How to Watch The Conjuring Movies in Order (October 2026)

Short answer first: to watch the Conjuring movies in order, start with The Conjuring (2013), then The Conjuring 2 (2016), then The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021), then The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025). Those four are the numbered Warren films, and nothing else is required to follow their story. Everything else connected to them, from The Nun to Annabelle to Insidious, is a separate branch you can add later.

The Conjuring Franchise at a Glance

The Conjuring is a franchise with one spine and several branches. The spine is the four films about Ed and Lorraine Warren. Everything else borrows a character, a demon or a single unsettling image, and then goes its own way.

Film	Release year	Place in the franchise
The Conjuring	2013	First numbered Warren film, set in 1971
The Conjuring 2	2016	Second numbered Warren film, set in 1977
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It	2021	Third numbered Warren film, set in 1985
The Conjuring: Last Rites	2025	Fourth numbered Warren film, released September 5, 2025
Annabelle, Annabelle: Creation, Annabelle Comes Home	2014, 2017, 2019	Annabelle branch
The Nun, The Nun II	2018, 2023	Nun branch, set in the 1950s
The Curse of La Llorona	2019	Soft canon, not part of any branch

Three numbered Conjuring films existed for most of the franchise’s life, and the third one was built to feel like a closing chapter. A fourth, Last Rites, arrived in September 2025, which is why most of the order lists you find online are out of date.

How to Watch The Conjuring Movies in Order

1. The Conjuring (2013) — James Wan directs Ed and Lorraine Warren into a farmhouse in Rhode Hill, Rhode Island, in 1971.
2. The Conjuring 2 (2016) — Wan again, this time in the Enfield poltergeist case of 1977, with the Hodgson family and Arne Johnson.
3. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021) — Michael Chaves takes the Warrens to Arkansas in 1985 to defend a young man accused of murder.
4. The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) — the next numbered case, opened in theaters on September 5, 2025.

For the first three, release order and story order are the same thing. The cases run 1971, then 1977, then 1985, and they came out in that sequence too, so you never have to choose between the two lists for the mainline films.

Which Movies Belong in the Main Conjuring Trilogy?

The main series is the numbered films with Ed and Lorraine at the center. Patrick Wilson plays Ed and Vera Farmiga plays Lorraine across the run, and both characters carry the same arc from documentarian investigators to courtroom witnesses.

Outside that spine sit four other things. The Annabelle trilogy follows a doll and the people who handle it, with the Warrens appearing only at the edges. The Nun duology runs in the 1950s in Romania and belongs to no Warren case at all. Insidious is a separate franchise that shares a demon and a house, not a story. The Curse of La Llorona sits outside even that, and most fans treat it as soft canon: officially released in the same continuity, never referenced by the numbered films.

If your question is only about the Warrens, the answer is simple. Four films, numbered, in order.

How to Watch Each Main Movie

1. The Conjuring (2013)

Watch this first, no debate. It is the cleanest introduction to Ed and Lorraine and the only film that explains what their work actually looks like day to day, including the artifact room in their house.

The case is a rural farmhouse outside Providence where a family of seven has been living with something hostile in the walls. Lorraine, who is sensitive to what she calls the presence, feels it from the driveway. The investigation fills roughly two hours and builds on recordings, cold spots and a family that keeps contradicting itself.

Two things carry into the sequel. The Perron family name appears again later in the franchise, and the film plants the visual motif that the second movie pays off. Neither needs explaining before you start.

2. The Conjuring 2 (2016)

The second film is a step up in scale and a step sideways in tone. Where the first was a farmhouse and one family, this is a council house in Enfield, north London, in 1977, where the Hodgson family reports furniture moving on its own and two girls describing a figure in the house.

Two threads run through it. The first is Arne Johnson, the teenager at the center, whose story continues in the third numbered film. The second is the mirror, which the Warrens describe as hiding a demonic presence in the form of an Old Man. That second thread is the door to The Nun, and it is the reason plenty of people watch this film twice.

Watch it before The Conjuring 3. The Warrens are more worn here, the method is sharper, and the Arne Johnson setup has nowhere to go if you skip it.

3. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It (2021)

The third numbered film moves the Warrens out of New England entirely. In 1985 they are hired to defend Arne Johnson, a young man on trial in Arkansas for the murder of his housemate, while also trying to explain why he behaves the way he does.

It is the most courtroom-driven of the three and the most plot-heavy, and it is where the pair stop investigating and start arguing a case in front of a jury. The demonic thread in the background is the same one the second film opened.

As released entries go, this one was written to close the trilogy. It lands the Arne Johnson thread and leaves the door open without pointing anywhere specific.

4. The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)

And then the door opened anyway. Last Rites is the fourth numbered Warren film and the first one without James Wan behind the camera, which tells you how much the series had already outgrown its original director. It opened in theaters on September 5, 2025 and continues the same case-of-the-year structure the first three films established.

Watch it last, straight after The Devil Made Me Do It, and treat it as an ongoing season rather than a finale. The trilogy has not ended, so any guide that stops at three films is working from an outdated list.

Does The Conjuring 3 Have a Post-Credits Scene?

Yes, there is a short tag after the end credits. Without spoiling it, it points sideways into the wider demonic material rather than setting up another Warren investigation.

Here is why that matters for a watch order. A tag like this is often read as homework, and it is not. It does not introduce a character you will meet later in the numbered films, it does not change anything you just watched, and no viewing order makes more sense because of it.

If you have already seen The Nun, the tag reads as confirmation. If you have not, it reads as a nudge, and you can act on that nudge whenever you want.

Should You Watch Insidious Before The Conjuring?

No. Insidious is a separate franchise that overlaps with The Conjuring in cast, creature design and one recurring demonic figure. It is not a prequel, and watching it first will not give you anything you need later.

The connections that actually matter are small. The Lamberts from the Insidious films are connected to the Warrens through the artifact room, and the attic material in The Conjuring 3 borrows from that film. Franchise history aside, a new viewer gets a much clearer introduction to Ed and Lorraine from the first Conjuring.

If you are a fan of the house and the attic scenes specifically, Insidious is worth a night of its own. It does not belong in the order list.

Where Does The Nun Fit in the Viewing Order?

The Nun (2018) is set in 1952 in a monastery in Romania, decades before any Warren case, and The Nun II (2023) follows in the late 1950s. On the timeline they are the earliest films in the connected universe.

That is where they sit in the timeline. It is not where they belong in your viewing order. The second Nun film contains information about the demon that lands very differently once you have watched The Conjuring 2 and seen where that demon has already been on screen.

My recommendation is The Conjuring, The Conjuring 2, then The Nun. That way you meet the creature after the Warrens have already faced it, and the second Nun film stops feeling like a puzzle.

Are The Conjuring 2 and The Nun Directly Connected?

Yes, and the link is the figure in the mirror. The Conjuring 2 names the demonic presence trapped in the Enfield mirror as Valak in a shape resembling an Old Man. The Nun is that same entity, given its own origin story in a different decade and a different country.

What that does not mean is that you must watch The Nun first. Because The Nun is a prequel in story time, the natural reading order and the best viewing order point in opposite directions, which is the source of most of the confusion on this topic. You can watch The Conjuring 2 without having seen a frame of The Nun and follow it completely.

The post-credits tag at the end of The Conjuring 2 is the franchise waving at you. It is an invitation, not a prerequisite.

Do You Need to Watch Every Related Movie?

Three routes work, and you can pick one without ruining the others.

The Warrens only. The Conjuring, The Conjuring 2, The Devil Made Me Do It, Last Rites. Four films, one continuous arc, no spin-offs required. This is the route most people should take.

The full connected universe. After the four, add The Nun and The Nun II, then the Annabelle trilogy. Annabelle (2014) is the weakest film in the group and fans argue about it constantly, but Annabelle: Creation earns its place once you have the context of the first two Warren films.

Spin-offs before the deep cuts. If you only want the spin-offs, watch The Nun after The Conjuring 2 and stop there. You get the payoff without committing to a series that has nothing to do with Lorraine.

One practical note: availability in these films rotates. Licensing windows move films between subscription services and rental storefronts regularly, so check where a title sits the week you plan to watch rather than trusting an old guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Bottom Line

Start tonight with The Conjuring (2013) and keep going in numerical order: The Conjuring 2, The Devil Made Me Do It, then Last Rites. That is how to watch the Conjuring movies in order with nothing else required. Only after those four do most people decide whether the spin-offs are worth their time, and if they are, The Nun goes on the list before Annabelle.