The Star Trek Timeline Explained: Every Show in Story Order

Star Trek wasn't made in story order, and that's half the fun of untangling it. The shows jump backward and forward across more than a thousand years of future history: one prequel premiered in 2001 and is set before almost everything else, while the newest shows reach all the way to the 32nd century.

This guide walks the in-universe calendar from the earliest stories to the latest, then covers the alternate Kelvin Timeline from the 2009 film. Dates come from StarTrek.com, the official site.

A spoiler note: this guide is about where things happen, not how they end. Placing a show on the timeline sometimes reveals a premise, such as a time jump, and we flag those before you reach them.

Quick reference: the series in story order

StarTrek.com's chronological viewing guide places the shows like this:

1. Star Trek: Enterprise, 2150s
2. Star Trek: Discovery, begins in the 2250s
3. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, late 2250s
4. Star Trek (The Original Series), 2260s
5. Star Trek: The Animated Series, late 2260s to early 2270s
6. Star Trek: The Next Generation, 2360s to 2370s
7. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, 2369 to 2375
8. Star Trek: Voyager, 2370s
9. Star Trek: Lower Decks, 2380s
10. Star Trek: Picard, late 2390s
11. Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, 32nd century

That official list covers the shows streaming on Paramount+, so it leaves out Star Trek: Prodigy. StarTrek.com has said elsewhere that Prodigy is set in 2383, which puts it in the same decade as Lower Decks and before Picard.

The 21st century: first contact in 2063

A key starting point for the whole timeline is a single night. According to StarTrek.com, on April 5, 2063, inventor Zefram Cochrane's warp-capable ship, the Phoenix, broke the warp barrier. That caught the attention of a passing Vulcan survey ship, which landed in Bozeman, Montana, and humanity met its first alien species. That first contact paved the way for the United Federation of Planets.

You can see that night on screen in the 1996 film Star Trek: First Contact, when the Next Generation crew travels back to it. Fans celebrate April 5 as First Contact Day, and the date has a sweet real-world origin: the film's co-writer, Ronald D. Moore, told StarTrek.com he picked it because it's his oldest son's birthday.

The 22nd century: Enterprise

Star Trek: Enterprise is set in the 2150s, nearly a century after first contact. Captain Jonathan Archer commands Earth's first warp five starship as humanity starts exploring deep space and forming the alliances that lead to the Federation. If you want to see the Federation before it exists, this is the show.

The 23rd century: Discovery, Strange New Worlds and Kirk's era

The 2250s and 2260s are crowded:

• Discovery begins in the 2250s, about a decade before the original series, following Michael Burnham and the U.S.S. Discovery.
• Strange New Worlds is set in the late 2250s and follows Captain Christopher Pike's Enterprise, the same ship Kirk will later command. Anson Mount plays Pike in both Discovery and Strange New Worlds, which makes those shows a natural pair.
• The Original Series covers the 2260s, and The Animated Series carries on into the late 2260s and early 2270s.

The six original-crew films carry the story forward from there, all the way into the 2290s. StarTrek.com's ship history for the Enterprise-A dates the sixth film's peace talks with the Klingons to 2293.

The 24th century: The Next Generation era

The Next Generation picks up nearly 100 years after Kirk's crew. Picard commands the Enterprise-D through the 2360s and into the 2370s. From there the era fans out like a fleet:

• Deep Space Nine runs from 2369 to 2375, on a station near a strategically important wormhole.
• Voyager is set in the 2370s. Early on, the ship is stranded in the distant Delta Quadrant and faces a long journey home. (That's the show's premise, so we're not spoiling anything.)
• The Next Generation films land here too. StarTrek.com dates the launch of the Enterprise-E to 2372, a little over a year before its Borg battle in Star Trek: First Contact, and carries the E's history up to 2379, the era of Star Trek Nemesis.
• Lower Decks is set in the 2380s aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos.
• Prodigy follows in 2383.
• Picard closes out the era in the late 2390s, years after Picard's time on the Enterprise.

The 32nd century: Discovery's leap and Starfleet Academy

Light spoiler ahead for Discovery's third season premise.

In season 3, the crew of the U.S.S. Discovery travel to the 32nd century, and the season 3 premiere has Michael Burnham arriving 930 years in the future. The galaxy they find has been shaped by the Burn, which StarTrek.com describes as a catastrophic event that ravaged the galaxy and hobbled the Federation.

Starfleet Academy is set about 125 years after the Burn. Its cadets belong to the first Academy class since that disaster, and their main campus is a starship, the U.S.S. Athena. The show is billed as a stand-alone series, so you don't need Discovery first, but Discovery's third season fills in the history.

The Kelvin Timeline: a parallel branch

The three films that began with Star Trek (2009) aren't set later or earlier in the main timeline. They run alongside it. StarTrek.com explains that the 2009 film created an alternate reality known as the Kelvin Timeline. Its turning point is the destruction of the U.S.S. Kelvin in 2233, in an attack by a vengeful Romulan who came from the future. That one attack sends everything down a different path. In this version, James Kirk grows up without his father and is a reluctant recruit to Starfleet Academy in 2255.

The Kelvin films are Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016). Because the Romulan who starts it all comes from the main timeline's future, the two realities are linked. StarTrek.com calls the result a parallel, divergent timeline, which is why the TV shows' history carries on separately.

Where does Section 31 fit?

The 2025 streaming movie Star Trek: Section 31 is a companion to Discovery. It follows Michelle Yeoh's Philippa Georgiou, a character from Discovery's first season, as she joins a secret division of Starfleet. We couldn't confirm an exact in-universe year from an official source, so we're leaving it off the calendar above.

How to use all this

Imagine a viewer who wants the whole saga as a history lesson. They could start with Enterprise, follow the 23rd century through Discovery, Strange New Worlds and the original series, and keep going. A first-time viewer might prefer release order, which keeps each show's surprises the way audiences first met them. Discovery is the one tricky case: it begins in the 2250s and ends more than 900 years later, so in a chronological marathon it lands in two places.

Either way, the timeline is a map, not homework. Pick a century and dive in.