HBO's Harry Potter series (season 1, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone): release date, filming and the castles of the original films (Alnwick Castle, Hardwick Ha

Harry Potter Series (HBO): Premiering 25 December 2026, and the Film Castles to Revisit Before Hogwarts

HBO's Harry Potter series arrives on 25 December 2026 on HBO and HBO Max. Filmed mostly at the Leavesden studios, it revives interest in the real castles of the films: Alnwick, the early Hogwarts, and Hardwick Hall, the Malfoy manor.

Editorial journal · Carte des Châteaux · 10 November 2026

Séries

Twenty-five years after the first film, Hogwarts reopens its doors on television. HBO has confirmed that the first season of its Harry Potter series, adapted from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, will premiere on 25 December 2026 on HBO and HBO Max, earlier than the long-announced 2027 window. As with the films, the series is shot mainly at the Warner Bros. studios in Leavesden, north-west of London. The real filming locations remain little documented for now, so in the meantime here are the castles and historic houses that lent their faces to the wizarding world on screen.

The Film Location, the Real Castle

Hogwarts (Films 1 and 2)

Alnwick Castle, Northumberland

Malfoy Manor (Deathly Hallows)

Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

Northumberland · Alnwick

Alnwick Castle

Overlooking the River Aln on the edge of the small town of Alnwick, in Northumberland, Alnwick Castle is one of the largest inhabited fortresses in England. Its silhouette preserves the layout of a Norman motte-and-bailey castle with two baileys, wrapped in a powerful ring of medieval towers, while its interiors surprise with 19th-century Italian Renaissance decoration. Since 1309 the site has been inseparable from the Percy family, earls and later dukes of Northumberland, who still live there. A border stronghold facing Scotland in the Middle Ages and ruined by the 18th century, it was restored twice: first in a light Gothic taste by Robert Adam for the first duke, then, in the mid-19th century, by Anthony Salvin, who gave it back a more severe military appearance and created the great Prudhoe Tower housing the library. The Grade I listed monument is open to the public in season and hosts weddings and private receptions. It has also become a famous filming location: it served as Hogwarts in the first two Harry Potter films and as Brancaster Castle in the Downton Abbey Christmas episodes, not to mention Elizabeth and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

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Derbyshire · Ault Hucknall

Hardwick Hall

Hardwick Hall stands on an escarpment in eastern Derbyshire, not far from the M1 motorway, at the heart of a National Trust estate. It is one of the most spectacular Elizabethan houses in England, designed in the 1590s for Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, better known as Bess of Hardwick, one of the richest and most ambitious women of her time. The house is striking for the scale of its windows, so vast that the phrase "more glass than wall" has stuck to it. Its six towers, topped by openwork balustrades, bear the initials "ES" of the woman who commissioned it in stone letters. Inside, the Long Gallery, the great staircase and the State Bedchamber preserve an exceptional collection of tapestries, embroideries and furniture, part of which already appears in the inventory drawn up in 1601. A short distance away stand the ruins of the Old Hall, the family home that Bess enlarged before building the new house. Owned by the Cavendish family, Dukes of Devonshire, for more than three centuries, Hardwick was handed over to the National Trust in 1958 and opened to the public in 1959.

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