Resident Evil Timeline for the Movies, Explained

Resident Evil 2002, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, starts the timeline inside the Hive, a secret Umbrella Corporation lab beneath a mansion, after a stolen T-virus has been released and the Red Queen computer has sealed everyone in. Alice wakes with no memory and goes down with a commando team led by One and a man who says he is a cop named Matt.

A laser corridor kills One and several soldiers, and when Kaplan shuts the Red Queen down, every door opens and the dead walk free. Spence recovers his memory and admits he stole the virus. Rain is bitten on the train and Matt has to shoot her, and a Licker then kills Kaplan and wounds Matt. Umbrella scientists recapture Alice and Matt, who is slated for the Nemesis Program. Alice wakes in Raccoon City Hospital and walks out into a wrecked, empty city, which is where the next film begins.

Resident Evil Apocalypse, directed by Alexander Witt, is the chapter where the T-virus leaves the Hive and spreads through Raccoon City. Umbrella locks the city down, and Major Cain seals the exit bridge so that the living and the undead are stuck on the same side.

Alice, changed by the virus, falls in with former police officer Jill Valentine, soldier Carlos Olivera, reporter Terri Morales and L.J. Their deal is simple: bring Angela Ashford, daughter of the scientist Dr. Ashford, to the extraction point and earn a way out. Umbrella sends Nemesis, an engineered soldier of enormous size, to hunt them, and Alice realizes he is Matt. He turns on Cain's troops and dies shielding her. The helicopter escape ends when a nuclear warhead levels the city, and the news blames a power plant meltdown. Alice wakes in an Umbrella lab, and Dr. Isaacs tells her the escape was part of Umbrella's plan. A mid credits scene shows part of a "Regenerate" skin product teaser.

Resident Evil Extinction, directed by Russell Mulcahy, jumps five years past the Raccoon City outbreak into a world where the T-virus has turned most of the planet into desert.

The film opens with a clone of Alice who is killed in a trap and dumped in a pit of failed clones from Umbrella's Project Alice. The real Alice wanders alone and finds a notebook pointing to an uninfected area in Alaska. She meets Claire Redfield's convoy, which includes Carlos, L.J. and K-Mart, and saves it from infected crows with her telekinetic powers. Dr. Isaacs breeds a new kind of zombie against Wesker's orders, and most of the convoy dies. Carlos sacrifices himself by driving a tanker of dynamite into the horde. Alice later defeats Isaacs, who has mutated into a Tyrant, in a replica of the Hive's laser corridor. The story then moves to Tokyo, where Alice appears at Wesker's meeting.

Resident Evil Afterlife, directed by Anderson and the first film in the series shot in 3D, picks up after Alice's raid on Umbrella's underground base in Tokyo. Wesker, who is infected with the T-virus, takes her powers away.

Six months later Alice flies north to Alaska, following a broadcast about a safe haven called Arcadia. There she finds Claire Redfield, who is dazed and has no memory of her past. The two fly to Los Angeles, where a city of undead surrounds a prison with a few survivors inside. The group frees Chris Redfield from the cells and faces a huge axe wielding executioner. Arcadia turns out to be an Umbrella trap, and Alice defeats Wesker aboard the ship while he escapes by parachute. The film closes on Umbrella aircraft led by a mind controlled Jill Valentine closing in on Arcadia.

Resident Evil Retribution, directed by Anderson, starts with the assault on the Arcadia and moves the story into Umbrella's underwater base in Kamchatka. Jill Valentine leads the attack wearing a mind control device, and Alice is taken prisoner.

Alice wakes in a suburban home with a husband and a daughter named Becky, but a zombie outbreak shows the life is a simulation. The real Alice is held in the Kamchatka base, where outbreaks are staged in replica cities. She escapes her cell and meets Ada Wong, a former agent of Wesker. Wesker says the Red Queen AI now controls Umbrella and asks for Alice's help, and a rescue team led by Leon Kennedy arrives to extract her. Barry Burton sacrifices himself so the others can get away, and Alice frees Jill by removing the device. The survivors reach the fortified White House, where Wesker restores Alice's powers and warns that the Red Queen wants to wipe out humanity.

Resident Evil The Final Chapter, directed by Anderson, closes the Alice saga and reaches back to the origin of Umbrella. It opened in Japan on December 23, 2016 and in the US on January 27, 2017.

A flashback shows Umbrella's founder, Dr. James Marcus, trying to save his dying daughter Alicia with an experimental virus. His partner Dr. Isaacs has him killed, adopts Alicia and takes over the company. In the present, Alice wakes in the ruined White House after Wesker's betrayal, and the Red Queen tells her an airborne antivirus could end the outbreak but will wait 48 hours for the last human survivors to die. Alice must return to the Hive beneath Raccoon City. Inside she learns that the Isaacs she killed earlier was a clone, and that she is a clone of Alicia Marcus. Wesker destroys the Hive, and Alice survives because the antivirus clears the T-virus only from her own body. The Red Queen gives her Alicia's childhood memories, and Alice vows to keep fighting the undead while the antivirus spreads over the years.

Resident Evil Welcome to Raccoon City, directed by Johannes Roberts, wipes the slate and begins in 1998 with a new ensemble and no Alice. It reached US theaters on November 24, 2021. Claire Redfield comes back to a fading Raccoon City, the town where she grew up in the orphanage alongside her brother Chris and befriended Lisa Trevor, a girl damaged by Umbrella's experiments.

Two storylines run in parallel. One follows Chris, Jill Valentine, Richard Aiken, Brad Vickers and Albert Wesker, who head to the Spencer Mansion to search for a missing team. The other follows Claire and rookie officer Leon Kennedy, who join Chief Irons while the police station is overrun. Wesker is secretly serving another side and wants the virus William Birkin developed. Birkin injects himself with a new strain and turns into a monster. The survivors ride an underground train out as Umbrella prepares to destroy the city, and Leon finishes the pursuing creature with a rocket launcher. In a post credit scene, Wesker wakes in a body bag, and a woman hands him sunglasses and says she is Ada Wong.

Resident Evil 2026, directed by Zach Cregger, is a self contained story set on one snowy night, and no year is given for its events. It reached US theaters on September 18, 2026.

Bryan is a courier with no combat skills who takes a well paid delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital. On the way, a little girl bites him. Inside he meets people twisted by the Umbrella Corporation's outbreak, whose shifting, merging bodies echo John Carpenter's The Thing, and the virus is never named outright. His package holds a key ingredient for an antidote meant for National Guard soldiers about to land on the roof. The bite then causes Bryan to mutate, and he kills the scientists in the top floor lab. He kills the last surviving scientist after they fall through a window, and the syringe with the antidote falls toward the ground. As helicopters close in, Bryan roars. Reported accounts of the ending describe no sequel setup.

The short version is that the Alice saga is one unbroken line, and the two newer films are separate stories that happen to share a town. In my opinion, the saga's chronology is simpler than its reputation suggests, because each film opens within moments or months of the last, with the five year leap at the start of Extinction as the only large gap. Afterlife begins six months after the Tokyo raid, and Retribution starts at the attack on the Arcadia, so very little time is lost between them.

The Final Chapter bends the line twice: the Marcus flashback, and the reveal that Alice is a clone of Alicia Marcus. It could be argued that this is a retcon, since the 2002 film simply gave Alice amnesia without any explanation. Whether the answer was planned from the start is something the films never say, but it does make the Red Queen's return to the Hive in the finale feel like a loop closing.

The clearest sign that Welcome to Raccoon City does not continue the Alice films is the city itself. Apocalypse ends with a nuclear warhead destroying Raccoon City and the news blaming a power plant meltdown, and Welcome to Raccoon City ends with the city destroyed again while Umbrella reports no survivors. Two destructions of one city cannot sit in one timeline. Resident Evil (2026) is narrower still, because it follows one courier through one hospital with none of the earlier lead cast, so it needs no homework. If you only have one evening, start there, and if you want the whole story, press play in release order. The new resident evil movie page tracks what comes after, and so far no report describes a sequel setup.