There is no required order for reading the SCP Foundation wiki. For a quick orientation, start with the official Guide for Reading; for fiction, choose a standalone SCP file, a tale, or a Group of Interest (GoI) format and follow links that catch your attention. The wiki has no single canon or central storyline, so you can explore without first learning a master plot.
Where should you start reading?
Choose a route based on what you want from the site. The Guide for Reading explains the wiki’s structure and recommends treating it as a place to explore rather than a series of prerequisites. Its advice is not to read only Series I or to make SCP-001 your first stop.
| # | Preview | Product | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
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SCP Foundation - Foundation Handbook - Volume I | $22.34 | Buy on Amazon |
| 2 |
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SCP Foundation - Foundation Handbook - Volume II | $22.31 | Buy on Amazon |
| 3 |
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Scp Foundation Artbook Red Journal | $27.42 | Buy on Amazon |
| 4 |
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SCP Foundation Artbook | Paperback Edition | Black Journal | $24.45 | Buy on Amazon |
| 5 |
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Scp Foundation Art Book Yellow Journal | $37.20 | Buy on Amazon |
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| If you want… | Try… | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| A shortlist of recommendations | Unofficial SCP Starter Picks | Community-maintained personal recommendations across series, not an official endorsement. |
| Well-known classics | Top Rated Pages | Popular, established work; older pages have had more time to gather ratings. |
| Newer writing | New Pages or recent top-rated pages | Recently posted material; the home page’s latest numbered series is another way into newer SCP files. |
| Recommendations by subject or genre | User-Curated Lists, Curated Tale Series, or the Tales Hub | Community selections, organized lists, and tale tags for browsing by theme or genre. |
| Connected stories | A canon hub or a series hub | Linked works that share a setting or are collected together; a canon and a series are not the same thing. |
| Unplanned discovery | Random SCP, Tale, or GoI Format links | A chance to land on something unexpected and follow its references. |
The FAQ’s practical suggestion is to sample all three major formats: SCP files, tales, and GoI formats. SCP files use the familiar containment-document style; tales are stories outside that usual format; GoI formats present anomalous material through the perspective of other groups.
Do you need to follow one canon or reading order?
No. The SCP Wiki’s Guide for Reading says, “Unlike most forms of fiction, there is no canon or central storyline.” Articles may contradict or disregard one another, while some works share a universe and refer to each other. You can read a standalone entry without reconciling it with every other page.
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If you want continuity, use a canon hub to find works set in a shared fictional setting, or a series hub to browse a collected run of related pages. These are optional routes into linked fiction, not a prerequisite for understanding the wiki as a whole.
Why not start with SCP-001 or read in numerical order?
SCP-001 is a collection of proposals, not one ordinary entry that introduces the entire site. The reading guide recommends returning to those proposals after reading other material, because many are broad in scope. Likewise, reading only Series I means missing later writing as well as tales and GoI formats. Numbering is an identifier, not a syllabus.
How to browse an SCP article
The visible paragraphs may not contain everything. The reading guide describes several interface elements worth checking:
- Expand collapsibles. They divide long articles and can conceal substantial sections.
- Check every tab. Tabs may hold material of comparable importance, so do not assume the first tab is the whole page.
- Open footnotes when needed. They are usually optional. On desktop, hover over a footnote; on mobile, tap it. The guide notes that occasional exceptions make a footnote more important to the article.
How to find more after your first page
Use tags when you want to narrow a search by topic or style. On the Tales Hub, the tag filters help organize stories by genre; the hub also links to explanations of its genre tags, tale series, audio readings, canons, and archives. Its listings are ordered from newest-created onward, so it is useful for recent additions as well as browsing by category.
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For another recommendation path, compare community-curated lists rather than assuming a single list is definitive. Or pick a random SCP, Tale, or GoI Format and follow whichever references appeal to you. The Guide for Reading puts the approach simply: “Pick a page, follow any links you find interesting, and you’ll soon have more to read than you know what to do with!”
Quick Recap
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