The Walking Dead TV Show Timeline

The following is a timeline for the TV show, explaining what happened each day. Citations are given for almost every single day; the overall timeline of 20 months is not a guess, but rather a careful count of everything that we have seen in the show so far.

Note: For the Fear The Walking Dead timeline go here: Fear The Walking Dead Timeline. The events of the main show and the companion series are happening within the same timeline. The two have been separated, however, so as not to overfill a single timeline. Webisodes are included here.

Overall timeline

 * Dr. Edwin Jenner notes in "Wildfire" that the zombie virus initially arose 194 days prior to the events of that episode and went global 63 days prior to the events of that episode.
 * There is a time skip of one day between season 1 and season 2: Rick Grimes informs Morgan Jones via walkie-talkie in "What Lies Ahead" that the group "lost another of [their] own the day before last"; he says this in reference to Jacqui, who died at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention at the end of season 1.
 * There is a time skip of seven to eight months, an entire winter, between season 2 and season 3: Andrea informs Merle Dixon that the Greene family farm was overrun seven or eight months prior to the events of "Walk With Me".
 * In "Sick", Tomas informs Rick's group that he and his fellows were locked in the cafeteria of the West Georgia Correctional Facility ten months prior to the events of that episode during riots at the onset of the global outbreak; Oscar specifies that it was 292 days before, while Axel gives his own count of 294 days.
 * Hershel Greene mentions in a flashback in "A" that, by that time, they have been at the prison for two months; this supports that the entirety of season 3 occurs in a span of less than two months.
 * There is a time skip of six months between season 3 and season 4. While it is never stated in the show itself, those associated with the show have confirmed it: Andrew Lincoln, who plays Rick, describes season 4 as occurring "six-ish months later" in one interview and Scott M. Gimple, executive producer and showrunner, reveals in a video from AMC that "about six or seven months has passed."
 * There is no time skip between season 4 and season 5: Rick and his group are incarcerated in Terminus and break out on the very same day, as indicated by the gunshots that Carol Peletier and Tyreese Williams hear on the tracks in "No Sanctuary", which are in fact the gunshots herding the survivors into the train car at the end of "A".
 * The Talking Dead episode for "Strangers" reveals that Father Gabriel Stokes was in his church for 17 months before Rick's group found him. Seth Gilliam, who plays Gabriel, claims that it was 18 months during his appearance on the episode for "Them". With season 3 concluding nearly 11 months into the outbreak, a time skip of six months between season 3 and season 4, and season 4 spanning upwards of a month, an approximation of 18 months since the onset of the global outbreak by the beginning of season 5 is reasonable.
 * There is a small time skip of some number of days between season 5 and season 6; however, the intermediary days are filled in through flashbacks.
 * There is a time skip of two months between season 6 episode 9 "No Way Out" and episode 10 "The Next World", as revealed by Danai Gurira on the Talking Dead episode for "The Next World". However, this is later contradicted in the show by Abraham Ford, who says in episode 11 "Knots Untie" that the run-in with the Saviors on the road occurred only a month ago, not two.
 * Season 7 picks up some minutes after season 6, but the intermediary minutes are filled in through flashbacks.
 * When Dr. Gale Macones explains her story to Karina in the webseries "The Oath", she states that it's "been a few months" since the military overran the hospital. This is the same hospital in which Rick recovers in his coma. The webisodes take place prior to Rick's awakening, as indicated by the fact that, in the final webisode, Paul paints the "Don't Open Dead Inside" warning on the doors to the cafeteria that Rick sees in the pilot. However, if Rick wakes up 59 days into the global outbreak, then there could not have been a "few-month" time lapse between the military's attack, which took place after the start of the global outbreak, and the events of the webisodes, unless Macones is getting her dates wrong or she is not using "few" to mean "three" as it often does mean.
 * According to Dave Erickson, executive producer for the companion series Fear the Walking Dead, Rick was in his coma for "four to five weeks", which would mean, if we are to take Dr. Jenner's word for how far into the apocalypse we were by "Wildfire", that Rick was shot some time after the outbreak had gone global. This is not entirely impossible, but it is notable that: police officers were still on duty after civilization had fallen and children were still going to school after the living dead had taken over the world. Whether Erickson is misinformed or Jenner was relaying false information remains to be known.
 * Additionally, if Rick had been in his coma for a mere "four to five weeks", then Macones' claim that the military attacked a "few months" ago, when Rick was in his coma (as seen in a flashback in "TS-19"), is even more dubious.
 * It should be noted that Fear the Walking Dead takes place in the same time frame as The Walking Dead. According to Tobias, there were already outbreaks in five states at the time Fear started, and with nothing reported in the news other than a strange 'virus', it is possible that Dr. Jenner is counting from the first case that the CDC became aware of rather than the first case that the public became aware of. Since there were no cases reported of walker infection in the five states mentioned in Fear, it is possible that the infection was underway at the time Rick was shot.
 * No speculation is in fact needed at all for this because Jenner says in "Wildfire" as well that the virus first arose 194 days before, so naturally it would have been present prior to Rick's entering the coma. However, Jenner's specific statement that it went global, not just in a few states, 63 days before makes the fact that it was not as big a deal in "Days Gone Bye" rather questionable.
 * In promotional material for Fear The Walking Dead, there is the first page of a six page memo released by the World Health Organization to all medical personnel how to deal with the recently deceased. The fact that the walker epidemic was being discussed at an international level even before the start of Fear (whose timeline predates the main shows by several days/weeks) indicates that the epidemic already had a global impact. Also, given that in Fear we see the epidemic spreading into Mexico and Canada, it is at least an international incident.
 * In support of the above: In the pilot of Fear, Nick comes across Gloria as a walker and no one believes him when he tells them this. Also, it is heavily implied that Susan Tran witnessed a walker attack, or at least a walker. Thus, it is highly probable that when Rick was shot, there were outbreaks, but that they hadn't reached epidemic levels- or at least, reached levels where an outbreak in California would be reported on news stations in Georgia.
 * Again, not only is it probable, it is all but known for certain that there were outbreaks prior to Rick's being shot. The virus arose over six months (194 days) prior to "Wildfire" (about five months prior to the shoot-out, if Rick was only comatose for four to five weeks), so it was very much present before Rick went into is coma. The real issue is that it had already gone global -- it had reached the entire world, had reached epidemic proportions -- and there is no sign of it in "Days Gone Bye".

Real-life time period
Robert Kirkman has been intentionally vague as to when the comics occur in relation to real-life time and, by extension, when the show occurs as well. In the Letter Hacks column for issue 58, he says, "[The Walking Dead] is set in modern times...but the book started in 2003 and only a year has passed in the book. But that doesn't mean it's 2004 in the book...maybe it's 2009...who knows...who really cares? I don't want to be specific." The show follows a similar nature: There are no direct references to real-life time, and thus pinpointing when exactly the apocalypse began is difficult. However, there are some hints throughout the series that enable us to approximate a window in which the outbreak could have started.
 * In "Killer Within", the Governor makes the remark to Merle that they "should visit Augusta. Take only the women and let them play. It'll be historic." and Merle adds, "And break decades of tradition." They are referring to the Augusta National Golf Club, which, until August 2012, did not allow women to be members. This would place the onset of the outbreak prior to August 2012. However, it is possible that Merle is not up-to-date with his golf facts, or he is merely being jocular and referencing that well-known tradition regardless of what actually happened. It is to be noted that this episode was written prior to August 2012.
 * In "Spend", the song "Internet Friends" by Knife Party is heard as part of Aiden Monroe's "run mix". "Internet Friends" was released on December 12, 2011.
 * Perhaps an anachronism, an issue of WORLD magazine from April 6, 2013 appears in the background in the RV in "The Distance".
 * The green Hyundai Tucson seen in seasons 2, 3, and 4 is a 2012 model released in 2011.
 * The SCAR 17S used by Aiden Monroe in "Forget" was released in 2010.
 * A sign seen in the background of a scene from episode 2 of Fear the Walking Dead bares the date "08.07.10", or August 7, 2010, and advertises a "library week". The fact that the sign is up would indicate that this library week is coming up soon, or has recently passed and the sign has not yet been taken down. In any case, this would strongly suggest that the outbreak began sometime in August 2010, a relatively certain date that immediately increases the number of anachronisms in the show than if the outbreak had begun in August, 2012.
 * In episode 13 of Fear the Walking Dead there are some gravestones on the farm where Travis, Chris, and the American tourists are staying that. These gravestones, 2 of which belong to characters who died onscreen show the death year as 2010.