Winter is coming. Next summer. 

Winter is coming. Next summer. 

HBO announced Monday that the next season of Game of Thrones will be premiering a little later than usual in 2017, and it will have fewer episodes than usual. The show begins filming its highly anticipated seventh season later this summer, and debut on HBO in summer of 2017. Traditionally the show has aired on HBO beginning in March or April. This year it began on April 24.

HBO's programming president Casey Bloys explained in a news release that it the weather of the real world is partially the cause of the scheduling shift. 

“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,” he said. “Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule.”

The season will also only have seven episodes, a departure from the show's usual 10. 

Thrones saw major developments in its sixth season, the first to truly outpace George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire book series. The explosive finale left many questions on fans' minds about where the show will go from here. Martin's next book in the series, The Winds of Winter, has no release date as of yet. He wrote earlier this year on his personal blog that the book would be delayed. 

The show, meanwhile, received 23 Emmy nominations last week, including best drama series and acting nominations for stars Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, Maisie Williams and Max von Sydow.