Game of Thrones season 8 officially premiering in 2019

For the people in the northeast right now, we know the expression “winter is coming” may have a totally different meaning at present (winter is there in the form of a bomb cyclone!) — one that doesn’t have anything to do with Game of Thrones.

Unfortunately, in speaking about the HBO show itself it doesn’t appear as though winter is going to be arriving for a little while longer still. It was basically all but confirmed last year that the final season would not arrive until 2019, but now the network has gone ahead and made that confirmation official. We suppose that one of the biggest reasons for that is rather simple: HBO knows that this is one of the most-anticipated series out there and the last thing that they want is to create false hope that the show is coming later this year when it’s not.

As for why we are not getting more Game of Thrones on the air until 2019, there are apparently a number of different reasons why it’s rolling out like this. For starters, we know that production wanted to do everything that they could in order to ensure that the show is as “wintry” as possible. That means doing more filming later in the year / early this year. Beyond that, this is also the most ambitious season that Game of Thrones has ever done in terms of scale. While in the past the series has been able to send off various cast members with different production units, that can’t happen this time. The bulk of the cast is now together and it’s harder to have more simultaneous units going at the same time.

Related – If you live in the UK there are some Game of Thrones stamps coming your way!

Game of Thrones will likely wrap filming at some point either this spring or summer; we would anticipate that the show could be ready as early as the first few months of 2019, but it’s really up to HBO to determine when they want to put it on the air. Our guess would be April, the same time that it aired during the first few seasons. HBO then isn’t throwing the series up against the Super Bowl or some of the other big programs that are on the air in January or February. It would still get great ratings, but why limit yourself?

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