Life is Strange Reunion Year Set: When the Story Takes Place and Why It Matters

Max Caulfield's campus is on fire, Chloe Price is back, and the calendar reads September — but which September? If you're trying to pin down the Life is Strange Reunion year set, the answer is 2024: the present-day story opens in September 2024, roughly nine months after the storm that devastated Caledon University. That gap is the whole point. The Life is Strange Reunion year set lets the game treat the 2015 original and 2024's Double Exposure as one shared history instead of two separate stories, and it explains nearly every dated clue you find on campus.

Below is the timeline as the sources describe it, plus what the dates actually change in your playthrough.

The Short Answer: September 2024

The main story takes place in September 2024 at Caledon University in Lakeport, Vermont. Max returns from a weekend trip to find the campus engulfed in flames and fails to save her friend Moses Murphy, so she uses a polaroid taken three days earlier to rewind, cancel the trip, and try again.

That reset is why the opening act feels like a three-day loop rather than a long prologue: you replay the same September days with knowledge Max shouldn't have. Everything after that — the Abraxas investigation, the masked party, the observatory — plays out in the same autumn window.

One thing to separate right away: the year the story is set in is not the year the game came out.

Release Year vs. Story Year: Two Different Numbers

If the Life is Strange Reunion year set is 2024, why do store pages and press coverage file it under 2026? Because Life is Strange: Reunion is a 2026 release whose fiction is dated 2024. It was developed by Deck Nine and published by Square Enix, arriving on PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S on March 26, 2026.

The two dates are easy to conflate because both appear in the same sentence in most coverage. For reference, the official Life is Strange: Reunion Steam page lists the release-side details, while the Wikipedia plot summary for Life Is Strange: Reunion is the clearer source for where the story actually sits on the calendar.

Square Enix also said on June 29, 2026 that the game had exceeded its sales expectations, per the coverage summarized on that same page — a dated statement about performance, not about the story's timeline.

How the September 2024 Timeline Shapes the Plot

The Life is Strange Reunion year set is fixed in September 2024, and that fixed point does more narrative work than a typical background detail.

• It makes the merged timelines legible. Max learns that when she merged realities to save Safi Llewellyn-Fayyad in Double Exposure, she also fused the two outcomes of her original 2013 choice — sacrifice Chloe or sacrifice Arcadia Bay. The plot summary frames that choice as "eleven years ago," which is why both Chloe and the town exist in the same present.
• It gives Chloe something to investigate. Chloe arrives as a touring manager for the band Drugstore Makeup, experiencing visions of a woman she doesn't know. Moses dubs the plane she slips into "the Overlight."
• It puts a deadline on the mystery. The fire Max witnesses in the first scene is the fire she spends the whole game trying to prevent, and the days between are the runway she has to work with.
• It ties the occult plot to the season. The Abraxas party at the center of the investigation lands on the autumn equinox festival, Mabon — a date that only works because the story is parked in late September.

Max's rewind is also looser here than in 2015: she can use it at will, but only across a few minutes, and only at points in time she has already occupied. Chloe counters with "backtalk," carried over from Before the Storm, which opens doors and conversations Max can't reach.

The Older Dates Buried in the Story

The Life is Strange Reunion year set puts the present in 2024, but the mystery reaches back decades. The plot summary confirms one key flashback: Max's power evolves to project the memories stored in photographs, revealing that in 1995 a Lakeport teenager entered an Abraxas party and died by suicide during a drug-induced hallucination. That death is the root of the grudge driving part of the endgame.

Beyond that, in-game archive material digs up older coverage. Community walkthrough footage shows players reading through the Caledon Caller's back catalog as part of Loretta Rice's research:

Read together, those clippings do more than world-build. They establish that the 2024 fire has a pattern behind it, and they give the investigation a paper trail that stretches back forty years.

What the Year Setting Means for Your Playthrough

The Life is Strange Reunion year set shapes your run in practical ways, especially if you're chasing a clean ending.

Your starting choices come from earlier games. Before you control anyone, you set the outcomes imported from previous entries — most importantly whether Chloe survived Arcadia Bay. According to community guides, each option unlocks a different achievement or trophy, so seeing both requires two playthroughs.

The present-day action is short but dense. The narrative moves in day-by-day beats — a "next morning" conversation, a "next day" discovery — so the playable timeline covers only a handful of September days, condensed into named chapters that community walkthroughs use to track collectibles.

Some evidence can't be recovered later. Photos, sketches, and podcasts can be mopped up through chapter select, but optional evidence cannot. If you care about completion, treat every piece of paperwork you find in a chapter as mandatory on your first pass.

The ending depends on who you saved. The plot summary lays out three variants of the final polaroid decision: Chloe destroys the photo, Chloe hands it over after a fire with casualties, or Chloe hands it over after a fire where everyone survived and Max destroys it herself. Reaching the cleanest version requires specific accusations and rescues in the days leading up to it.

For the story's own framing, the Steam listing's mature-content note is worth a glance before you start — it flags fire imagery, strong language, and drug references.

Life is Strange Reunion Year Set FAQ

Is the Life is Strange Reunion year set 2024 or 2026? Both, depending on what you mean. The story takes place in September 2024, while the game itself released on March 26, 2026.

Where does the Life is Strange Reunion year set fall relative to Double Exposure? After it. The Life is Strange Reunion year set picks up roughly nine months after the storm at Caledon University, and the game is positioned as a direct sequel to Double Exposure.

How much time passes during the story? The opening sequence covers three days, since Max rewinds to a polaroid taken three days before the fire. The rest of the game advances in day-by-day steps, so the present-day arc spans a short window in September 2024 rather than months.

Do the earlier games' dates matter? Yes. The game references the original Life is Strange decision as "eleven years ago," and your imported choices about Chloe and Safi change dialogue, achievements, and how difficult the finale becomes.

The short version: the Life is Strange Reunion year set is September 2024, the release year is 2026, and the gap between them is exactly the space the game uses to close out Max and Chloe's story.