Fans may have had to wait a lot longer for the upcoming seventh season of Game of Thrones but your patience will be rewarded as the opening episode is set to be the longest season premiere since the show began.

It will clock in at 59 minutes, which with ads should make for almost an hour 20 minutes running time when it goes out on HBO and Sky Atlantic.

The length is only beaten by the very first episode which was 62 minutes long.

It also bodes well that the rest of the episodes in the season will be longer, which should go some way in making up for the fact that we only have seven episodes as opposed to the normal ten per season.

Catch the season 7 premiere on July 17th on Sky Atlantic.