In which order are firewall policies processed on a FortiGate unit?

FortiGate units process firewall policies strictly from top to bottom, evaluating them in the order they appear in the policy list, which corresponds to their sequence number. The first policy that matches the traffic's criteria (source, destination, service, etc.) is applied, and no further policies are evaluated for that traffic.

While policies have an ID, the processing order is determined by their position in the list (sequence number), not the numerical value of the policy ID itself.

FortiGates do not use a "best match" algorithm like some routing protocols; they use a first-match, top-to-bottom processing order for firewall policies.

FortiGate firewall policies do not have an explicit "priority value" field that determines processing order; their order is explicitly set by the administrator.