A new class of fractional-order variational optical flow models, which generalizes the differential of optical flow from integer order to fractional order, is proposed for motion estimation in this paper. The corresponding Euler–Lagrange equations are derived by solving a typical fractional variational problem, and the numerical implementation based on the Grünwald–Letnikov fractional derivative definition is proposed to solve these complicated fractional partial differential equations. Theoretical analysis reveals that the proposed fractional-order variational optical flow model is the generalization of the typical Horn and Schunck (first-order) variational optical flow model and the second-order variational optical flow model, which provides a new idea for us to study the optical flow model and has an important theoretical implication in optical flow model research. The experiments demonstrate the validity of the generalization of differential order.