Release OrderRecommended
0 / 7 watchedRelease order, grouped by cast era. The comedy stays episodic, so the groups only mark who is still around.
Mahoney era
- 1 Police Academy Open-enrollment recruits. Mahoney and Hightower debut.
- 2 Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment The graduates hit the streets. Ensemble grows.
- 3 Police Academy 3: Back in Training The gang retrains new cadets. Last fully stable lineup.
- 4 Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol Citizens join the patrol program. Guttenberg's last film as Mahoney.
Post-Mahoney sequels
- 5 Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach First film without Mahoney. Miami Beach setting.
- 6 Police Academy 6: City Under Siege City-wide crime wave plot. Bubba Smith's last film as Hightower.
Moscow finale
- 7 Police Academy: Mission to Moscow Series finale with Christopher Lee and Ron Perlman. Only Gaynes, Winslow, and Graf remain from the original cast. Latest released entry.
About Police Academy
Seven Police Academy films ran from 1984 to 1994, built on slapstick misfit-recruit comedy. Steve Guttenberg's Mahoney leads the first four; he leaves after Citizens on Patrol, and the last three carry on as ensemble comedies. Only George Gaynes, Michael Winslow, and David Graf appear in all seven.
An animated series ran from 1988 to 1989 and a live-action series from 1997 to 1998. Release order is the recommended watch, with the groups marking the cast breaks. The long-planned reboot never filmed; its Key and Peele version was scrapped.
Good to know
Mahoney exits after film 4 and Hightower skips the Moscow finale. Reboot history: stuck in development hell since 2003 across New Line attempts, and Deadline reported in June 2026 that the Key and Peele version was dropped in 2014 after the killing of Michael Brown. No active film project remained as of September 17, 2026.
