Where Every Phase 4 and Phase 5 Project Actually Sits in the Timeline

The commonest complaint about Phases 4 and 5 is that they feel scattered. The chronology explains why, and it is not a story problem — it is a density problem. Almost everything Marvel released between 2021 and 2025 takes place inside a four-year window running from 2023 to 2027, and a great deal of it happens simultaneously.

Phase 4, In-Universe

Phase 5, In-Universe

The Compression Problem

Count the years. Excluding flashbacks and the out-of-time projects, Phases 4 and 5 occupy 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027. That is five years of in-universe time carrying twenty-plus projects — against the Infinity Saga's twenty-three films spread across thirteen years of modern-era continuity plus eighty years of history.

1. 2024 alone contains The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Far From Home, Shang-Chi, Eternals' present-day sections, No Way Home, Hawkeye and Deadpool & Wolverine's Earth-10005 scenes.
2. 2025 contains Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Multiverse of Madness, Love and Thunder, Wakanda Forever, Guardians Vol. 3 and Echo.
3. 2026 contains Quantumania, Secret Invasion, The Marvels, Agatha All Along, Ironheart, Wonder Man and the start of Daredevil: Born Again.
4. 2027 contains Brave New World and Thunderbolts* — and effectively nothing else.

That is the whole answer to why these phases feel unfocused. It is not that the stories are unconnected; it is that eight of them are happening in the same year to people who never meet.

The Infinity Saga had thirteen years to build a world. The Multiverse Saga has had four, and it has been running eight storylines at once inside each of them.

The Placements Most People Get Wrong

• Black Widow is a Phase 4 film set in 2016 — eight in-universe years before the phase's other entries.
• Far From Home is a Phase 3 film set in 2024, so it lands in the middle of Phase 4's chronology.
• Guardians Vol. 3 is a Phase 5 film set in 2025, earlier than several Phase 4 projects.
• Quantumania sits in 2026, which was the furthest forward the MCU had gone at the time of release.
• Deadpool & Wolverine is a Phase 5 film that mostly does not happen in the MCU at all — it takes place on Earth-10005 and in the Void.

The Two Films That Broke the Year Count

Two Phase 5 releases quietly ended the MCU's practice of assigning every project a single forward-moving year, and it is worth noting when that happened. Deadpool & Wolverine, released in July 2024, is set mostly on another Earth and in a place with no time at all. The Fantastic Four: First Steps, released in July 2025 and the biggest Marvel film of that year at $519.1 million worldwide, is set on Earth-828 in an alternate 1960s.

Between them, the two highest-profile Marvel films of the last two years contain almost no main-timeline chronology. That is not carelessness — it is the Multiverse Saga functioning as designed. Once realities are the unit of storytelling rather than years, a placement chart stops being a spine and starts being a map. Every entry in the tables above still holds; there are simply now projects that no row can accommodate.

What the Chart Reveals About Phase 6

The forward slate has published almost no in-universe placement, and that silence is informative. Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens 31 July 2026 and is expected to follow shortly after No Way Home, in a world with no memory of Peter Parker. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is not on this timeline at all — it takes place on Earth-828 in an alternate 1960s. Vision Quest follows WandaVision and Agatha All Along. Doomsday is expected to follow Thunderbolts* and First Steps.

Notice what that means: Phase 6's two biggest 2026 titles are, chronologically, a film set years earlier than the phase's leading edge and a film set in a different universe. Marvel is no longer building a single forward-moving year count, and after Secret Wars it may not need one.

For the complete integrated list, see our full chronological watch order; for the five-year hole underneath all of it, see our Blip explainer.