How to watch The Walking Dead franchise in order (release and chronological)

It can be hard trying to figure out how to watch The Walking Dead in order. Not only did the original show, which follows a ragtag group of zombie apocalypse survivors, run for 177 episodes, there have been several spin-offs launched since it kicked off in 2010 – and each one is full of crossovers and time jumps.

With both The Walking Dead: Dead City and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon keeping the franchise alive, it can be hard to find the time to binge-watch the whole lot. But since we're currently in that rare period where there aren't any The Walking Dead shows on air, there's never been a more perfect time to catch up. Perhaps you're a fan who's fallen off in recent years, and are keen to find out what happened once Andrew Lincoln said goodbye to Rick Grimes? Or maybe you've never seen a minute of the hit horror, and want to find out what all the fuss is about? Either way, we've got you covered.

Below, we've picked our decaying brains and broken down the best ways to watch The Walking Dead franchise, from release order (which is arguably best for newbies) to chronological (which is, admittedly, a bit of a headache). With The Walking Dead boss Scott Gimple previously telling GamesRadar+ that "there's nothing but possibility" for the franchise, you'd better get cracking now...

How to watch the Walking Dead in release order 

Recommended for: newcomers to the Walking Dead franchise.

If you're starting out your Walking Dead journey, then there's no better place than to watch the epic undead series in release order. However, considering how many spin-offs there are, doing so is not exactly simple and you're going to want to eventually watch Fear the Walking Dead, as the series features important characters and crossovers with other series. Here's The Walking Dead in release order.

• The Walking Dead seasons 1 – 5
• Fear the Walking Dead season 1
• The Walking Dead season 6
• Fear the Walking Dead season 2
• The Walking Dead season 7
• Fear the Walking Dead season 3
• The Walking Dead season 8
• Fear the Walking Dead season 4
• The Walking Dead season 9
• Fear the Walking Dead season 5
• The Walking Dead season 10 episodes 1 – 16
• The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 1
• Fear the Walking Dead season 6
• The Walking Dead season 10 episodes 17 – 22
• The Walking Dead season 11 episodes 1 – 8
• The Walking Dead: World Beyond season 2
• Fear the Walking Dead season 7 episodes 1 – 8
• The Walking Dead season 11 episodes 9 – 16
• Fear the Walking Dead season 7 episodes 9 – 16
• Tales of the Walking Dead season 1
• The Walking Dead season 11 episodes 17 – 24
• Fear the Walking Dead season 8 episodes 1 – 6
• The Walking Dead: Dead City
• The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 1
• Fear the Walking Dead season 8 episodes 7 – 12
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live
• The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2
• The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2
• The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3

All of the main Walking Dead series are available on AMC (which you can also watch AMC through FuboTV and Sling) in the US, and Disney Plus in the UK. The Walking Dead: World Beyond and Fear the Walking Dead are both streaming on Prime Video – while The Ones Who Live and Daryl Dixon are exclusive to Sky over here.

How to watch the Walking Dead in chronological order

Recommended for: returning Walking Dead viewers.

So, you're aware of the Walking Dead world... You've seen the main series, perhaps, and fancy tackling the show in a different way, or you're simply just curious to see how the spin-offs slot into the main show. We're here to help. Below, we have a list of the chronological order of The Walking Dead, followed by a deeper dive into why everything sits where it sits. Prepare yourselves – it gets a little complicated.

• Fear the Walking Dead seasons 1 – 3
• The Walking Dead seasons 1 – 8
• Fear the Walking Dead season 4
• Tales of the Walking Dead season 1
• The Walking Dead season 9 episodes 1 – 5
• Fear the Walking Dead seasons 5
• The Walking Dead season 9 episodes 6 – 16
• Fear the Walking Dead seasons 6 – 7
• The Walking Dead season 10
• The Walking Dead: The World Beyond seasons 1 – 2
• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (not including flashbacks)
• The Walking Dead season 11
• Fear the Walking Dead season 8
• The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
• The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2
• The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 3
• The Walking Dead: Dead City
• The Walking Dead: Dead City season 2

Wondering why that order's so different to release? Fear not, let's go into a beat-by-beat explanation of the Walking Dead watch order.

Fear the Walking Dead seasons 1 – 3

Fear the Walking Dead might have premiered five years after The Walking Dead, but the events of its earlier seasons take place first. Where the main Walking Dead series starts with Rick Grimes waking up with the world already overrun by zombies, Fear the Walking Dead takes place during the beginnings of the apocalypse.

The first three seasons unfold in both Los Angeles and Mexico, as high school counselor Madison Clark (Kim Dickens) and her family try to navigate the start of the zombie outbreak. Initial confusion leads to violent hysteria and dwindling resources. The group has to adjust to a new world order and learn how to survive. All the while, tensions between Madison and her daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) and son Nick (Frank Dillane) as he wrestles with his drug addiction. Elsewhere, Madison's fiancé Travis (Cliff Curtis) finds himself torn between his new family and his son, Chris. Euphoria's Colman Domingo plays a calculating conman-turned-businessman Victor Strand.

The Walking Dead seasons 1 – 8

After stumbling out of the hospital after regaining consciousness following a coma, Rick encounters Morgan Jones (Lennie James), kills a bunch of walkers, and reunites with his wife Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies) and son Carl (Chandler Riggs) as the trio join forces with a ragtag team of survivors. Said team includes Glenn (Steven Yeun), Carol (Melissa McBride), and Daryl (Norman Reedus).

The second season sees the gang try to settle down on the Greene Farm – where they meet Maggie (Lauren Cohan) – followed by a stay in an abandoned prison. The third season blows that dream up with the introduction of David Morrisey's villainous community leader The Governor. The following installments see several characters come (Michonne!) and go (sob!) as Rick and the gang navigate the apocalypse, and face very-much-alive antagonists too, including Jeffrey Dean Morgan's baseball bat-swinging baddie Negan.

Note: We suggest you seek out season 10, episode 22 (titled 'Here's Negan') before pressing play on season 6, episode 16 for the full chronological experience. The self-contained episode does work best when you're familiar with the man Negan went on to become, but it is set before Rick meets him.

Fear the Walking Dead season 4

Fear the Walking Dead reinvents itself in season 4 with The Walking Dead's Morgan joining the cast and, for reasons we won't go into, immediately becoming one of its leads. Given the events of The Walking Dead season 8, and the fact that Rick, Carol, and Jesus (Tom Payne) appear in the pilot looking no different, we can estimate that we're about three years into the apocalypse by Fear the Walking Dead season 4's opener. The crossover also cements the fact that the spin-off is no longer a prequel, its storyline running concurrently with The Walking Dead. For now, at least.

Several new characters are introduced as Morgan finds himself up against the antagonistic Vultures: video journalist Althea (Maggie Grace), police officer John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt), and nurse June (Jenna Elfman), to name a few.

Tales of the Walking Dead season 1

Tales of the Walking Dead is an anthology series, and working out where each individual episode lands in the Walking Dead timeline is almost impossible, especially given the time travel and supernatural elements of some stories. However, most of the episodes take place after the US has been devastated by zombies.

So, why here, exactly? One of the episodes centers on Samantha Morton's Alpha – or Dee as she's known here. In it, the future villain gets jealous when her daughter Lydia (Scarlett Blum) strikes up a motherly bond with fellow survivor Brooke (Lauren Glazier). The final moments of the episode set up Alpha's arc on The Walking Dead, as she and Lydia are found by the Whisperers. The events of the episode occur around here – hence why the season's placement on the timeline.

The Walking Dead season 9

By The Walking Dead season 9 opener, the characters are around three and a half years into the zombie apocalypse. Partway through the chapter, though, the story leaps forward six years, with the most significant change being – outside of major spoilers, anyway – that Rick's daughter Judith is now a katana-wielding ten-year-old.

As expected, new characters are introduced, and the most notable new additions this time round are Yumiko (Eleanor Matsuura), Magna (Nadia Hilker), Connie (Lauren Ridloff), Kelly (Angel Theory), and Luke (Dan Fogler). Towards the end of the season, our survivors stumble across one of their most formidable foes yet; the Whisperers, a group that wears walkers' faces to blend in with the undead. It's creepy stuff and worlds away from Negan's villainous showboating.

Note: 'Find Me', the 18th episode of The Walking Dead season 10, is set across two of the six years in the time jump, and sees Daryl strike up a romance with a mysterious character called Leah (Lynn Collins). If you're doing a deep chronological dive, then you want to watch that episode right after season 9, episode 5.

Fear the Walking Dead season 5

Fear the Walking Dead season 5 sees Morgan, Alicia, and the rest strive to help other survivors who are struggling as a way to atone for their past wrongdoings. Of course, there are a couple of character introductions, including former power plant worker Grace (Karen David), and welcomes back a familiar face, too. It also sees Dwight (Austin Amelio), one of Negan's ex-cronies from The Walking Dead, cross over into the show. As if walkers were enough of a danger, the group soon learns that much of the land they use is causing people to get radiation sickness, which majorly interrupts their Samaritan missions.

The Walking Dead season 10

The Walking Dead season 10 explores Daryl, Carol, and the gang's conflict with Alpha and the Whisperers, as the residents of Hilltop, Alexandria, and the Kingdom band together to fight them. In true Walking Dead fashion, no one person can decide how best to deal with their enemies, which creates plenty of tension within camps as well as between them. The show introduces yet another community: the Commonwealth.

The Walking Dead: The World Beyond seasons 1 and 2

In October 2020, AMC released another spin-off titled The Walking Dead: World Beyond, which centers on a bunch of Nebraska-based kids who have grown up in a world where the undead roam the Earth. Like Fear the Walking Dead, it features a crossover character in Jadis – also known as Anne (Pollyanna McIntosh), the former Junkyard community leader who threatened Rick and Michonne before eventually joining their team in the flagship show.

In World Beyond, the Civic Republic Military are properly introduced, the mysterious army-like organization that has previously made contact with Fear the Walking Dead's Althea and The Walking Dead's Rick. It also has links to the upcoming Daryl Dixon series. World Beyond ended with a scene in which a French doctor (Carey Van Driest) was seen listening back to old transmissions from virologist Dr. Edwin Jenner (Noah Emmerich), the CDC guy that Rick and co. ran into back in the first season of The Walking Dead. The scientist notes that there are super fast "variants" of walkers that have been spotted in the vicinity and are potentially man-made – which is something Daryl found himself discovering in France.

Fear the Walking Dead seasons 6 and 7

Fear the Walking Dead season 6 follows Morgan as he tries to catch up with the rest of his group having been left for dead by the villainous Virginia (Colby Minifie). Elsewhere, the separated survivors try their best to make it through each day, and plot to either escape or accept their place within Virginia's Pioneer-run settlements.

There are a few flashbacks and time jumps – as well as a nuclear explosion – but nothing significant enough to disrupt the watch order. Season 7 deals with the fallout of the devastating blast and the return of a fan favorite character.

The Walking Dead season 11

The gang "settle into" new roles within the Commonwealth and question its leader Pamela Milton (Laila Robins) and her shady right-hand man Lance Hornsby (Josh Hamilton). As the earlier seasons proved, Rick's group isn't the best at accepting new authority figures but the main source of drama is due to Maggie's complicated relationship with Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

Fear the Walking Dead season 8

Fear the Walking Dead season 8 takes place seven years after the season 7 finale, which brings the spin-off right up to the events of the main show.

The first half bids farewell to Morgan Jones as he leaves with daughter Mo to go find Rick and Madison becomes the focus once again. The latter half, however, sees Madison come face to face once again with her old adversary Troy Otto, who claims to have been the one who murdered Madison's daughter Alicia. Be warned, it gets very emotional.

The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live

In terms of timeline, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live is a weird one, because it kind of takes place around the same time as the events of The Walking Dead season 11. Rick was whisked off by the CRM in season 9, before a six-year time jump introduced us to a whole roster of new characters and an older Judith, which points to The Ones Who Live partly filling in that gap. But only in flashbacks and content that doesn't include Michonne...

Danai Gurira's katanna-wielding survivor didn't leave to find Rick until season 10, after the time-jump, and she certainly wasn't on the road for years and years before she stumbled across her long-lost love again. Hence why we've concluded that it runs concurrently with the original show's final chapter – a fact that makes the twosome's desperate attempt to return to Alexandria, not knowing that it's been overtaken by the Commonwealth, all the more heartbreaking. (Confusing, too, since they reunite with RJ and Judith in an undisclosed, safe-looking location right at the very end).

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon

Presumably set before the events of Dead City, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 1 sees Norman Reedus's titular character wash up in France, where he's rescued by a mysterious religious community.

Later, Clémence Poésy's nun Isabelle asks the American to ferry Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi), a young French boy, to a specific location across the zombie-filled country – and reveals that the kid might be the key to the "revival of humanity".

The second season picks up not long after the first season left off, with Melissa McBride's Carol hot on the trail of Daryl. For our verdict, check out our Daryl Dixon season 2 review.

The most recent third season was a huge improvement on its sophomore offering, relocating the action to Spain after Daryl and Carol's failed attempt to sail back to the US from the UK. Less spiritual than its standout season 1, it balanced action and character arcs well, while refusing to curtail to fan pressure and allowing the two leads to have their own separate storylines.

Season 4 has already been shot, but AMC has yet to confirm a release date. We're guessing it'll come out sometime in late 2026, though.

The Walking Dead: Dead City 

Centering Lauren Cohan's Maggie and Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan, The Walking Dead: Dead City sees the unlikely duo work together to find Maggie's son Hershel, who's been kidnapped and taken to a derelict Manhattan.

The reason for the team-up? Maggie's caught wind of the fact that Negan once knew the man who has Hershel, the brutal Croat (‎Željko Ivanek), and she's hoping that his complicated relationship with the guy will help goad him out of the shadows.

Consisting of six episodes, the spin-off takes place a few years after the end of The Walking Dead season 11, which you can work out from Hershel's growth spurt, meaning it definitely comes in last on this list. Season 2, which concluded on June 22, follows on shortly after. Season 3, which is expected to release sometime in 2026 and sticks to the same timeline, wrapped filming in December 2025.

For more TV recommendations, check out our list of the best TV shows of all time for some inspiration. (Spoiler: The Walking Dead is at #80.)

Alternatively, if you need to play catch up we'd recommend heading over to our spoiler-heavy The Walking Dead recap. Whatever your route, the undead await.