Game of Thrones season 7 release date, spoilers, cast and everything you need to know 

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​season seven. With the HBO hit\'s sixth run currently thrilling audiences, thoughts are inevitably turning to next year... and how much longer the fantasy epic can run.

episodes in the spring - so bar any major shift in the cabler\'s scheduling patterns, you can expect the next season in April 2017.

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​Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion), Lena Headey (Cersei), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau​ (Jaime) all reportedly signed up for a seventh season back in late 2014.

claimed that these five - plus Natalie Dormer (Margaery), Sophie Turner (Sansa) and Maisie Williams (Arya) - had inked new deals.

​ has an option on those actors - there\'s still no guarantee that their characters will actually survive that long.

Hence the long-running ambiguity surrounding Harington\'s involvement with the show, prior to Jon Snow\'s miraculous resurrection.

​its smash-hit series for a seventh year on April 21, 2016 - but declined to reveal how many episodes would make up the next run.

That reticence is interesting, since HBO\'s president of programming Michael Lombardo had previously indicated that 

"[Showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] are feeling there\'s probably two more years after season six, that\'s what we\'re looking at right now,​" he said in January.

Then, in April - shortly before word broke of the official renewal - reports suggested that the final two ​GoT seasons could span less than the standard 10 episodes.

The rumour? That the show will be on air for only seven weeks in 2017, while the final season will be comprised of just six episodes.

So far, this is all just talk, with no rock-solid confirmation. But comments attributed to Benioff and Weiss - suggesting that the show has \'10-15 hours of story\' left - would seem to suggest that these reports have some weight.

​ending: What will happen in the final episodes?

"We know what the end is, and we\'re barrelling towards it​," Benioff and Weiss said of what\'s sure to be the most highly scrutinised series finale since 

The tight-lipped pair haven\'t given any clue as to what that ending might entail - though George RR Martin has hinted at a "bittersweet ending" for his

books, which serves as the (increasingly loose) inspiration for

​books: What\'s going on with \'The Winds of Winter\'?

I have days where I make lots of progress, I have days where I make next to no progress," Martin told Digital Spy back in 2014, discussing his long-awaited next book, 

​has been in the works for several years now - before even the first episode of 

In January 2016, having missed a series of deadlines, Martin confirmed that the book wouldn\'t be published before the launch of season six of the TV series. And still we wait.

But it\'s not as simple as the TV series having \'caught up\' with the books. The show\'s uniquely fractured storytelling

means that while some plot strands - Jon Snow\'s, Tyrion\'s - have moved well beyond the novels, others have not.

There\'s still some Martin material that the show is yet to touch upon - Jaime making his way to Riverrun, the Ironborn setting sail to Mereen for a battle on the water​ - and some or all of this could potentially be included in a seventh season.

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​George RR Martin, ever the optimist, was bullish about the prospect of a ​

"There is certainly no lack of material," he said. "There are eight million stories in Westeros as well… and even more in Essos and the lands beyond. A whole world full of stories, waiting to be told… If indeed HBO is interested."

​running for as long as possible – is surely interested. But showrunners Benioff and Weiss have apparently ruled out any extension of the franchise – at least, they wouldn\'t be involved in any such project.

"At a certain point, especially if it\'s a serialised story, it falls apart and loses its heat and its momentum - because there\'s a carrying capacity even a world the size of ours has," Weiss said.

"When you reach that carrying capacity and you try to push it further, people start to wonder when this is going to be over and hope that it will be over soon so they can move onto the next thing. That\'s not what we ever wanted."

So no small-screen spinoff - but there has been talk about a 

​movie. And we\'ll give you one guess who\'s been doing most of the talking.

"It might need a feature to tie things up," George RR Martin said back in March 2014. "Something with a feature budget, like $100 million for two hours. Those dragons get real big, you know..."

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