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In case you haven't already seen it: we now know (about) when HBO's House of the Dragon season 3 will start filming. As reported by Collider, showrunner Ryan Condal confirmed on The Stuff Dreams are Made Of podcast that HBO has nailed down a start date for production and that it's in "first quarter 2025."

Now, this is absolutely not a confirmation of when the show will be back on the air, but it is one of our first clues from an official source. It's certainly enough to start speculating on, and as long as you promise not to drive to our houses and throw eggs at our windows if we're wrong (I'm allergic), we'll start down that road of guesses together. 

When does House of the Dragon season 3 start filming?

For those of us that don't speak boardroom, first quarter 2025 refers to a window that stretches from January 1 to March 31 of next year. Now, Condal's comments only confirmed that HBO's official start date for the third season for the Game of Thrones prequel falls within that widow, but since we're playing the speculation game, we're going to start as late as possible with our potential dates. 

So for the sake of speculation alone, let's presume that filming of season 3 begins right at the end of March. With that start date, let's look back on how long previous seasons of the series have taken to make.

How long did House of the Dragon season 2 take to make?

Deadline reported on the House of the Dragon's season 2 filming on the exact day that it began. That is, April 11, 2023. The Economic Times confirmed that filming on that season had wrapped September 28 of the same year, giving us about a five-month window for the shooting of the scenes.

(By the way, you may have noticed that that filming overlapped the SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023. The mostly British House of the Dragon cast was allowed to keep filming due to local union rules, according to Variety.)

After the filming was done, it was still about another nine months until Hosue of the Dragon season 2 premiered on HBO June 16 2024. Altogether, that means that from day one of filming to fans streaming the first episode at home, about 14 months ellapsed.

When is the House of the Dragon season 3 release date?

OK, we've got our start date and a rough estimate of how long it takes to film a House of the Dragon season (by the way, Condal confirmed to Variety that he expects HBO to follow the "cadence" of their previous 8-episode seasons in the upcoming one). So where does that leave us?

Popverse speculates that House of the Dragon season 3 will drop in May of 2026. If you want a less-specific guess, we might even stretch that to say that it could happen in the three months previous, considering that production could technically star January 1, 2025. But we can almost guarantee this - fans will NOT be watching House of the Dragon season 3 before March of 2026.

That said, release dates (like dragons, political factions, and brother-sister romantic relationships) are fickle. Perhaps the only thing we can truly guarantee in this whole affair is that, as soon as we hear official word on the House of the Dragon season 3 release dat, we'll let you know.

In the meantime, House of the Dragon seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Max.

House of the Dragon season 2 may be over, but Popverse is still in the Westeros spirit, and we've got more Game of Thrones articles than could fit on a spiky chair. We'll tell you how to watch through the Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon saga in order, or if you're so inclined, read through it. We've dug through and exhumed the biggest differences between the two HBO shows set in Westeros, and gotten an inside look at them from House of the Dragon's prop designers. We've covered the history of Westeros's greatest houses & families, talked you through every single dragon in House of the Dragon so far, and peered into the future regarding A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO's upcoming GoT spinoff, and we've got much, much more on the way.