Every season, a handful of productions do something more than entertain — they sear a particular place into the viewer’s mind, one that’s impossible to shake.
Set-jetting — traveling to the locations where films and TV series were shot — has turned into a global phenomenon, drawing millions of travelers every year.
Dubrovnik, for instance, has never been the same since Game of Thrones. Koh Samui’s hotels filled up the moment the third season of The White Lotus premiered.
The pattern repeats with every major production, and this year brings a particularly strong slate for those who travel with one eye on the screen.
These are the films and series worth traveling for in 2026.
1- The White Lotus: Season 4 on the French Riviera, 2027
The fourth season of The White Lotus has a confirmed location: the French Riviera, with filming underway since spring 2026 in Saint-Tropez, Cannes, and Monaco.
According to the official synopsis, the season is set during the Cannes Film Festival, against a backdrop of glamour, artistic pretension, and the contradictions of celebrity culture.
Two hotels in the region serve as fictional White Lotus properties: the Airelles Château de la Messardière, a 19th-century palace converted into an 86-room hotel in Saint-Tropez, and the Hotel Martinez de Cannes, an Art Deco icon that opened in 1929.
The cast includes Steve Coogan, Vincent Cassel, and Rosie Pérez, among others. No release date has been confirmed, but based on the timeline of previous seasons, 2027 is the most likely window.
2- The Odyssey: Greece, Morocco, Italy, and Iceland, July 2026
Christopher Nolan’s new film adapts the epic poem attributed to Homer, with a $250 million budget, the largest of his career.
Filming ran from February to August 2025, with locations spanning the United Kingdom, Morocco, and Italy.
The full list also includes Greece, Scotland, Iceland, and Western Sahara, reflecting a commitment to practical effects over digital ones, a philosophy that shaped every location choice.
In Greece, the production used the landscapes of Pylos, the Castle of Methoni, and Voidokilia Beach to conjure the story’s ancient Mediterranean world.
The Italian island of Favignana — traditionally identified as the place where Homer set Odysseus’s arrival with his crew — is also among the filming locations.
Matt Damon plays Odysseus; Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, and Zendaya round out the cast. The film is set to open worldwide on July 17, 2026, in IMAX and 70mm.
3- House of the Dragon, Season 3: Wales and England, June 2026
The third season of House of the Dragon arrives on HBO in June 2026.
Filming began in March 2025 at Leavesden Studios in Watford and wrapped in October of that year.
The production also shot on location in northern Wales during the summer of 2025, including Beaumaris Pier on Anglesey, the Craig Yr Undeb rock formation in Gwynedd, and Llyn Ffynnon Llugwy, within Eryri National Park (Snowdonia).
Unlike previous seasons, which were shot in Spain and Portugal, this season was filmed entirely in the United Kingdom.
The slate landscapes and cliffs of Wales — which had already stood in for the ruins of Harrenhal — once again take center stage in a season that promises the aerial battles the story has been working toward for years.
4- Bridgerton, Season 4: Historic Mansions of England, January 2026
The highly anticipated fourth season of Bridgerton was filmed at some of England’s oldest properties, many of which remain open to the public.
Ham House, the 17th-century mansion on the banks of the Thames in Richmond, Surrey, was used to depict the Bridgerton home, Penwood House, and the famous masquerade ball where Benedict meets the mysterious Lady in Silver — for which a pergola was specially built on the south terrace.
Loseley Park — a 16th-century Tudor mansion in Surrey set within a walled garden of more than a thousand rose bushes — serves as the protagonist’s country retreat. The property is open to the public during the summer and also offers overnight stays in its estate cottages.
Hampton Court Palace, the historic palace of Henry VIII, returns as the residence of Queen Charlotte. The complete season has been available to stream on Netflix since February 2026.
5- Citadel, Season 2: London, Slovenia, and Valencia, May 2026
The second season of the espionage thriller produced by the Russo brothers spans three locations, each with a distinctly different visual identity: historic British architecture, the Alpine mountains of Slovenia, and contemporary Valencia.
In England, the production used the Great Court of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire — the birthplace of Winston Churchill and one of the country’s most imposing Baroque complexes — for sequences requiring dramatic entrances and sweeping wide shots.
In Slovenia, filming concentrated on the Kanin Mountains, the Kobarid region, and Lake Bled for high-altitude scenes.
Valencia completes the contrast: the City of Arts and Sciences provided its signature glass-and-water architecture, lending the thriller an almost futuristic atmosphere, while the old town served as a backdrop for sequences tied to the Fallas festival.
All seven episodes premiered on Prime Video on May 6, 2026.
6- Dune: Prophecy, Season 2: Jordan, Hungary, and Spain, 2026
The second season of Dune: Prophecy — the prequel series set 10,000 years before the events of Paul Atreides’ story — began filming in late 2025 in Hungary, Jordan, and Spain, with a 2026 premiere on HBO and Max.
Jordan had already served as a filming location for both of Villeneuve’s Dune films, where the deserts of Wadi Rum stood in for the planet Arrakis.
The return is no coincidence. Jordan offers one of the most extreme and visually distinctive landscapes on Earth, and the production is back for a clear reason: to preserve the visual coherence of a universe that has made the desert one of its signatures.
At its core, set-jetting isn’t all that different from any other kind of purposeful travel.
The difference is that a screen does something a guidebook cannot: it shows how light falls on a place at a given hour, what the wind sounds like, what the horizon looks like from that exact angle.
Viewers arrive at a destination with a picture already in their heads — and what they are looking for, consciously or not, is confirmation that the place exists outside the frame.
Sometimes they find it. Sometimes they find something better.
