 <p><strong>For MVC6</strong>, You need to decorate the controllers with <code>Area</code> attribute. if you do not prefer to add this to individual controllers, you may simply create a base call which has Area decoration and inherit your other controllers from that.</p> <pre><code>[Area("Admin")] public class AdminArea : Controller { } public class OrdersController : AdminArea { public IActionResult Index() { return View(); } } public class ProductsController : AdminArea { public IActionResult Index() { return View(); } } </code></pre> <p><strong>MVC 5 and below</strong></p> <p>You do not need to put that attribute on your controller name, You can simply specify the area name in the area route registration.</p> <pre><code>public override void RegisterArea(AreaRegistrationContext context) { context.MapRoute( "Admin_default", "Admin/{controller}/{action}/{id}", new { action = "Index", controller= "YourDefaultCtrl", id = UrlParameter.Optional } ); } </code></pre>