Game of Thrones season 8 set to premiere in April 2019 - start your recap now

Game of Thrones season 8 will premiere in April 2019, HBO has revealed. That means the new six-episode season will comfortably begin (and end) within the first half of 2019, which was the announced window HBO has been working with for a while. That's not far off at all!

The announcement was first made in the above teaser video, which sadly doesn't showcase any new footage about season 8. But at least it's a quick recap of many of the dramatic moments that led up to the current, semi-apocalyptic state of events in Westeros. Speaking of which, uh, spoiler warning if you're not caught up.

We already got to take a little bit of a peek into the final season of Game of Thrones in its first official set photo, showing Daenerys and Jon Snow embracing as they regard the audience (or maybe a bunch of White Walkers) with varying degrees of suspicion. Back in August, HBO gave us our first, very brief, look at season 8 in motion in a preview of all its upcoming 2019 shows. We also have a bumper crop of Game of Thrones theories if you're ready to delve deep into some informed speculation while you wait for the answers to arrive.

The original Game of Thrones series is drawing to a close, but that doesn't mean our time in the televised land Westeros is over. A Game of Thrones prequel series titled The Long Night is on the way, likely showing the first time the White Walkers threatened the world more than 8,000 years before we joined the story of Starks, Lannisters, and the rest of the gang.