How to Watch The Walking Dead in Order: Release Order vs. Timeline Order

The simplest way to watch The Walking Dead franchise is release order — the order AMC actually made each show — though a timeline (chronological) order exists too if you’d rather follow the story itself instead of production history. What started in 2010 as a single zombie-apocalypse drama has grown into seven live-action AMC series, and most of them only make full sense once you know where they sit relative to the others. Here’s the full lineup, both ways to watch it, and where the still-running spinoffs currently stand.

What shows actually make up The Walking Dead franchise?

The franchise now totals seven scripted AMC series, five of which have fully concluded and two of which are still airing. The flagship, The Walking Dead, ran 11 seasons and 177 episodes from October 2010 to November 2022. Its spinoffs are Fear the Walking Dead (2015–2023, 8 seasons, 113 episodes), The Walking Dead: World Beyond (2020–2021, a deliberately capped 2-season/20-episode run), Tales of the Walking Dead (2022, a 6-episode anthology), The Walking Dead: Dead City (2023–present), The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (2023–present), and The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (2024, a 6-episode miniseries). Everything below is built on those seven shows; there’s no separate Rick Grimes movie trilogy to add, for reasons we get into below.

Should you watch in release order or timeline order?

Either works, but they give you a different experience: release order follows how the story was actually told, while timeline order follows the in-universe chronology instead. Release order is the easier default, since it’s how the writers paced reveals and crossovers — Fear the Walking Dead’s later seasons lean on a returning character from the main show in a way that plays better once you’ve already met him there. Timeline order is really only worth it once you’ve seen everything already and want a rewatch as one continuous story.

What’s the release order for the whole franchise?

Release order is simply the order each show premiered, which is also the order most people naturally discover the franchise.

Dead City and Daryl Dixon premiered four days apart in June 2023, so which one you watch first between those two is really a coin flip.

What’s the timeline order, if you’d rather follow the story chronologically?

In-universe, the franchise runs roughly: the outbreak’s start, then the main show’s 11 seasons, then Rick’s years away from his family, then the two present-day spinoffs running in parallel. Fear the Walking Dead’s first three seasons cover the outbreak beginning, before The Walking Dead’s own story starts. The Walking Dead’s 11 seasons then carry the bulk of the timeline, overlapping with Fear’s seasons 4 through 8 (via Fear’s Morgan Jones crossing over between the two shows) and with World Beyond, set roughly ten years into the outbreak. The Ones Who Live picks up Rick Grimes’s arc after he’s separated from the main story and carries it back toward reuniting with Michonne, spanning into the period just after the 2022 finale. Dead City and Daryl Dixon both pick up some years after that finale and run roughly in parallel on different continents. Tales of the Walking Dead is a self-contained anthology and doesn’t slot in at all.

Where do Dead City and Daryl Dixon fit in, and are new seasons coming?

Both are currently AMC’s active Walking Dead spinoffs, following characters from the flagship show years after its 2022 finale, on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Dead City follows Maggie Rhee and Negan Smith through a walker-filled, cut-off Manhattan; it has aired three seasons and 22 episodes, from June 2023 through September 2026. Exactly how many years separate it from the main show’s finale has been described inconsistently even by the people who make it — some reporting has put it around two years, while star Lauren Cohan has described the gap as closer to five or six — so we don’t pin an exact figure. As of this writing, AMC has not renewed or cancelled Dead City for a season 4; producers have said they’re hopeful, but no decision has been announced. Our full Dead City viewing guide covers all three seasons and the cast in detail.

Daryl Dixon follows Daryl Dixon, and later Carol Peletier, across France and the rest of Europe. It has aired three seasons — a 6-episode season 1 (2023), the 6-episode season 2, “The Book of Carol” (2024), and a 7-episode season 3 (2025) — and AMC has renewed it for a fourth and final season of 8 episodes. That season wrapped filming in November 2025 and is targeting a 2027 premiere, though AMC hasn’t announced a specific date beyond that general window.

What happened to World Beyond, Tales of the Walking Dead, and The Ones Who Live?

All three are finished, self-contained runs rather than ongoing shows. World Beyond was announced from the outset as a 2-season, 20-episode limited series and wrapped on schedule in December 2021. Tales of the Walking Dead ran a single 6-episode anthology season in 2022, each episode telling a mostly standalone story; a follow-up project called More Tales from the Walking Dead Universe was reported in April 2023, but there’s been no public update on it since, so we’re not treating it as either upcoming or cancelled. The Ones Who Live wrapped in March 2024 after 6 episodes reuniting Rick Grimes and Michonne — a story originally announced back in 2018 as a trilogy of theatrical Rick Grimes films before being reworked into this miniseries instead.

Where can you watch the entire franchise?

All seven shows are available on AMC and AMC+ in the United States, with AMC+ being the one subscription that covers the whole catalog without a cable package. New episodes of currently airing spinoffs have historically premiered on the linear AMC channel and landed on AMC+ the same night. Availability elsewhere varies by market and streaming service.

That’s the whole map: start with the main show if you’re new to the franchise, follow the release-order table as AMC put it out, or use timeline order on a rewatch. The story isn’t finished — Daryl Dixon has one more season on the way, and Dead City’s future is still an open question AMC hasn’t answered.