With it having been rumoured and teased previously, it’s now been officially confirmed that Game of Thrones’ eighth (and final!) season will consist of just six episodes.

Speaking at this past weekend’s SXSW (as per EW), executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss discussed the topic, with Benioff explaining, “It’s only going to be six episodes for the final season. From the beginning we’ve wanted to tell a 70-hour movie. It will turn out to be a 73-hour movie, but it’s staying relatively the same of having beginning, middle and now we’re coming to the end. It would have been really tough if we lost any core cast members along the way, I’m very happy we’ve kept everyone and we get to finish it the way we want to.”

Ruling them out of returning for the long-rumoured prequel/spinoff series, Benioff added, “I think HBO might well do and I look forward to watching it and I think it it’ll be great, but I think they should get new blood in.”

Additionally, one other noteworthy detail from this past weekend was the reveal that Ed Sheeran will have a surprise cameo in the upcoming seventh season – something which the show has reportedly tried to put together for a while now in order to surprise Maisie Williams. 

Before Season 8’s six-episode run, of course, comes that seventh season, which is made up of seven episodes and will debut on July 16th.