User blog comment:BannedLagiacrus/Elder Dragon Discussion/@comment-31029678-20171013130229/@comment-33338653-20171013211907

I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that Frontier and even Explore of all things would be canon. They just feel so...different. I'm also pretty sure the main MonHun team never confirmed they were canon, and technically speaking, they never deconfirmed it either. But is they were canon, the Main series would probably make a nod to those franchises, which they haven't done since MH frontier had normal looking monsters.

MH stories on the other hand seems more likely to be canon as it stays true to the Main series and actually got released outside of Japan.