It was finally announced last week that season seven would be arriving on our screens on July 16th (17th of July over here). We already knew that there would be only seven episodes for this season as opposed to the normal ten, while there were rumours that there would be even less in the final season.

Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have now confirmed that when speaking over the weekend at a fan event at SXSW in Texas: "It’s only going to be six episodes for the final season," Benioff said.

"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 stayed relatively the same of having the 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."

So there you have it. It's official - only thirteen more episodes of Game of Thrones left, and then it's done. In one way it's great they're not going to drag it out until we don't care anymore, but still, what will we do without our annual visit to the Seven Kingdoms?

There are talks of spin-offs and prequel TV series' but Benioff and Weiss also confirmed at this event that they wouldn't be part of them: "I think HBO might well do [another series] and I look forward to watching it and I think it be great, but I think they should get new blood in," Benioff said.

For the moment anyways we still have season seven to look forward to, which as we said, you can catch on Sky Atlantic on July 17th.