The Walking Dead takes place across 7 shows, covering multiple seasons and years of storytelling. Here’s the complete TWD timeline explained.

The Walking Dead timeline is complex, with its main series and various spinoff shows taking place at different points in the ongoing story. Based on the comics by Robert Kirkman, AMC’s live-action The Walking Dead TV show took on a life of its own, adding new stories, original characters, and multiple spinoff series. The main series finished its final season, while Fear the Walking Dead wrapped up after eight. The Walking Dead: World Beyond has come and gone, while more spinoffs arrived, including shows focusing on the franchise’s biggest characters such as Maggie, Negan, Daryl Dixon, Michonne, and the overall protagonist, Rick Grimes.

The original Walking Dead comic series employs several extended time skips that advance the story. However, the Walking Dead timeline on TV has advanced at an ever-faster rate, with the post-Savior leap in time being far longer than in the comics. And where Fear The Walking Dead initially charted the origins of the outbreak, the show soon caught up to the main series adaptation — before falling behind yet again. With multiple shows already twisting and turning around each other and even more zombie apocalypse goodness on the way, the convoluted world of The Walking Dead is trickier to follow than ever.

The Walking Dead timeline begins with Rick Grimes getting shot while on duty as a cop and falling into a coma. The entire world goes wrong during his absence, and Rick awakens on day 59 of the zombie outbreak, with The Walking Dead season 1 taking place in mid-to-late 2010, relative to when the premiere episode aired. The story kicks off properly with Rick’s awakening. The plot takes Rick from the hospital to Morgan’s house, then toward an emotional reunion with his family, and finally to the CDC where season 1 concludes. These events take place within one week, bringing the franchise to day 64 — roughly nine weeks since the virus began wreaking havoc.

The Walking Dead Season 2

The Walking Dead season 2 takes place mostly on the Greene family’s farm, where Rick’s group spends a handful of weeks camped up with Hershel and his children, including Maggie. These events move The Walking Dead timeline onto day 83 when Hershel’s farm is overrun, and the two groups officially join to head out into the unknown wilderness. The year is probably still 2010. Concurrent with The Walking Dead season 2, Negan’s first wife, Lucille, runs out of cancer medication, and he heads off to find help. Six weeks later — between The Walking Dead seasons 2 and 3 — he finds a doctor but fails to save Lucille. The Saviors are born.

The Walking Dead Season 3

The first jump in The Walking Dead timeline occurs between seasons 2 and 3, moving the story forward approximately seven or eight months as Rick’s group endures a harsh winter and hones their survival skills. When The Walking Dead season 3 begins, the calendar turns to 2011, at which point the characters encounter a prison to make their new home. Michonne is introduced, and the first battle against The Governor takes place. This all happens within a few weeks, bringing The Walking Dead timeline to somewhere in the vicinity of 321 days since patient zero first spluttered over someone.

The Walking Dead Season 4

Another time skip occurs between The Walking Dead seasons 3 and 4, lasting a period of six months while the prison community enjoys a spell of peace. During this time, Morgan Jones meets Eastman and learns the art of Aikido that’ll serve him well in future seasons, while The Governor recoups and encounters new followers. Now toward the end of 2011, 500 days of zombie apocalypse summer have passed.

Rick’s survivors are in flu season and enduring a devastating outbreak. The prison is abandoned altogether in The Walking Dead after The Governor attacks, forcing Rick’s people to split up and reunite at Terminus, which turns out to be a bad move. With each second-half episode in The Walking Dead season 4 focusing on a different group, the narrative takes place over a mere one or two weeks.

The Walking Dead Season 5

Picking up where The Walking Dead season 4 left off, season 5 deals with the Terminus cannibals and moves Rick’s group to Alexandria, with Beth and Tyreese falling during the journey. Another condensed installment, The Walking Dead season 5 largely takes place inside a two-month period, bringing the show just shy of day 550.

The Walking Dead Season 6

Once again, there’s no time skip before The Walking Dead season 6, and the first half of this installment is even more constrained than before. The first nine episodes, from the premiere until “No Way Out,” focus on preventing a herd from attacking Alexandria and only span a handful of days. A mini-skip of one or two months occurs during season 6’s mid-season break, and then the second batch of episodes covers a little over a week, leaving The Walking Dead timeline just under 600 days removed from the outbreak’s onset. The second half of season 6 sees the first foray into The Walking Dead show’s Negan arc.

The Walking Dead Season 7

With The Walking Dead season 6 ending on the notorious Negan cliffhanger, there’s no gap between season 6’s finale and season 7’s premiere. In fact, The Walking Dead actually rewinds a few minutes to show who met the wrong end of Negan’s baseball bat. Over the course of 12 days, Negan’s Saviors continue to lean heavily on both Alexandria and Hilltop, while contact is made with the Kingdom, Oceanside, and the Scavengers. An attempt to overthrow Negan goes wrong thanks to the duplicitous Jadis, and The Walking Dead timeline hits 610 days.

The Walking Dead Season 8

With a couple of weeks passing since the season 7 finale and Rick’s declaration of war, The Walking Deadseason 8 is now undoubtedly into 2012 and once again only charts a period of a few days. This is enough for Rick Grimes to turn the tide against Negan, and by the season finale episode, the threat of the Saviors is over.

The Walking Dead Season 9

In the first significant time jump, The Walking Dead timeline moves ahead 18 months, with Alexandria and its allies enjoying their longest period of peace and prosperity thanks to Negan sitting in jail. The first five episodes of The Walking Dead season 9 likely take place in late 2013 and span just over one month while the allied communities — now including the remaining Saviors — attempt to build bridges of both the literal and metaphorical kinds. The world has been awful for slightly more than 1,200 days. This is when Rick Grimes “dies” in a fiery explosion. Eight months later — judging by the progress of Michonne’s pregnancy — the events of “Scars” take place.

16 months after that, Daryl meets Leah and Dog while out in the wild searching for Rick, and they casually bicker with each other over the ensuing two years of sporadic forest meetings. The WalkingDead season 9 continues in late 2019. Six years have passed since Rick’s assumed death, and Judith is now 8 years old. Most of the rest of the season covers a short period of days when the survivors make first contact with the Whisperers. After Alpha’s severed head display in “The Calm Before,” there’s another jump before the finale lasting three or four months and taking The Walking Dead‘s narrative to approximately day 4,190.

The Walking Dead Season 10

With time jumps as common as Negan’s colorful insults at this point, The Walking Dead season 10 picks up four or five months after the season 9 finale (this was confirmed by showrunner Angela Kang) taking the story through much of 2020. Fortunately, The Walking Dead timeline gymnastics pass, and the events of season 10 take place within a time frame of several weeks, bringing the day count closer to 4,500. The Walking Dead season 10’s supplementary “COVID” episodes also occur very close together with no major time skips.

The Walking Dead Season 11

The Walking Dead‘s final season picks up very close to, if not directly after, the Whisperers’ defeat at the end of season 10. The first time jump occurs between “No Other Way” and “New Haunts,” which sees the show fast-forward about a month in the future, leading up to Carol’s discovery of Ezekiel’s condition while staying at the Commonwealth. However, the biggest time leap occurs at the end of The Walking Dead series finale, with a year passing between the defeat of the zombie hoard and the rebuilding of Hilltop and Alexandria. All in all, by its end, The Walking Dead takes place over 5,065 days — or about 13 and a half years.