Fate Series Watch Order
The popular advice is to start with Fate/Zero, and it is wrong. Zero is a prequel that spoils the mysteries the rest of the series is built to withhold.
Fate is the franchise people bounce off before they start. The question of where to begin has four defensible answers, and the one repeated most often is the one that damages the story most.
The short answer
Unlimited Blade Works, then the Heaven's Feel films, then Fate/Zero. Put the 2006 series at the front only if you specifically want the route the others assume you already know.
The order
- Fate/stay night (2006, Studio Deen). Optional, with caveats below.
- Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works (ufotable, 2014).
- Fate/stay night: Heaven's Feel, three films (2017 to 2020).
- Fate/Zero (ufotable, 2011 to 2012).
Why Fate/Zero goes last
Because it is a prequel, and prequels are written for people who already know the answers. Fate/Zero thoroughly gives away the central mysteries of Fate/stay night: who certain participants are, how particular conflicts resolve, and the history the later stories spend their runtime withholding. Watch it first and the reveals arrive as confirmations of things you were told years earlier in production order.
The reason the chronological advice spreads anyway is that Zero is, by a wide margin, the best-made thing in the franchise. It is faster, better directed, and much easier to recommend on its own terms. That makes it a poor first course and a superb last one, and it is why Anime News Network's guide to the franchise puts it after all three stay night routes rather than before them.
The 2006 series, and whether to bother
Studio Deen's adaptation covers the Fate route, the only one of the three that ufotable never made as a series. Its pacing is uneven and it leaks details of the later routes, which is why fan edits exist specifically to trim the spoilers out of it. That is a fairly damning thing for a fandom to have built.
Skip it if you want one clean run at the story. Watch it if you want the route the other two are quietly built on top of, and accept that the version you are watching is the weakest telling of it.
Everything else, briefly
- Fate/Apocrypha: worth it, after stay night and Zero.
- Fate/Grand Order (Babylonia and the films): watchable without the rest, better with it.
- Fate/kaleid liner Prisma Illya: season one yes, two and three skippable, season four and the films yes.
- Fate/Extra Last Encore: no.
- Fate/strange Fake: yes, but it assumes a great deal of prior knowledge.
The one-line version
Unlimited Blade Works, Heaven's Feel, Fate/Zero, and do not decide anything about the spin-offs until you know whether the main line is for you.
Fate is not the only franchise where two studios adapted the same source and only one version is the one people mean. Fullmetal Alchemist has the same problem, and Evangelion has a stranger version of it.