‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 7 Release Date Leaked? Liam Cunningham Hints At Possible Summer Premiere

Winter is coming — but when? “Game of Thrones” fans have been asking this question since Season 6 came to a close in June 2016.

While the wait isn’t officially over, we may finally have a clue as to when Season 7 of the HBO original will premiere. “Game of Thrones” star Liam Cunningham opened up about the season premiere during a chat with The Independent. According to their conversation, the show “was meant to come out in April,” but things changed.

“I’ve been disappointing various people around the world because it was meant to come out in April. It’s July now, I think,” Cunningham said.

The actor, who plays Ser Davos on “Game of Thrones,” confirmed the penultimate season will be seven episodes. He told The Independent that after Season 7 wraps, he and his co-stars will get right back to work. Filming for Season 8 of “Game of Thrones” is reportedly set to begin in the fall.

“There’s going to be a launch and something special happening this year for the premiere,” he told The Independent. “The bad news is, there will only be seven episodes and the [filming for the] final season starts again as far as I know in September.”

Cunningham is the first “Game of Thrones” star to allude to a Season 7 premiere date. Previous rumors that the show was coming back to HBO in June started after a mysterious post appeared on IMDb. The Sun reported that the site listed June 25 as the air date for Season 7, episode 1.

Thronies first learned that the show would be returning later than normal in July 2016. HBO sent out a press release confirming that filming would begin late that summer in Northern Ireland, Iceland, Spain and other locations. The statement chalked the late start in production up to climate change.

“Now that winter has arrived on ‘Game of Thrones,’ executive producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss felt that the storylines of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing,” Casey Bloys, president of HBO programming said. “Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule.”

HBO has yet to confirm a release date for Season 7 of “Game of Thrones.”