Star Wars: Galactic Atlas: Updated Edition was released in this month, and this book made a short discussion about the canon timeline of A New Hope (hereinafter referred to as ANH) occurred on Discord. Since this issue has been a topic of discussion for a long time, I thought it would be worth clarifying here. Just to be clear, what I want to discuss is the date in the canon.
Current situation
Editoronthewiki and I have compiled a summary in the Behind the scenes section of 0 BBY article, showing how various sources dates the events of around ANH.
Following the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in 2016, it was noted by sources like Star Wars: Galactic Atlas that the events of Rogue One and Episode IV A New Hope, prior to the Battle of Yavin, occurred in 0 BBY. However, according to the 2022 Amazon listing for the reference book Star Wars: Timelines states that these events took place in 1 BBY. Emily Shkoukani, a member of the Lucasfilm Story Group stated on Twitter that 0 BBY no longer exists, and that events prior to the Battle of Yavin are now assigned 1 BBY, and The Battle of Yavin itself is "0," and any events in the year after that battle are 0 ABY. Eventually, with the release of Timelines in 2023, the events of Rogue One still take place in 1 BBY; however, the events of A New Hope now take place in "0." The "0 BBY" name appeared in the reference book Star Wars 100 Objects, which was released in the same month as Timelines, as a date for A New Hope and the last year of "the height of the Empire's reign." However, the book, on another page, uses the date 1 BBY for A New Hope. Later, the 2025 reference book Star Wars: Galactic Atlas: Updated Edition states that the destruction of Alderaan depicted in A New Hope occurred in 1 BBY and Battle of Yavin is dated as "0."
Note that BSW4/ASW4 (Before Star Wars 4 / After Star Wars 4) is often used interchangeably with BBY/ABY, but it's not BBY/ABY, so this time I didn't include it.
We generally prioritize Star Wars: Timelines because it's the most recent book, and this is the "Timeline" book. Therefore, we often cite this book. Of course there are exceptions because there's a clear error or not include in this book. And one exception is ANH. The current Wookieepedia dates the events of ANH to 0 BBY, and mostly citing the 2016 Star Wars: Galactic Atlas. The reason ANH cites 2016 Galactic Atlas despite other films citing Timelines is because this book dates ANH to 0, so technically, it cannot be used to reference 0 BBY date.
Proposed changes
I support the dating system of Emily Shkoukani's tweet in 2022 and Galactic Atlas: Updated Edition, and I think the current Wookieepedia dating of ANH should be changed. This means that all events before the Battle of Yavin are dated 1 BBY, events at the Battle of Yavin are dated 0, and events immediately after the Battle of Yavin are dated 0 ABY. There is no 0 BBY. I know someone will be hard for accept this idea, but I think this is actually the most reasonable dating system.
In the first place, ABY-BBY calendar is based on the Battle of Yavin. So the year changes based on the Battle of Yavin. Therefore, n BBY indicates the year beginning exactly n years before the Battle of Yavin. This is why the final arc of Andor S2 and Rogue One are dated to 1 BBY. While these events seemingly take place from a few weeks before the Battle of Yavin until just before ANH, they are included in the year beginning one year before the Battle of Yavin, making them 1 BBY. n ABY works in the same way: it indicates a year beginning n years later. Therefore, events immediately after ANH would be dated as 0 ABY, not 1 ABY. This means there's no room for 0 BBY in between. Because the Battle of Yavin is literally the base point event in this calendar, it's represented as "0" rather than a year 0 BBY. I think this is what Emily Shkoukani meant when they said "No more 0 BBY."
In Legends, the events of ANH take place over a single week, but dating what is likely a similarly short period in canon to the year 0 BBY feels odd and confusing. To me, the Galactic Atlas: Updated Edition dating system makes the most sense.
Issues with current dating
As mentioned earlier, the current source that places the events of ANH in 0 BBY is the 2016 Galactic Atlas, but 2025 Updated Edition don't use 0 BBY. Unless it's a clear error, it's odd to ignore the updated dates in the 2025 edition and continue to cite the 2016 Galactic Atlas. If we cite Star Wars 100 Objects, this book dates of the events of ANH to 1 BBY, 0 BBY, and 0 ABY, and the medal ceremony is even dated to 1 ABY. Then it's an inappropriate source for dates. Timelines doesn't use the notation 0 BBY, so if we cite it, we should at least change 0 BBY to 0. Plus it's unclear whether 0 BBY and 0 are the same thing.
For these reasons, I think that continuing to reference 2016 Galactic Atlas for the date of ANH is outdated, and we should move away from the 0 BBY notation.
How to change
If I were to create a CT on this, I would split it into two parts. One would be to change the events before the Battle of Yavin in ANH from 0 BBY to 1 BBY. This would be handled in the same way that we changed the events of Rebels Season Four and Rogue One from 0 BBY to 1 BBY with the release of Timelines. The other would be to change the notation of 0 BBY to 0. We would move the 0 BBY page to 0 and also change the text on pages that link to 0 BBY.
0 BBY currently has links from nearly 1,900 other articles in mainspace, so correcting all of these would take time, but I think that's typical for us. It's been over two years since the release of Timelines, and I still see articles that date the events of Rebels Season 4 and Rogue One to 0 BBY. I've been checking many pages linking to 0 BBY and correcting articles that still have the old date, and I've also found that some status articles were still dated to 0 BBY until recently.
Conclusion
My main point is that 0 BBY is a confusing and strange notation. 0 BBY hasn't always worked as a full year, and both Timelines and Galactic Atlas: Updated Edition reference books have moved away from it. There's no need to use 0 BBY for a period that lasted only a week or so. Also, I prefer to simply refer to events before the Battle of Yavin as 1 BBY, as in Galactic Atlas: Updated Edition. That said, I'm sure there are people who prefer a different method, so please share your opinion. あざした (talk) 11:23, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
EDIT: I just found Pablo Hidalgo's 2025 Bluesky post related to this discussion. Reading it, it seems to state the same thing as Shkoukani's tweet, and there appears to be no doubt that 0 BBY has been abolished. As a note, as I mentioned above, the Timelines actually set the entire ANH to "0," so strictly this post contradicts that. However, at least, the Story Group's intent seems clear for me. This post supports the above claim that the 0 range in Timelines should be overwritten, setting everything in ANH pre-Yavin to 1 BBY, the Battle of Yavin alone to 0, and the Medal Ceremony to 0 ABY. あざした (talk) 12:46, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
Discuss
- Thank you for laying this all out! I agree that it seems that 0 BBY has been pretty much killed off by now. However, what seems to me a bit puzzling is the issue of the modern sourcing for the dates of ANH. In the CT that you suggest you might put up, would you be suggesting that we go with Shkoukani's tweet saying that everything in ANH pre-Yavin is "1 BBY" over Timelines saying that everything in ANH is "0"? Because, to be clear, there is an event between the Destruction of Alderaan, which the new Galactic Atlas dates to 1 BBY, and the Battle of Yavin: the Rescue of Princess Leia. Imperators II(Talk) 12:17, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- You're welcome! I mean, for ANH, I prefer Shkoukani's tweet dating system over Timelines. The difference is that this dating system everything in ANH pre-Yavin as 1 BBY and the Medal Ceremony to 0 ABY. (Timelines dates both to 0.) And about 2025 Galactic Atlas, its Timeline pages feature a section divided into five parts for ANH events. Since the top of this page states 1 BBY, I interpreted this to mean the Rescue of Princess Leia is also dated 1 BBY. The Battle of Yavin has its own page stating "Date: 0," so this overrides the timeline page date and it dates to "0." By the way like the 2016 edition, this book also dates the Medal Ceremony to 0 ABY. Therefore, I consider Shkoukani's tweet and the 2025 Galactic Atlas date system to be the same, and if my idea is actually approved in CT, I will cite the 2025 Galactic Atlas directly. ex) Star Wars: Galactic Atlas: Updated Edition dates the events of pre Battle of Yavin in A New Hope to 1 BBY. あざした (talk) 13:01, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- With two sources now avoiding 0 BBY it does seem time to retire it sadly. The one thing I'd really strongly push for with this is that we don't use the 0 date in prose, possibly just infoboxes, since I think it doesn't really make any sense to most readers in the middle of a sentence. As far as I'm aware there's also no instances in official sources of it being used this way, although I might have missed something in Atlas. Instead I'd recommend we just say something was during the Battle of Yavin, since that's what the 0 conveys anyway so saying "the Battle of Yavin in 0" is redundant and actually likely adds more need for context then that battle itself. "The Battle of Yavin in the time period known as 0" is also redundant since the time period known as 0 is just the battle of Yavin.Ayrehead02 (talk) 22:25, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- Indeed. In that case, there's no need to move the "0 BBY" article or create "0" article. Both would simply redirect to the Battle of Yavin article.Tomeito 23:57, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- That's right, and I think that there is no need to move 0 BBY to 0 now. But in that case, at least 0 BBY articles should remain. Even if the content of the article is lost, we still need an article to explain the BtS, like the 92 BBY article. あざした (talk) 00:32, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
- That example is not appropriate, as the year 92 BBY could still exist. Plus, the BtS things of 0 BBY/0 can be explained in the BtS section on the Battle of Yavin, if necessary.Tomeito 00:59, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
- That's right, and I think that there is no need to move 0 BBY to 0 now. But in that case, at least 0 BBY articles should remain. Even if the content of the article is lost, we still need an article to explain the BtS, like the 92 BBY article. あざした (talk) 00:32, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah I was thinking along the same. As you say, setting the Battle of Yavin to 0 in prose is redundant. I often see phrases like "during the Battle of Yavin in 0 BBY," but in such cases, it's perfectly fine to simply say "during the Battle of Yavin" instead of replacing 0 BBY with 0. Also, it might be better to use the decreing Battle of Yavin in Infobox as well. あざした (talk) 00:32, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
- Indeed. In that case, there's no need to move the "0 BBY" article or create "0" article. Both would simply redirect to the Battle of Yavin article.Tomeito 23:57, 17 November 2025 (UTC)
- Pablo's bluesky post focuses on the abolition of 0 BBY. It should be noted that the range of 0 was not discussed in that thread, and he did not express any particular views on it. It would be misleading to assume the post supports your conclusion about 0, i think. Tomeito 14:11, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
- For me the phrase "the year leading up to the Battle of Yavin is 1 BBY" suggests that 1 BBY ends immediately preceding the Battle of Yavin, but it's true that it's not as clear as Shkoukani's tweet for 0 range. あざした (talk) 15:08, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
- If one were to explain BBY/ABY, anyone would end up phrasing it that way. And if what you say is correct, then Pablo introduced a theory that overwrites Timelines in his post explaining Timelines to fans. We ought not to extract more information than necessary from staff ' social media posts.Tomeito 21:58, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
- To be clear, I don't consider Pablo's post to be the most promising source in the 0 range, and the same goes for Shkoukani's tweet. It clearly indicates that 0 is only Battle of Yavin, but in the context of a reply to a question about preview images of Timelines. This tweet alone is not enough to override Timelines, as the production version of Timelines has an extended range of 0's. The main reason I think the range of 0 should be limited to Battle of Yavin is because the 2025 Galactic Atlas adopted this approach. あざした (talk) 00:07, 19 November 2025 (UTC)
- I see. Then there's no problem! Tomeito 09:16, 19 November 2025 (UTC)
- To be clear, I don't consider Pablo's post to be the most promising source in the 0 range, and the same goes for Shkoukani's tweet. It clearly indicates that 0 is only Battle of Yavin, but in the context of a reply to a question about preview images of Timelines. This tweet alone is not enough to override Timelines, as the production version of Timelines has an extended range of 0's. The main reason I think the range of 0 should be limited to Battle of Yavin is because the 2025 Galactic Atlas adopted this approach. あざした (talk) 00:07, 19 November 2025 (UTC)
- If one were to explain BBY/ABY, anyone would end up phrasing it that way. And if what you say is correct, then Pablo introduced a theory that overwrites Timelines in his post explaining Timelines to fans. We ought not to extract more information than necessary from staff ' social media posts.Tomeito 21:58, 18 November 2025 (UTC)
- For me the phrase "the year leading up to the Battle of Yavin is 1 BBY" suggests that 1 BBY ends immediately preceding the Battle of Yavin, but it's true that it's not as clear as Shkoukani's tweet for 0 range. あざした (talk) 15:08, 18 November 2025 (UTC)