With Resident Evil Requiem bringing players back to Raccoon City, it is a good moment to step back and look at how we got here.
The Resident Evil timeline spans decades, multiple outbreaks, the collapse of Umbrella, global bioterror incidents, and eventually a new era centered around the Mold. It can get messy fast, especially with remakes, CGI films, and side games floating around.
So here is a recap of the main canon storyline, focusing on the core events that created the world leading into Requiem, and where it positions itself.
The Raccoon City Incident (1998)
Everything began in 1998.
The events of Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, and the Outbreak titles all unfold around the same catastrophe in and around Raccoon City between July and late September.
The T-Virus, developed by Umbrella, escapes containment. The S.T.A.R.S. team investigates the Spencer Mansion in July. Two months later, the virus spreads through Raccoon City itself. Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield arrive just as the city collapses into chaos. Jill Valentine attempts to escape but is being hunted by Nemesis.
Among the civilians caught in the outbreak is investigative journalist Alyssa Ashcroft, one of the playable characters in Resident Evil Outbreak. She survives the incident and later becomes known for reporting on biohazard events. Her survival quietly extends the Raccoon City legacy beyond the main heroes, a detail that becomes more interesting as the timeline moves forward.
On October 1st, 1998, the U.S. government destroyed Raccoon City with a missile strike to contain the infection.
This is the defining trauma of the series. Nearly every major character, Leon, Claire, Jill, and Chris, is impacted by what happened there. If Requiem is revisiting Raccoon City, it is revisiting the main event of the franchise.
And Requiem is set in 2028, so exactly thirty years later. That anniversary matters.
The Fall of Umbrella (1998-2003)
Shortly after Raccoon City, the story continues in Resident Evil Code: Veronica (late 1998), where Claire searches for Chris and uncovers more of Umbrella’s internal corruption.
By 2003, the events of The Umbrella Chronicles tell the story of Umbrella’s final collapse. Financial ruin and political pressure bring the corporation down, but bio-weapons do not disappear with Umbrella.
They spread.
That change is important. The threat moves from a single corporation to a global black market. From accident… to weaponization.
The Las Plagas and Global Bioterror Era (2004-2013)
In 2004, Resident Evil 4 changed things a little bit. Leon encounters Las Plagas, a parasite-based bio-weapon that allows hosts to retain coordination and intelligence. This is no longer a mindless infection, but it is a controlled bio-weapon deployment.
After that follows:
- Resident Evil 5 (2009) with global bio-weapons trafficking, the legacy of Umbrella’s founders, and the rise of Uroboros.
- Resident Evil 6 (2012-2013) with large-scale C-Virus attacks across multiple countries.
By this stage, outbreaks are no longer isolated disasters. They are tools of geopolitical warfare. The world adapts. Anti-bioterror units become standard. Biohazards become normalized.
The Mold Era (2017-2020)
After the global chaos of Resident Evil 6, the series takes another turn.
In 2017, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard introduced Ethan Winters and the Mold, a completely different organism from previous viruses or parasites. The threat feels smaller in size, but it is biologically more unpredictable.
In 2020, Resident Evil Village expands the Mold’s origins and reveals that Ethan’s daughter, Rose Winters, is something new, not just infected, but born from this altered biology.
At the end of Village, the timeline jumps forward, eventually leading to Shadow of Rose (2036), where Rose is a teenager living in a world that has fully absorbed decades of bioterror.
So, Where Does Requiem Fit?
Resident Evil Requiem is set in 2028. That places it:
- 30 years after the destruction of Raccoon City (1998)
- 8 years after Resident Evil Village (2020)
- 8 years before Shadow of Rose (2036)
This makes it a transitional chapter. The original outbreak generation is now older. The Umbrella era is long over. The Mold has entered the biological landscape. Bio-weapons are no longer shocking anomalies, but they are part of global reality.
If Requiem returns to Raccoon City, it is not just revisiting a location. It is revisiting the origin point of everything, from the T-Virus, to the collapse of Umbrella, to the world that ultimately produced the Mold and babies like Rose, born from altered DNA.
Thirty years later, the question is no longer how the nightmare began.
It is what remains. So get ready for February 27, 2026, the next chapter begins soon!
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