From Budapest to the Liwa Desert: The filming locations of Dune: Part Three

Principal photography began on July 8, 2025, at Origo Film Studios in Budapest, Hungary – the same facility used for both Dune and Dune: Part Two. Origo is one of Central Europe's largest studio complexes, with twelve soundstages spread across a 100,000 square metre site. For the Dune films, director Denis Villeneuve has consistently used Budapest as the place where interior Arrakeen architecture, the Imperial Court, and the more controlled, political spaces of the story are built and filmed.

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In August 2025, the Abu Dhabi Film Commission confirmed that filming would take place in Liwa Oasis during the latter stages of the year. The Liwa Oasis sits at the northern edge of the Rub' al Khali – the Empty Quarter, the largest continuous sand desert in the world. The dunes here reach heights of over 300 metres. The light at dawn and dusk is not the orange-red of most desert environments but something more complex – shifting, golden, occasionally bleached near-white. Nothing about it looks constructed. Nothing about it looks like Earth, while being entirely of it.

The Liwa Desert and the wider Rub' al Khali have appeared in previous Dune films, alongside Wadi Rum in Jordan, which provided the red rock canyon landscapes used for several earlier Arrakeen sequences.

Filming wrapped in November 2025.

Dune: Part Three opens in cinemas on December 18, 2026.