Release OrderRecommended
0 / 13 watchedThe order the films came out. Start here: later films build on earlier ones, including the Kelvin reboot.
The Original Series cast
- 1 Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- 2 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
- 3 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
- 4 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
- 5 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
- 6 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country Farewell to the original crew.
The Next Generation cast
- 7 Star Trek Generations Passes the torch from Kirk's crew to Picard's.
- 8 Star Trek: First Contact
- 9 Star Trek: Insurrection
- 10 Star Trek: Nemesis
Kelvin timeline
- 11 Star Trek Reboot in an alternate timeline branching from the destruction of the USS Kelvin.
- 12 Star Trek Into Darkness
- 13 Star Trek Beyond Latest released film (2016).
Chronological Order
0 / 13 watchedStory order for the Prime timeline, with the Kelvin branch kept together at the end. For first-timers, release order above is still the better pick.
Prime timeline
- 1 Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- 2 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
- 3 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
- 4 Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
- 5 Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
- 6 Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- 7 Star Trek Generations
- 8 Star Trek: First Contact
- 9 Star Trek: Insurrection
- 10 Star Trek: Nemesis
Kelvin timeline (alternate branch)
- 11 Star Trek Splits from the Prime timeline in 2233. Same names, changed events.
- 12 Star Trek Into Darkness
- 13 Star Trek Beyond
About Star Trek
Thirteen theatrical films span three crews. Six follow Kirk and Spock's original series cast (1979-1991), four hand the torch to Picard's Next Generation crew (1994-2002), and three reboot the saga with a younger cast (2009-2016). Release order is the recommended watch: every sequel assumes you saw what came before.
The 2009 film branches into the Kelvin timeline, an alternate reality created when the villain Nero travels back and destroys the starship USS Kelvin. It replays familiar names in changed circumstances, so it lands best after the ten Prime timeline films. The streaming TV film Section 31 (2025) is a separate small-screen story and is not listed here.
Good to know
A fourth Kelvin timeline film with Chris Pine's crew went through years of rewrites and is now scrapped; Paramount is instead developing a standalone reboot from Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, reaffirmed at CinemaCon 2026. That project has no cast, date, or finished script as of this writing, so nothing unreleased is listed as a watch entry.
The Kelvin films overlap the Prime era in-universe but form a separate branch, which is why the chronological list groups them apart rather than interleaving them.
