The Elder Scrolls timeline: every game in story order, explained

In story order, the Elder Scrolls games run from The Elder Scrolls Online, set in 2E 582, to Skyrim, set in 4E 201: ESO, Redguard, Arena, Shadowkey, Battlespire, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion, Legends, Blades and Skyrim. The table below gives each game's in-world date and release year. The rest of this guide explains the eras, the Dragon Breaks that let contradictory histories coexist, and where TES VI may land.

Updated 14 October 2026.

Every game in story order

Here is every Elder Scrolls game in lore order, not release order. Placements follow UESP and match the round-ups on Digital Trends and esports.net (both accessed 2026-07-04).

Game	In-universe date	Released
The Elder Scrolls Online	2E 582	2014
Redguard	2E 864	1998
Arena	3E 389 to 3E 399	1994
Shadowkey	3E 397	2004
Battlespire	3E 398	1997
Daggerfall	3E 405 (main quest concludes 3E 417)	1996
Morrowind	3E 427	2002
Oblivion	3E 433	2006
Legends	~4E 175 to 4E 201	2017
Blades	4E 180	2019
Skyrim	4E 201	2011

Quick answers

When does ESO take place? In 2E 582, during the Interregnum, roughly 950 years before Skyrim. ZeniMax files every ESO chapter under that same year (see the ESO note below).
When does Morrowind take place? In 3E 427.
When does Oblivion take place? In 3E 433. The Oblivion Crisis ends the Third Era; the next year is 4E 1.
When does Skyrim take place? In 4E 201, about two centuries after Oblivion.
Which game comes first? In story order, ESO. In release order, Arena (1994).

First, the notation. Tamriel counts years within named eras, so "3E 427" means year 427 of the Third Era. That is when Morrowind takes place. When an era ends, the count resets: the Oblivion Crisis ends in 3E 433, and the very next year is 4E 1. Fan wikis and this guide use that notation throughout.

The eras at a glance

The structure below is stable, long-settled lore, documented in depth on UESP's history pages (accessed 2026-07-04).

Era	What it covers	Starts with	Ends with
Dawn Era	Mythic prehistory	Creation of Mundus	Time itself is non-linear here; no real dates exist
Merethic Era	Elven prehistory	Counted backwards, from roughly ME 2500 down to ME 1	Rise of human civilisation
First Era	Recorded history begins	Year zero of the Camoran Dynasty	Fall of the Reman Dynasty
Second Era	The Interregnum and worse	Rule passes to the Akaviri Potentates	Tiber Septim conquers all of Tamriel in 2E 896
Third Era	The Septim Empire	Tiber Septim declares a new era	Oblivion Crisis and Martin Septim's death, 3E 433
Fourth Era	The current era	Aftermath of the Oblivion Crisis	Ongoing; Skyrim sits at 4E 201

Two quirks worth flagging. The Dawn Era cannot be dated at all because time had not yet settled into a straight line, which matters again when we get to the Dragon Break. And the Merethic Era runs backwards, a scholarly convention invented later, counting down toward the First Era rather than up.

The obvious oddity: the earliest point on the timeline belongs to one of the newest games. ESO sits in 2E 582, deep in the Interregnum, the lawless four-century gap between the Reman and Septim empires, the better part of a thousand years before Skyrim. Redguard follows in 2E 864 during Tiber Septim's wars of conquest, on the island of Stros M'Kai off Hammerfell.

ESO deserves a footnote, because it has now been running for over a decade of real time. ZeniMax's official position is that the calendar does not advance with each chapter. The studio's Loremaster said as much in a 2019 Reddit AMA, telling players to "assume the year is still 2E 582," with the nuance that events begin in 582 and the precise timing of later chapters is deliberately "not committed to lore" (discussed at length on the official ESO forums; UESP likewise files all ESO storylines under 2E 582). So Necrom, Gold Road, and everything since all pile into the same crowded year. It is awkward, and it is intentional.

Then the Third Era belongs to the classic single-player run. Arena's Imperial Simulacrum spans 3E 389 to 399, with the spin-offs Shadowkey (3E 397) and Battlespire (3E 398) tucked inside it. Daggerfall opens in 3E 405 and its main quest detonates in 3E 417 (more on that detonation below, because it broke time). Morrowind lands in 3E 427, and Oblivion closes the entire era in 3E 433. The Fourth Era then belongs to Skyrim in 4E 201, with the mobile titles Legends and Blades filling in the Great War years just before it.

If you are less interested in lore order and more in which of these are actually worth playing today, that is a different question with a different answer, and one better settled game by game than on a single chronology.

The Dragon Break, or why the wikis argue

Akatosh is the god of time. A Dragon Break is what happens when he fractures: linear time stops, causality goes on holiday, and mutually exclusive events all occur. When time re-knits, everyone remembers a different, contradictory version, and all of them are right. Bethesda invented this device partly out of metaphysical ambition and partly as the most elegant retcon machine in gaming.

The big one is the Middle Dawn, the longest Dragon Break on record: one thousand and eight years, from 1E 1200 to 1E 2208. Per UESP's Dragon Break page (accessed 2026-07-04), it was caused by the Marukhati Selectives, a fanatic sect of the Alessian Order under Arch-Prelate Fervidius Tharn, who used the Staff of Towers and danced on the White-Gold Tower in an attempt to cleave the hated elven aspects of Auri-El out of Akatosh. It worked about as well as dancing a god apart ever could: time shattered for a millennium and the Staff of Towers broke into eight pieces. Even the 1008-year figure is contested in-universe, since the Khajiit claim their lunar records show nothing unusual happened at all.

Three in-game books do the heavy lifting here, and they are all worth reading in full:

"Where Were You When the Dragon Broke?" collects four eyewitness accounts of the Middle Dawn that flatly contradict each other. Better still, copies of this book circulate in the Second Era while referencing Third Era events. The book's own existence is evidence of non-linear time. That is the level Bethesda's lore team was operating on.
"The Dragon Break Re-Examined" by Fal Droon is the in-lore skeptic's take, arguing the whole thing is a calendar transcription error. The joke is that Droon describes the fall of the Septim Dynasty in the past tense, in a book present in games set before the dynasty fell. The debunker is himself proof of the thing he is debunking.
"The Warp in the West" documents the second famous break, and it exists to clean up a video game.

That second break, the Warp in the West (also called the Miracle of Peace), happened over the 9th to 11th of Frostfall, 3E 417. Daggerfall ends with the player giving the Mantella to one of seven factions, activating the giant god-golem Numidium, with seven mutually exclusive endings. Bethesda's canonical answer: all seven happened at once. Numidium's activation caused a localised Dragon Break, and when the dust settled, the Iliac Bay's absurd patchwork of 44 squabbling statelets had collapsed into four consolidated kingdoms: Daggerfall, Sentinel, Wayrest, and Orsinium (UESP, Lore:The Warp in the West; the in-game book of the same name). It is the boldest canonisation trick any studio has pulled, and it is why veteran fans smile when newer players ask which Daggerfall ending is "real."

Where TES VI may land

TES VI has no confirmed date, setting or title. Bethesda Game Studios' July 2026 studio note calls it the studio's primary development focus and confirms it runs on Creation Engine 3.

The chronology argument is the one part that is not rumour. Every mainline single-player game since Arena has moved the clock forward, and Skyrim repeatedly frames the White-Gold Concordat as a truce rather than a peace, most directly in the in-game book The Great War. A Fourth Era setting some time after 4E 201 is therefore the straightforward reading, but neither the year nor the province has been confirmed.

For the sourced record, see everything we know about TES VI, the release-date evidence and the Hammerfell evidence.

A reading order for lore newcomers

You do not need to play eleven games to follow this timeline. Play Skyrim or Oblivion first; they are the best on-ramps and the wikis will backfill the rest. If chronology is what hooks you, Daggerfall (free on Steam and GOG, best via Daggerfall Unity) plus the book "The Warp in the West" is the single most rewarding deep cut, because you experience the event that broke time and then read the canon cleanup. ESO is the place to inhabit the Second Era, with the caveat that its entire decade of content is wedged into 2E 582. And read the three Dragon Break texts above in order: eyewitnesses, skeptic, aftermath. No other game series rewards reading its own fake historiography like this one.

Sources

UESP: Lore:History, Lore:Dragon Break, Lore:Warp in the West, and era pages - accessed 2026-07-04
In-game texts: "Where Were You When the Dragon Broke?", "The Dragon Break Re-Examined" (Fal Droon), "The Warp in the West", "The Great War" (Legate Justianus Quintius); mirrored at the Imperial Library
Digital Trends / esports.net, "All Elder Scrolls games in order" - accessed 2026-07-04
ESO Loremaster Reddit AMA on the 2E 582 dating - 2019, via official ESO forum threads
Wikipedia: The Elder Scrolls VI (announcement 2018-06-10; FTC hearing June 2023; production start September 2023; Bethesda anniversary note 2024-03-25; Kinda Funny interview 2026-02-18; Kuhlmann interview 2026) - accessed 2026-07-04