Spoilers below.The game is far from over. Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon will continue for a fourth season on HBO—but it won’t premiere for another two years. HBO made the season 4 renewal announcement months ahead of the show’s season 3 summer 2026 premiere, further underscoring HBO’s ongoing commitment to the GoT fan base. (HBO has also renewed the upcoming GoT spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, for a second season.) The two shows “reveal just how expansive and richly imagined George R. R. Martin’s universe continues to be,” Francesca Orsi, head of HBO drama series and films, said in a statement.Here’s what we know so far about HotD chapter 4.Will this be the final season of House of the Dragon?We can’t be sure yet. On Nov. 20, 2025, during an HBO and HBO Max slate presentation, HBO chairman and CEO Casey Bloys shared that House of the Dragon has not definitively set an end date. “We generally try to leave it to the creators to make that decision,” he said. “We’ll work with them. Sometimes people will work through the season to feel like, does it come to a natural end? Does it not? So I don’t have updates for you on any of that. But when we do, I’ll let you know.”Showrunner Ryan Condal had previously shared, back in 2024, that the show would end with season 4. Per The Hollywood Reporter, when asked whether the prequel would continue for five seasons, Condal clarified, “No, I think it’s four.” (However, HBO had not officially announced a season 4 renewal at the time.)This aligns with what Martin himself predicted, Variety points out. Back in 2022, the author—whose book Fire & Blood serves as the source material for HoTD—wrote on his blog that it would take “four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do justice to the Dance of the Dragons, from start to finish.” Season 2, however, comprised eight episodes. Condal anticipates that “the cadence of the show, from a dramatic storytelling perspective, will continue to be the same from season 2 on.”Fire & Blood by George R. R. MartinFire & Blood by George R. R. MartinNow 50% OffDeadline previously reported in 2023 that the creative team saw the show running for three or four seasons. At the time, Condal and Martin, who is also an executive producer, had to “take a big-picture view of the series...and figure out the overall narrative flow, including how to break up the stories season-to-season and what battles to include and when,” co-editor-in-chief Nellie Andreeva wrote at the time. “With a portion of the plot originally intended for season 2, including a major battle, moving to season 3, I hear it is now more likely that the series would run for four seasons,” she added.The most recent update on the series ending with season 4 arrived on June 16, 2026. Condal confirmed in a press conference he, with the help of his creative team, is “actively writing” season 4 as the final season. “We’re as far ahead as we’ve ever been at this point in crafting a new season, while we’re still [delivering post-production on] the old one,” he said, noting that season 4 will be “the end,” and “the final act in a story we’ve been waiting to tell for many years.”Who will be in the season 4 cast?We won’t know until much closer to the show’s release date. But in the meantime, here’s the season 3 cast—whose characters survived the season—according to HBO: Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke, Steve Toussaint, Ewan Mitchell, Tom Glynn-Carney, Sonoya Mizuno, Bethany Antonia, Phoebe Campbell, Phia Saban, Matthew Needham, James Norton, Tom Bennett, Kieran Bew, Kurt Egyiawan, Freddie Fox, Clinton Liberty, Gayle Rankin, and Abubakar Salim.When will House of the Dragon season 4 premiere?Per HBO, season 4 will debut in 2028. Season 3 premiered in the summer of 2026.Is there a trailer?There is no trailer for season 4 yet, but fans can watch season 3 in its entirety while waiting. The season 3 finale airs on August 9.Watch House of the Dragon on MaxThis story has been updated.Additional reporting by Starr Bowenbank.