The notion of an extriangulated category gives a unification of existing theories in exact or abelian categories and in triangulated categories. In this article, we develop Auslander–Reiten theory for extriangulated categories. This unifies Auslander–Reiten theories developed in exact categories and triangulated categories independently. We give two different sets of sufficient conditions on the extriangulated category so that existence of almost split extensions becomes equivalent to that of an Auslander–Reiten–Serre duality. We also show that existence of almost split extensions is preserved under taking relative extriangulated categories, ideal quotients, and extension-closed subcategories. Moreover, we prove that the stable category
C
_
\underline {\mathscr {C}}
of an extriangulated category
C
\mathscr {C}
is a
τ
\tau
-category (see O. Iyama [Algebr. Represent. Theory 8 (2005), pp. 297–321]) if
C
\mathscr {C}
has enough projectives, almost split extensions and source morphisms. This gives various consequences on
C
_
\underline {\mathscr {C}}
, including Igusa–Todorov’s Radical Layers Theorem (see K. Igusa and G. Todorov [J. Algebra 89 (1984), pp. 105–147]), Auslander–Reiten Combinatorics on dimensions of Hom-spaces, and Reconstruction Theorem of the associated completely graded category of
C
_
\underline {\mathscr {C}}
via the complete mesh category of the Auslander–Reiten species of
C
_
\underline {\mathscr {C}}
. Finally we prove that any locally finite symmetrizable
τ
\tau
-quiver (=valued translation quiver) is an Auslander–Reiten quiver of some extriangulated category with sink morphisms and source morphisms.