Season six of Game of Thrones reached HBO a little later than expected this year, and based on comments from showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, it appears as if a production delay will create an even bigger wait come 2017. Apparently, the fact that "Winter is here" means they're having to wait until the weather worsens in order to capture that convincingly in the show from this stage.
"We don't have an air date yet," they confirmed during a recent UFC podcast appearance (via THR). "We're starting a bit later because at the end of this season, 'Winter is here' — and that means that sunny weather doesn't really serve our purposes any more. So we kind of pushed everything down the line, so we could get some grim, gray weather even in the sunnier places that we shoot."
Game of Thrones season seven still doesn't have an official episode count, but chances are that it will be only seven or eight episodes instead of the normal ten. We'll just have to wait and see for now!