How to Watch The Purge Movies and TV Series in Order — and What to Expect From the Next Purge Film in the Works

The Purge premiered in 2013, showing a supposedly utopian America where crime rates have fallen to their lowest in decades. The problem is that the country achieves these low crime rates through “the purge” — a 12-hour period each year where all crimes, including murder, are legal. Throughout the purge, the privileged and wealthy hide away in their decked-out bunkers while the lower classes and minority groups are hunted by sadistic gangs intent on “purifying” the country.

In 2023, the franchise’s creator James DeMonaco told Variety how he got the idea for The Purge. “I had this little, strange, dark indictment of American gun culture,” he told the publication. “I hate guns. To me, the scariest thing in the world would be a night where everyone was armed and it was legal to use these firearms. To me, there was nothing scarier than that notion.”

Racism, bigotry and class struggles are also important concepts in the franchise, and as the series continued, those messages were amplified more and more, turning The Purge into one of the most subversive and eye-opening horror franchises in modern history.

But its societal critiques almost kept The Purge from being made. In the same Variety interview, DeMonaco shared that studios passed on his script almost 50 times before it was finally made by Blumhouse, saying that many said the movie was “too anti-American.” But the franchise has since earned more than $533 million worldwide, proving that its story resonates with viewers.

Here's how to watch The Purge movies and TV series in both release and chronological order.

How to Watch The Purge Franchise by Release Date

• The Purge (2013)
• The Purge: Anarchy (2014)
• The Purge: Election Year (2016)
• The First Purge (2018)
• The Purge TV series (2018-2019)
• The Forever Purge (2021)

How to Watch The Purge Franchise in Chronological Order

The First Purge

The First Purge is set in 2017 and reveals how it all began. In the movie, Staten Island is chosen as a “testing ground” for a new concept — the purge — by the New Founding Fathers of America (NFFA). For 12 hours, all crime on the island will be legal. The Fathers say the goal is to let Americans express all their anger in one night, hopefully making the country more peaceful overall. But later in the film, it’s discovered that the NFFA has a secret agenda and has sent in armed mercenaries to instigate violence and kill members of low-income communities. Ultimately, the experiment is considered a success and is expanded across America. The film stars Lex Scott Davis, Marisa Tomei and Joivan Wade.

The Purge

The original Purge film is the second chronologically. It’s now 2022 and the purge has been happening annually for five years. In the film, the wealthy Sandin family (including Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey) hunker down in their fortified house to wait out the purge. But their son lets in a man screaming for help, only to discover he’s being hunted by a group of masked killers.

The Purge: Anarchy

Set in 2023, one year after the original movie, The Purge: Anarchy took things out of the confined environment of a house and brought audiences into the streets of Los Angeles during purge night. The movie follows different groups of people, whose stories all end up converging, as they fight for survival around the city.

The Purge (TV series)

The two-season Purge series takes place in the years between Anarchy and The Purge: Election Year. The show’s first season follows a group of Americans on Purge Night 2027 as they struggle to survive their various ordeals, including death cults, revenge killings and a sadistic party held by the wealthy.

Season 2 picks up some years later, just after Purge Night 2037. During the season, society struggles to process the events of the night and the lasting impacts it has on them throughout the rest of the year. So far, season 2 is the only Purge entry that is set outside of Purge Night.

The Purge: Election Year

Election Year was released in 2016, capitalizing on the growing anxiety in America leading up to the real 2016 election. Set in 2040, the movie sees Sen. Charlie Roan running for president. But Roan is no ordinary candidate. During a purge when she was a child, she had to watch her parents get brutally murdered and is forced to live with that trauma. For her campaign, she’s running on an anti-purge platform, vowing to end the vile tradition if she’s elected.

But the NFFA wants to ensure that can’t happen. Knowing that their supporters love purging and want Roan dead before the election, the corrupt party allows civilians to kill politicians during that year’s purge, hoping Roan will die before election night.

The Forever Purge

Set in 2048, The Forever Purge took the franchise to its most politicized state yet. Its themes of bigotry and corruption were brought front and center, and The Forever Purge shows what happened to America after Election Year. After Roan’s term as president, the NFFA was elected back into power and reinstated the purge. But their supporters are angrier and more violent than ever, and they’ve decided the purge is now never-ending.

The Forever Purge is set in Texas and sees a group of White nationalists attack immigrants and those they consider “un-American." Many Americans are now fleeing across the Canadian and Mexican borders hoping to escape the country’s violence, and by the end of the film the NFFA have lost control of their supporters who are hellbent on violently taking over America.

Will There Be More Purge Films?

In 2023, Variety reported that DeMonaco had completed a script for a sixth movie, and the filmmaker gave the publication a brief glimpse of what it might look like. “In The Forever Purge, America kind of collapsed,” DeMonaco said, “and it’s really kind of mapped itself according to different ideologies. The states are based on sexuality, religion, and ideology. So we’ve broken apart and the state of discord is at its worst. We enter The Purge in that world.”

The Purge star Frank Grillo also confirmed that a sixth film is in the works during a 2024 interview with ScreenRant. “The script is done and it basically centers around Leo Barnes, my character,” the actor said during a red carpet interview. He also said the team is waiting to see how much funding the studio will invest in the movie before filming begins. “It’s a matter of how big they want the movie to be, how much money they want to spend on the movie, considering they’ve done a lot in this franchise.”