Welcome To The Legendary How I Met Your Mother Timeline!
Hello everybody and welcome. I created this timeline, just in the course of watching the show and after not finding anything similar like it anywhere else on the internet so I decided that other people might want to see it as well.

The thing that's so great about a show like How I Met Your Mother is that that unlike most shows the show will actually give you real life dates to use as Future Ted tells the great (and long) story to his kids of how he met their mother, and his wife. Like a real life diary the dates add a lot of realism to the show.

It's also my hope that the awesome creators of the show (Craig Thomas & Carter Bays) may someday see this website and enjoy it. If either one of them see this I just wanna say thanks for creating such an awesome show with such amazing characters!

This timeline needless to say contains major spoilers for all of the show on every page so if you haven't seen it all yet then proceed with caution!

I'm not Barney by the way...but I hear that guys awesome!!!
About This Timeline
The timeline is divided up into nice, easy to read sections listing in chronological order every major event that we have been told or shown on the show. See below for how the dating was worked out. Each event listed is followed by a reference in grey such as [216 Stuff] which shows which episode I got that piece of information from. The first number (2 in this case) refers to the season and the second two numbers (16) is the episode number in that season. This is followed by the episode title.
About the dating of events...
The dates in this timeline are based on the dates shown in the show either by Future Ted, on screen, in dialogue (ie. "Three years ago", "In 2012") or in the case of flashbacks the age of the character is sometimes stated in the end credits (i.e a flashback might have a young Lily and then in the end credits of that episode it states a guest star played '7 year old Lily') and this is used to calculate what year it happened in.
For where no date is given, and it is set in the present it can be safely presumed that the event is happening around the time the episode was aired, unless stated otherwise. Sometimes the date can actually be worked out. For example episode 109 is set at Thanksgiving (24th November) and episode 111 is set on New Year's Eve (December 31st) so episode 110 The Pineapple Incident must of occurred between those two dates, and as the episode aired in December then I have set December 2005 as when that event occurred.
Some sites I've seen use the date the episode was originally first broadcast on as the same day as the event occured, for example Tracy's birthday is sometimes said to be September 19th, because that's the day The Pilot was originally shown on. However there's nothing in this episode, or any other, that indicates that the broadcast day is the same day the events occur. Also there's the fact that many episodes take place over a few days, or even weeks!
Dating some events are tricker than others, and sometimes there are inconsistencies with dates - one major example is dating Barney's birthday. When there is any issue with conflicting dates, or other issues, I have put it in brackets after the event i.e [102 Purple Giraffe. Note: Dating this is difficult due to...]
Under no circumstances have I just made up a random day. If it says a date then that's because I have applied the previous rules. If you want to add something I've missed then please let me know in the comments below and please add which episode it was from, so I can check it. I'll be more than happy to give you credit if you do. Thanks!

Latest Legendary Updates
Like the timeline? Like us on Facebook!
Thanks! You are now Legen-waitforit-DARY!!
June 30th 2015 by Swarley - And we're done! Am happy to finally announce the return of the massively update and upgraded The Future page, featuring everything that's revealed to of happened after 2014 throughout the series. I've also changed the header to a new one featuring Tracy. I wasn't totally happy with the other one but this one looks great. I suppose this will be the last major update, though in the future I may add more. Thanks everyone, and enjoy!!
June 24th 2015 by Swarley - The 2013 page is finally finished! I really hope you guys all really enjoy it. There's probably some spelling/grammatical errors in there still etc, and I'll fix those as I find them but otherwise it's good to go!! Still to come - The Future (2014-2030) page featuring all the stuff the gang does after 2013. It'll be another huge update and it's coming soon!!
June 21st 2015 by Swarley - I'm continuing to work on the 2013 + Future pages but there definitely not ready for you all yet. When they are I can assure you the wait will be worth it because there's tonnes of new content!!
June 10th 2015 by Swarley - Am happy to say the 2012 page is finally complete! Changed some of the images as well. Am currently working on the brand new 2013 page and am revising The Future page. Due to the extent of the revisions I've temporarily removed the links to The Future page. Sorry, they'll be back soon!
June 7th 2015 by Swarley - Re-formatted and mobile optimised 2012 page. Updates coming soon!
May 30th 2015 by Swarley - Re-formatted, updated and mobile optimised 2010-2011 pages.
May 24th 2015 by Swarley - Added a nice new background for the desktop version of the site. I've been meaning to do this for ages so it's awesome to finally get around to it. The sites looking awesome, I'm really happy with it now. Am continuing to add content updates along the way as well for stuff I've missed as I watch the show (currently re-watching the fifth season). I've added a placeholder link to a 2013 page on all pages, but there's nothing there at the moment. When I get to that point in the show expect to see a truckload of updates!
May 20th 2015 by Swarley - Re-formatted, updated and mobile optimised 2008-2009 pages.
May 18th 2015 by Swarley - Changed the sites header to a nice new image I made. Fixed mobile optimisation for pages Before The Show-2007. The other pages still need to be done so I apologise to anyone viewing the site from a mobile at the moment, it still looks very rough.
May 17th 2015 by Swarley - Updated, added to and re-formatted the 2005-2007 pages. Fixed a lot of broken links too.
May 10th 2015 by Swarley - God willing every time I write on here it won't be a full year later and me apologising for the lack of updates but I'm back again and re-watching the whole series so I can add things I've missed. So far I'm on season two so please bare with me. Have added to and re-formatted the Before The Show page so far, more to come. Thanks for visiting everyone!
July 15th 2014 by Swarley - Okay so I haven't been on here in a while so apologies for that, have a lot of other things to do (work etc)! Will I actually get around to updating the site again? Yes I will, but when exactly I'm not so sure so for now. I hope you all enjoy what I've written so far though and I hope to be on again at some point in the nearish future to continue what I've started. Thanks everyone!
August 1st 2013 by Swarley - Firstly thanks for all the positive comments and feedback, it's really appreciated! It's great to see that people enjoying the site and hopefully the recently added features will make it even better - Added May-October 2012 to the timeline, Added mobile optimisation for easier viewing on mobile devices, Fixed some broken links and other errors, added a Facebook like button so you can like our Facebook page.

Like what you see? Noticed any mistakes I've made? Got anything to add?
Please let me know in the comments section below!