Where Was Star Wars Filmed? (Complete Location Guide for Every Film)

The Short Answer

Star Wars has been filmed at more than 30 real-world locations across 12 countries. The shorthand cheat sheet:

Plus every interior shot in every Star Wars film since 1977 has been filmed at a UK studio: EMI Elstree (original trilogy), Leavesden (prequels), and Pinewood (sequels and Disney+ era).

Tatooine — Filmed in Tunisia

The desert planet Tatooine is the most-filmed location in Star Wars, appearing in A New Hope, Return of the Jedi, The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith, The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Most Tatooine exteriors were filmed in Tunisia:

The planet got its name from Tataouine, a real city in southern Tunisia where George Lucas scouted in 1976. He simply transliterated the French spelling — Tataouine → Tatooine.

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For A New Hope, Death Valley, California was also used for Tatooine — the canyon where Luke flees the Tusken Raiders and the Jawa sandcrawler scenes.

Hoth — Filmed in Norway

The ice planet Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back was filmed at Finse, Norway, in March 1979. Finse sits at 1,222 meters above sea level on the Hardangerjøkulen glacier and is only accessible by train.

• Temperature during shoot: as low as -30°C
• Mark Hamill's frostbite-risk scene: the opening attack by the Wampa was filmed outside the Hotel Finse 1222
• AT-AT battle plates: filmed on the open glacier with the snow walkers added later

Today, Finse is a Star Wars pilgrimage site. The Hotel Finse 1222 still hosts fans, and a small museum displays original production photos.

Endor — Northern California Redwoods

The forest moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi (1983) was filmed in the redwood forests of Northern California:

• Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park (near Crescent City) — most of the forest backgrounds
• Smith River National Recreation Area — the Ewok village location
• Grizzly Creek Redwoods State Park (Humboldt County) — the famous speeder bike chase, achieved by mounting cameras on a Steadicam operator running through the forest

A 1987 windstorm damaged much of the original filming area, but the protected park is still accessible to visitors today.

Yavin 4 — Tikal, Guatemala

The Rebel base on Yavin 4 in the closing act of A New Hope (1977) was filmed at Tikal, the ancient Mayan ruins in northern Guatemala. The shots of the Massassi Temple were captured atop Temple IV, the tallest pyramid at Tikal.

George Lucas chose Tikal specifically because the temple ruins rising above the jungle canopy gave Yavin 4 an immediate sense of ancient mystery — no set could match it.

Naboo and Geonosis — Italy and Spain

The prequel trilogy expanded Star Wars's location filming significantly:

Naboo (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith)

Geonosis (Attack of the Clones)

The Geonosis execution arena was a mix of Plaza de España in Seville (architectural backgrounds) and CGI extensions from ILM. The interior of the droid factory was all soundstage work at Fox Studios Australia.

Ahch-To — Skellig Michael, Ireland

Luke Skywalker's hidden island in The Force Awakens (2015) and The Last Jedi (2017) was filmed at Skellig Michael, a UNESCO World Heritage Site island 11.6 km off the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, Ireland.

• The 6th-century stone beehive huts at the summit are the real inspiration for the Jedi temple structure
• Filming required helicopter access and was strictly limited to protect the island's puffin colonies
• Additional Ahch-To exteriors were filmed at Malin Head (County Donegal) and Brow Head (County Cork) when weather prevented helicopter access

Skellig Michael had a major tourism boom after The Force Awakens — visitor numbers tripled the year the film opened.

Crait — Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

The salt-and-red-crystal world of Crait in The Last Jedi (2017) was inspired by — and partly shot on — the Salar de Uyuni in southwestern Bolivia. The world's largest salt flat (10,582 km²) provided the white surface that crackles open to red mineral when the AT-M6 walkers march across it.

Most of the Crait sequence was completed on Pinewood soundstages with the real Salar de Uyuni used for plate photography.

Jedha and Pasaana — Wadi Rum, Jordan

The Jordanian desert of Wadi Rum has done double Star Wars duty:

• Jedha in Rogue One (2016) — the desert moon home to the holy city and Saw Gerrera's partisans
• Pasaana in The Rise of Skywalker (2019) — the Festival of the Ancestors desert

Wadi Rum's massive red-sandstone canyons and dune fields also doubled as Mars in The Martian (2015) and several scenes in Dune (2021). It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Maldives also stood in for some establishing plates of Jedha city.

Eadu and Lah'mu — Iceland

Rogue One used Iceland for two key planets:

• Eadu — the rain-soaked Imperial research facility where Galen Erso is killed. Filmed at Mýrdalssandur and Hjörleifshöfði, a glacial outwash plain on Iceland's south coast.
• Lah'mu — the volcanic black-sand farm where young Jyn Erso lives. Filmed at Reynisfjara black sand beach and the surrounding volcanic landscape.

Iceland's volcanic terrain has since become a regular Star Wars stand-in for hostile, primordial worlds.

Where Was Star Wars Filmed in the UK?

Every Star Wars film since 1977 has been filmed at a UK studio. Interiors, sets, and CGI-heavy sequences are all built on UK soundstages:

This UK production lineage is why so many British actors appear in Star Wars — and why Lucasfilm's London office (Lucasfilm Ltd.) is the operational headquarters for the franchise.

Filming the Disney+ Era — "The Volume" Changes Everything

The Mandalorian (2019) introduced StageCraft, ILM's massive LED-wall video stage at Manhattan Beach Studios in California. Rather than location filming, the show projects pre-rendered environments on 270-degree LED walls around the actors.

This means The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and parts of Obi-Wan Kenobi are filmed mostly inside a single soundstage in Los Angeles — with location plate photography from Iceland, Utah, and California composited into the LED backgrounds.

Notable exception: *Andor* (2022, 2025) deliberately rejected The Volume in favor of traditional location filming across:

• Cleveleys, England (Niamos beach)
• Little Marlow, England (Aldhani heist set)
• Lanzarote, Spain (the Ghorman massacre planet in Season 2)
• Pinewood Studios (interiors)

Star Wars Filming Locations You Can Visit Today

If you're planning a Star Wars location pilgrimage, here are the still-standing real-world sites:

Naming Characters in Real Star Wars Locations

If you're writing fan fiction or RPG characters tied to specific planets, the real-world location often inspires the linguistic register:

• Tunisia/Tatooine — Arabic, Berber, and North African phonetics (Tatooine, Jabba, Anchorhead)
• Norway/Hoth — short, cold-sounding Norse-influenced names
• Italy/Naboo — soft, vowel-heavy, Latinate names (Padmé, Naberrie, Theed)
• Ireland/Ahch-To — Gaelic-rooted names with rolled consonants
• Jordan/Jedha — Arabic and Aramaic-rooted names (Jedha itself echoes Judea)

Our generators and guides cover this regional logic:

• Star Wars Planet Name Generator and the Planet Name Ideas Guide
• Tatooine-style Names — Star Wars Last Names Guide
• Naboo-era Female Names Guide
• Complete Star Wars Naming Guide

The Bottom Line

Star Wars has been filmed in 12+ countries across 30+ real-world locations — with Tunisia, Norway, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Jordan, Iceland, Guatemala, Bolivia, and the United States providing the iconic outdoor planets, and UK studios (Elstree, Leavesden, Pinewood) providing every interior since 1977.

The Disney+ era has shifted much of the live-action production into LED-stage volumes in California, but the films and shows that go on location — Rogue One, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, and Andor — continue to use the same global filming map that George Lucas first scouted in 1976.

If you can stand in Wadi Rum at sunset, you're standing where two different Star Wars planets were born. That's the magic of how this franchise gets made.