A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Belfast Film Locations

When the first episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms aired on Max in January 2026, something shifted in how people looked at Northern Ireland. The show — George R.R. Martin’s “Tales of Dunk and Egg” brought to screen by HBO — did not invent this landscape. The Antrim coastline, the drumlin-studded shores of Strangford Lough, the beech avenue at Bregagh Road: all of it had already been on camera for fifteen years of Game of Thrones production. What the new series did was make it visible again, in a register that felt intimate rather than epic. One hedge knight, one prince travelling incognito, a few horses. The camera had nowhere to hide.

Season 2 is filming in Belfast right now. The crew that set up at Titanic Studios and scattered across County Down and County Antrim in December 2025 is still there, wrapping production ahead of what the industry expects will be a 2027 premiere. The locations used in Season 1 are already accessible. The places being filmed this week are, in many cases, the same estates and coastlines you can visit today. This is what a living production pilgrimage looks like.

Castle Ward: The Real Winterfell

Castle Ward is an 18th-century National Trust estate sitting on the southern shore of Strangford Lough in County Down. Its farmyard — the Old Castle Ward buildings — became Winterfell for Game of Thrones Seasons 1 and 2, and the same estate returned for tourney-adjacent scenes in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The connection is not coincidental: the production knows this land, has dressed it and undressed it across decades of filming, and keeps coming back.

The estate covers 820 acres with 21 miles of walking trails and more than 20 confirmed GoT filming locations. This is not a reconstruction of a set; it is the original location, weathered and real, where Ned Stark received the king’s party and where Dunk walks through the kind of Westerosi countryside Martin described in the novellas. The walled farmyard, the shore of the lough, the tower house at Audley’s Castle nearby — all of it forms part of the Winterfell geography that both productions drew from.

The Dark Hedges: The King’s Road

The beech trees on Bregagh Road in County Antrim were planted around 1775 by the Stuart family to line the approach to their Georgian mansion. They have been growing in each other’s company ever since, their branches locking overhead into a canopy that photographs as something between a cathedral nave and a place where the light has forgotten what direction it came from. In Game of Thrones Season 2, this lane became the Kingsroad — the road Arya travelled disguised as a boy after escaping King’s Landing. The scene ran for perhaps forty seconds on screen. The landscape has not recovered its anonymity since.

What the Dunk and Egg show adds is a reason to read this road differently. In the novellas, the Kingsroad is not a dramatic escape route but a working highway across Westeros, the arterial path that hedge knights travel between tourneys. The Dark Hedges, with its particular quality of filtered light and enclosed air, reads as both things at once.

Visiting is straightforward. The road is free to walk. Parking costs £4. The management advice is consistent: before 9am for photography without crowds, or on weekdays in spring and autumn. By mid-morning in summer the lane is busy. The beech trees themselves are aging — several have been lost to storms in recent years — which gives the place, if you arrive early and alone, a quality of something in the middle of its own story.

Giant’s Causeway and the Iron Islands

The Giant’s Causeway is not a Game of Thrones filming location in the strict sense. No scene was staged here. But it sits at the centre of the North Antrim filming corridor — 12 kilometres from Ballintoy Harbour (the Iron Islands/Lordsport port), close to Dunluce Castle and Kinbane Castle, along the same road as the Dark Hedges. Northern Ireland’s only UNESCO World Heritage Site became the geographic anchor of almost every GoT tour from Belfast not because it was used for production, but because the Causeway Coast is the most concentrated stretch of dramatic landscape in Northern Ireland, and it is naturally combined with the sites that were.

The 40,000 interlocking hexagonal basalt columns, formed 60 million years ago during volcanic eruptions, look like something that would require explanation on screen. The Iron Islands — rocky, ocean-beaten, austere — were shot nearby. Ballintoy Harbour, which became the port of Lordsport on the Isle of Pyke, is the natural companion stop. Theon Greyjoy arrived here in Season 2. Balon Greyjoy’s funeral happened in these grey waters. The harbour is still a working harbour. The scale of it — small, exposed, functional — is part of what made it a convincing Iron Islands location.

Belfast: Filming the Seven Kingdoms

Belfast is where the interior work has always happened. The former Harland and Wolff Paint Hall in the Titanic Quarter — now Titanic Studios — has been the production hub for Westeros since 2010. It is the largest television production facility in the UK outside London. The Red Keep, the Iron Throne room, the great halls of Westeros: all of it was built inside these former shipbuilding sheds. The facility is not open to general visitors, but the exterior of the Titanic Quarter is worth the visit for any fan aware of what is being made inside.

The city itself holds another GoT experience worth half a day. Tourism Ireland commissioned six giant stained-glass windows for locations across Belfast city centre in 2019 — each depicting characters and scenes from GoT Seasons 1 through 8. They are scattered through hotels, shopping centres, and civic buildings, and a guided walking tour connects them into a coherent narrative about sixteen years of production in Northern Ireland.

For fans who want the complete indoor experience, the Game of Thrones Studio Tour at Linen Mill Studios in Banbridge — 30 minutes south of Belfast — is the definitive complement to any outdoor filming location tour. Original sets, costumes worn by named characters, the Iron Throne, scale models of King’s Landing, production art from all eight seasons. The Viator product includes coach transfer from the Visit Belfast Welcome Centre on Donegall Square North.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: What We Know

The show aired its six Season 1 episodes on Max between 18 January and 22 February 2026. The episodes — “The Hedge Knight,” “Hard Salt Beef,” “The Squire,” “Seven,” “In the Name of the Mother,” and “The Morrow” — cover the first of Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas and introduce Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall and Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg, the young Targaryen travelling incognito as a squire.

HBO renewed the show for Season 2 in November 2025, before Season 1 had even aired. Filming in Belfast began in December 2025 and is expected to wrap around June 2026 — more than double Season 1’s filming window. The expanded cast brings Lucy Boynton as Rohanne Webber and Peter Mullan as Ser Eustace Osgrey, characters from the second novella, “The Sworn Sword.” A premiere in early 2027 is expected, though no confirmed date has been announced.

The showrunner’s stated aesthetic for the production has shaped how the Northern Ireland locations read on screen. Where GoT deployed armies and CGI cityscapes, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is built around two figures on horseback and the landscape they move through. The Mourne Mountains in County Down appeared in Episode 1’s burial scene. Glenarm Castle — a 17th-century structure on the Antrim Coast Road — became Ashford Meadow, the tournament site at the centre of Season 1’s plot. These are specific places, with specific characters, and the camera’s narrower frame made them more visible.

What this means for visitors is that the GoT tour infrastructure — built across fifteen years for a global fanbase — now carries a second layer of content. The same Castle Ward that became Winterfell for Arya and Jon is the same estate where Dunk stands before the tourney. The same Antrim coastline that hosted the Iron Islands now hosts the production crew for Season 2. Visiting before Season 2 airs means standing in locations that are, in a real sense, still mid-story.

• Decide on your route: Winterfell Trek (Castle Ward, County Down) or Iron Islands/North Antrim Coast (Dark Hedges, Ballintoy, Giant's Causeway) — most visitors do both on separate days
• Book shared tours in advance via Viator — the top operators depart from the Leonardo Hotel on Great Victoria Street at 7:30am; spots fill fast in summer
• For Castle Ward: National Trust members enter free; others pay general admission. Allow 2–3 hours minimum on the estate itself
• For the Dark Hedges: arrive before 9am for photography without crowds; £4 parking fee on Bregagh Road
• For Giant's Causeway: National Trust car park fee applies; combine with Ballintoy Harbour (12km east) and Dunluce Castle (5km west) on the same day
• Add the Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Banbridge on a separate day — it's a full half-day experience and the only official GoT studio tour in the world
• If you're a cruise passenger docking at Belfast Port, private shore excursion tours depart directly from Victoria Terminal — the Giant's Causeway and Dark Hedges combination is the standard cruise-day itinerary
• For the complete city experience, the Glass of Thrones walking tour covers all six Tourism Ireland stained-glass windows in Belfast city centre — works as a first or last day activity
• Base yourself in Belfast city centre: most shared tours depart from Great Victoria Street or Donegall Road; the Titanic Quarter (AC Hotel) is ideal for Glass of Thrones fans
• Best season: June through August for maximum daylight and tour frequency; September–October for smaller crowds and better photography light at the Dark Hedges and Causeway

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