own it at the end.

Filling it in turned up one disagreement, stated plainly: Capcom’s page dates RE6 to June 2013, while Wikipedia gives December 2012 into 2013. I could not reconcile the two, and use the range below.

Line one: the game canon mainline, July 23, 1998 to October 2026

The scope of this list first: it covers the mainline games plus the screen works Capcom helped produce. It is not an exhaustive canon. Survivor, Outbreak, Dead Aim, Umbrella Chronicles, Darkside Chronicles and other spin-offs and retellings have contested canon status and limited bearing on mainline continuity, so they are not itemized here — Capcom’s own timeline page does not collect them all either.

July 23, 1998 — the Arklay Mountains, the Ecliptic Express and the Umbrella executive training facility: Resident Evil 0.
July 24, 1998 — the Spencer Mansion: Resident Evil. One day apart, same mountains.

September 28 to October 1, 1998 — Raccoon City. Three games are packed into those four days: Jill’s escape (RE3) starts September 28, Leon and Claire arrive (RE2) on September 29, and the two threads cross inside the city. The Nemesis chasing Jill and the Tyrant chasing Leon are built on the same mass-production body.

Here is a genuine ordering problem: Resident Evil 3 wraps entirely around Resident Evil 2. By release order, 2 comes first. By in-story chronology it is the first half of 3, then 2, then the second half of 3. Neither is wrong, and neither lets you play straight through in chronological order. This is the first time the series ties a knot in itself.

Early on October 1, roughly 5:35 a.m. to just before 7 — the U.S. government executes the sterilization operation and destroys the city.

About that missile, the official sources contradict each other, so here it is straight. In the BIOHAZARD 3 LAST ESCAPE Official Guide Book (Complete Conquest Edition), page 350, Yasuhisa Kawamura states it was a thermobaric weapon, not a nuclear one, which is why almost no radiation was left behind. The Japanese biohazard archives, page 344, also calls it a fuel-air explosive. The English Resident Evil Archives, page 268, calls it nuclear. And the 2010 revised edition of biohazard archives simply deleted the sentence describing the weapon.

Most retellings I have read say a nuclear missile destroyed Raccoon City. Weighing the sources, thermobaric is the better supported reading — but Capcom has never issued one consistent statement, and this article is not going to settle it on their behalf.

December 1998 — Rockfort Island and the Antarctic base: Code: Veronica.

Autumn 2004 — rural Spain: Resident Evil 4. Six years after Raccoon City. On the same job, Ada Wong takes the parasite sample for an employer the series has never named.

2005 — the Queen Zenobia: Revelations.

2005 — Harvardville Airport: the CG film Degeneration, officially set “seven years after the Raccoon City incident.”

2006 — the White House and Penamstan: the CG series Infinite Darkness, two years after RE4.

August 2006 — the raid on the Spencer estate: Lost in Nightmares, the RE5 add-on where Jill goes over the cliff and is presumed dead.

March 2009 — Kijuju, Africa: RE5 proper, and the death of Wesker.

2011 — Sushestvovanie Island: Revelations 2. Same year, the civil war in the Eastern Slav Republic: the CG film Damnation.

December 2012 into 2013 — Tall Oaks and Lanshiang: RE6. The sitting U.S. president, Adam Benford, is killed in Tall Oaks.

2014 — the New York bioterror attack and Sonido Island: the CG film Vendetta.

2015 — the CG film Death Island.

July 2017 — the Baker estate in Louisiana: RE7. New protagonist, new perspective, new pathogen — close to a full reset, and yet it does not start a second line.

2021 — a village in Eastern Europe: Village, and the death of Ethan Winters.

October 2026 — the Ark facility: Resident Evil Requiem. Elpis is released on October 9, twenty-eight years after Raccoon City burned. (The canon ending of that game is itself a puzzle the player has to answer correctly; that gets its own piece.)

1998 to 2026. Twenty-eight years. Canon does not stop there, though. Shadows of Rose, the story DLC for Village released October 28, 2022 with the Gold Edition and flagged as canon, is set in 2037 — sixteen years after the events of Village, and eleven years past Requiem. The accurate statement: the mainline has advanced to 2026, and the canon timeline already has an anchor planted in 2037.

The half-line everyone skips: the CG films are not side stories

This is the part watch-order articles miss worst.

The CG works Capcom helped produce are four films and one series: Degeneration (2008), Damnation (2012), Vendetta (2017), Death Island (2023), and the Netflix CG series Infinite Darkness (2021). All of them sit inside the game canon. Wikipedia records Death Island plainly as the fourth prime-continuity entry in the animated series.

You do not have to trust the label. Check the dates. Degeneration is seven years after Raccoon City (2005). Infinite Darkness is two years after RE4 (2006). Vendetta is one year after the Tall Oaks and Lanshiang incidents of RE6 (2014). Death Island is one year after the New York attack and two years before Ethan Winters walks into the Baker house (2015). Every one of those five years is fixed by pointing at a game event. Not one of the four live-action works below is nested that way: they either move the disaster in time and place, or they state outright that they are on a different line.

Which means some significant stretches of these characters’ lives exist only in the CG works — I could not find them dramatized in any game. Two concrete cases.

The first time Leon and Claire meet again after Raccoon City is 2005, at Harvardville Airport (Degeneration). In 2006 they are pulled into the same situation again — Leon investigating a cyberattack at the White House, Claire finding a Raccoon-style outbreak in Penamstan (Infinite Darkness). I could not find either reunion in any game. Play only the games and you would assume the two of them never saw each other again after 1998.

Death Island is then the first time Chris, Jill, Claire, and Leon are all main characters of the same CG film. The games still have not done that.

Infinite Darkness hit Netflix on July 8, 2021, set in 2006 — two years after RE4. The reunion between Leon and Claire in it has no equivalent scene in any game.
Image: Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness promotional material, Capcom / Netflix

So when someone asks what order to watch things in, handing over a list of live-action films answers the wrong question — none of those four live-action works is canon, and the five that are canon rarely appear on the lists I have read.

Line two: the Anderson six, where the disaster happens in 2002 and underground

From 2002 to 2017, Constantin Film produced six live-action Resident Evil movies. Paul W. S. Anderson wrote all six and directed four (Apocalypse went to Alexander Witt, Extinction to Russell Mulcahy).

That itemizes to roughly $1.23 billion, and every one of the six grossed more than twice its budget. (Wikipedia’s prose says “over $1.3 billion,” which does not match the figures in its own table; the sum above is from the line items.) These six never missed commercially. They were simply not faithful.

How unfaithful: the outbreak in these films happens in the Hive, an Umbrella facility beneath Raccoon City, in 2002 — not 1998, and not aboveground. The lead character, Alice, is Anderson’s invention. She does not exist in the game canon.

Anderson has explained the distance. He says it was deliberate: “I didn’t want it to be a slavish copy of the game. It’s an action-horror movie, and in a horror movie you can’t give away all of the secrets. If I’d done a straight adaptation of the first game, the audience would have known all the plot twists: who the traitor was, who was going to die.”

You can disagree with that call. It is still a clear creative choice, not somebody who never read the source.

The 2002 original. The character at the center of that poster is Alice, Anderson’s invention, who does not exist in the game canon — this line was never telling the games’ story, from minute one.
Image: Resident Evil (2002) promotional material, Constantin Film / Screen Gems

Lines three and four: two reboots with nothing to do with each other

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021), directed by Johannes Roberts, is Constantin’s seventh live-action film — and it shares no continuity with the Anderson six. It is a clean reboot, aimed in exactly the opposite direction: it folds the first two games together, brings back Chris, Claire, Leon, Jill, and Wesker, and rebuilds the mansion and the police station. Nothing followed it. Wikipedia records the September film as the second reboot of the film series, which puts the first reboot as ending with Welcome to Raccoon City.

The Netflix live-action series (July 14, 2022, eight episodes) is the third set of rules. Wikipedia is explicit: the show is “set in its own continuity, separate from the previous Anderson film series and 2021’s Welcome to Raccoon City.”

It also reaches furthest in time of the four: the story splits between 2022 and 2036, fourteen years apart. It centers on Billie and Jade Wesker — and this needs stating precisely: the “Albert Wesker” who raises them is not the Wesker from the games but one of his clones, called Al in the show, and the twins are the product of an Umbrella-financed genetic-engineering project, brought up as Al’s daughters to supply him with a steady stream of blood transfusions. A little over a month after release, in August 2022, Netflix cancelled it after one season.

Which produces a very practical confusion: Netflix has hosted two different things called Resident Evil — the CG series Infinite Darkness on July 8, 2021, and the live-action series on July 14, 2022. The first is part of the game canon. The second is not — though calling it unrelated to the games would be wrong too: it lifts Raccoon City, Umbrella, the T-virus, and Albert Wesker wholesale, and installs them inside a continuity of its own. One year and six days apart, same platform, same name.

The 2022 live-action series. Put it beside the Infinite Darkness key art above: same platform, same title, one year and six days apart, one inside the game canon and one not.
Image: Resident Evil live-action series promotional material, Netflix

Line five: September 18, and the director’s own words

On September 18, 2026, a new live-action Resident Evil opens in North America. The title is just Resident Evil, no subtitle. Zach Cregger directs; Austin Abrams stars.

The lead is Brian, a medical courier — not a cop, not a soldier, not an agent. He has a package to deliver to Raccoon City General Hospital, and the city comes down on top of him. Leon and Chris are not in it.

Its continuity is already being reported wrongly. Several write-ups I have read state flatly that it is a canon side story running in the same universe as RE2. That conflicts with what the director says. Cregger:

“I wrote this movie to take place concurrently with the events of the Raccoon City outbreak in Resident Evil 2, albeit in an alternate timeline to the video game series set in a contemporary period.”

He has also described wanting a story that “could live in the Resident Evil world” but sit on the periphery of the events of RE2 — another story happening in parallel.

“Concurrent with” and “in the same universe as” are one preposition apart and an entire continuity apart. Its relationship to the game canon is the same kind the Anderson six have: shared world, separate timeline.

This is worth flagging not to score a point. A film that has not opened yet has already had its continuity settled by repetition. That is not new here: the two identically named Netflix works above produced the same class of confusion — status assigned by circulation rather than by anyone official saying so.

The official one-sheet carries the title and the date, no subtitle. Produced by Constantin Film, Davis Films, Vertigo Entertainment, and PlayStation Productions — Capcom is not on that list.
Image: Resident Evil (2026) promotional material, Constantin Film / Columbia Pictures

Resident Evil in order: what to actually do with this

Once they are separated, the answer is clean: pick a line first, and the order inside it stops being ambiguous. Most people looking for Resident Evil in order want one of two things — the games in order, or the movies in order — and those are two different questions with two different answers.

The Resident Evil games in order, by story chronology: 0 → 1 → 2 and 3 (first half of 3, then 2, then the rest of 3) → Code: Veronica → 4 → Revelations → Degeneration → Infinite Darkness → Lost in Nightmares → 5 → Revelations 2 and Damnation → 6 → Vendetta → Death Island → 7 → Village → Requiem.

Games only, no screen works: drop those five CG entries. The plot still holds together — you will just never see either of the Leon-and-Claire reunions.

The Resident Evil movies in order: watch the Anderson six in release order, as a self-consistent line of their own. Watch Welcome to Raccoon City on its own. Watch the Netflix series on its own. Watch the September film on its own. There is no viewing order between those four, because they do not interact.

The reason “what order do I watch Resident Evil in” gets asked forever without resolving is right here: it is not an order problem, it is a how-many-lines problem.

Three things people keep getting wrong

1. “The Netflix Resident Evil isn’t canon.” Half right — because Netflix has two. The live-action series from July 14, 2022 indeed is not; Wikipedia states it is set in its own continuity. But the CG series Infinite Darkness, July 8, 2021, is: it takes place in 2006, two years after RE4, and Capcom’s own timeline page tags it Game Timeline 2006, on the same axis as the games. Before saying the Netflix one is not canon, establish which one.

2. “The September 18 film is a canon side story about the Raccoon City outbreak.” It is not. Cregger’s own wording is that it runs concurrently with the RE2 outbreak but in “an alternate timeline to the video game series set in a contemporary period,” and Wikipedia records the film as the second reboot of the film series. Write-ups calling it a canon side story in the same universe as the second game contradict the director.

3. “The CG films are side content — skipping them costs nothing.” It does. Degeneration, Damnation, Vendetta, Death Island, and Infinite Darkness are all inside the game canon, developed by Capcom together with partners including Sony Pictures Entertainment Japan and Digital Frontier, each dated against a specific game event on Capcom’s own timeline page. They carry material the games never dramatized, including both Leon-and-Claire reunions in 2005 and 2006, and the first time all four leads appear in one story, in 2015. Skipping them will not leave you lost in the mainline. It will leave a whole stretch of these relationships missing.

Frequently asked questions

What order should I play the Resident Evil games in? By story: 0 → 1 → 2 and 3 → Code: Veronica → 4 → Revelations → 5 → Revelations 2 → 6 → 7 → Village → Requiem. Release order works fine too; most entries recap what you need. The thing to know is that 3 and 2 are nested inside each other.

Are the live-action films and the series canon? No. The Anderson six, Welcome to Raccoon City, the Netflix series, and the September 2026 film are four separate things, and none of them is in the game canon.

What year is the canon timeline currently at? October 2026, in Resident Evil Requiem, twenty-eight years after Raccoon City. How that game’s canon ending is unlocked is covered separately.

How many years does Leon span in the canon? September 29, 1998 to October 2026 — twenty-eight years. He spent all of them doing one thing, which is its own long piece.

How this article is sourced

Tier one: text inside the works. In-game date stamps, files, and plot events across the series, plus the plots of the five CG productions. Every game-side date above belongs to this tier.

Tier two: official statements and official material books. Yasuhisa Kawamura on the thermobaric weapon, BIOHAZARD 3 LAST ESCAPE Official Guide Book (Complete Conquest Edition), page 350; the contradictory accounts of that same missile in biohazard archives, page 344, and Resident Evil Archives, page 268, plus the deletion in the 2010 revision; Capcom’s BIOHAZARD portal series-retrospective timeline page (the Game Timeline tags on the four CG works, and the separate “Parallel World Live-action Movies” block noted as a different timeline from the videogames); Capcom’s BIOHAZARD portal announcement for Infinite Darkness; Zach Cregger’s public statements about the film’s timeline; Paul W. S. Anderson’s interview remarks on not doing a straight adaptation.

Tier three: third-party reference work. Entries on the English Resident Evil Wiki and Wikipedia — the prime-continuity designations used here, the continuity status of each live-action work, the in-universe years of the CG works, and the budget and box-office figures all come from there.

Tier four: my own judgment. Five things in this article are mine, claimed here:

First, counting these works as “four lines plus a fifth” is this article’s framing. Capcom has never phrased it that way, and no official document numbers the live-action works by continuity. The basis for the split is each work’s own stated status; totaling them into a number is mine.

Second, Capcom does publish an official timeline page, but it stops at 2021 and does not collect the spin-offs, so the chronology here is still assembled. The skeleton and the CG works’ canon years come from that official page; Death Island, Requiem, and 2037’s Shadows of Rose I added from the dates those works stamp on themselves. The conflicts I hit while assembling are marked in the text (the RE3/RE2 nesting, the missile, and the two official readings of the RE6 year).

Third, the official-site line describing Degeneration as sharing a canon universe with the games is something I have only through a citation on the wiki; I could not reach the archived page myself. So the argument here for the CG works being canon rests instead on the two things I could verify directly: the production credits, and the way the in-universe years interlock with game events.

Fourth, “watch-order articles mostly cover only one line” is based on the batch of English and Chinese guides I read, not an exhaustive survey. The accurate version: among the ones I read, few state which continuity they are describing.

Fifth, on the September film, this article relies only on the director’s public statements and distributor information. The film has not opened, and I could not find any Capcom statement on its canon status. Nothing here predicts whether it will be folded into the main line after release.

Sources

In-game text and plot events across the series; BIOHAZARD 3 LAST ESCAPE Official Guide Book (Complete Conquest Edition), page 350; biohazard archives, page 344 (including the 2010 revision) and Resident Evil Archives, page 268; Capcom BIOHAZARD PORTAL series-retrospective timeline; Capcom BIOHAZARD PORTAL announcement for Infinite Darkness; Wikipedia, Resident Evil (2026 film); Deadline on the film’s official trailer; Deadline on Netflix cancelling the live-action series, August 2022; English Resident Evil Wiki entries for Degeneration, Damnation, Vendetta, Death Island, Infinite Darkness, Welcome to Raccoon City, the Netflix live-action series, the Anderson film series, the sterilization operation, and the Eastern Slav civil war.