Watching the Star Wars films in release order means watching the movies in the order they were released to theaters in the over 40 year history of Star Wars.

For the first six movies, this order is fairly straightforward. This would mean watching the original trilogy first (Episode IV: A New Hope (1977), Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)). and then following it up with the prequel trilogy (Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002, and Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)).

Finally, you would watch the Disney era of Star Wars (which consists of the sequel trilogy and two anthology films interspersed in between. By 2020, these movies are Episode VII: The Force Awakens(2015), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Episode VIII: The Last Jedi(2017), Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), and Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)