In a nutshell:
Mike White’s sun-soaked satire is gearing up for its return – in a new location, at a new set of hotels and with a fresh cast, of course. Here’s absolutely everything we know so far about The White Lotus’s upcoming fourth season.
Where will The White Lotus season four be set?
On 4 September 2025, Deadline reported that the production had settled on France as next season’s location. Now, it’s been confirmed that the two hotels taking centre stage will be the Château de La Messardière in Saint-Tropez, as the White Lotus du Cap, and the Hôtel Martinez as the White Lotus Cannes. The former is a 19th-century palace-turned-luxury hotel set within 32 acres of parasol pines, cypress trees and jasmine, and offering five restaurants, a spa and beach access by Rolls-Royce transfer.
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Meanwhile, the latter is a celebrity hotspot with a glittering history, which is packed to the rafters during the Cannes Film Festival every year.
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As with previous seasons, other locations and properties will be featured, too, with some scenes set to be filmed at Hôtel Lutetia in Paris, though the new instalment will mainly unfold along the French Riviera.
Who will be in the cast of The White Lotus season four?
On 29 January, Deadline confirmed that none other than Helena Bonham Carter would be taking a starring role. Then, on 24 April, it emerged that the actor had departed the project just over a week after filming kicked off. “It had become apparent that the character which Mike White created for Helena Bonham Carter did not align once on set,” an HBO spokesperson told Deadline. “The role has subsequently been rethought, is being rewritten and will be recast in the coming weeks. HBO, the producers and Mike White are saddened that they won’t get to work with her, but remain ardent fans and very much hope to work with the legendary actress on another project soon.” Sources added that “as production started and Carter shot her first scenes, White felt that her character as originally conceived was not what it should be. With the role believed to be central to the season four story, a decision was made to rework it and recast it.”
Four days on, the production team found a replacement: White’s longtime friend and collaborator Laura Dern. Per Deadline, the Oscar winner “will play a new character, which is being developed and written for her by White.” The pair previously co-created HBO’s Enlightened, and Dern also starred in White’s directorial debut, Year of the Dog. (True fans will also know that Dern has appeared in The White Lotus before, making an uncredited voice-only cameo as the furious estranged wife of Michael Imperioli’s Dominic Di Grasso in season two.)
Joining Dern will be Heather Graham, Steve Coogan, Vincent Cassel, Rosie Perez, Kumail Nanjiani, Chris Messina, Laura Smet, New Girl’s Max Greenfield, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story’s Ari Graynor, Marty Supreme’s Sandra Bernhard, The Madison’s Ben Schnetzer, The Last Kingdom’s Tobias Santelmann, Vikings: Valhalla’s Frida Gustavsson, Vikings’s Alexander Ludwig, The Goldbergs’s AJ Michalka, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Chloe Bennet, Yes Man’s Jarrad Paul, and newcomers Caleb Jonte Edwards, Charlie Hall, Corentin Fila, Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Marissa Long and Dylan Ennis.
Alongside them, Ben Kingsley, Industry’s Max Minghella and Finnish actor Pekka Strang will lend support in recurring parts. There are also a few major White Lotus players who could return. These include two key survivors (spoiler alert): Jon Gries’s Greg, who we last saw sipping a drink in his mansion following the bloodshed of the season three finale, and Natasha Rothwell’s newly rich Belinda who may or may not now be opening her own spa (and her hot son, Zion, as played by Nicholas Duvernay, too). I for one would love to see where they wind up.
What will be the plot of The White Lotus season four?
Per Variety, the premise of the new season is as follows: “In Cannes, two rival film teams descend upon the Cannes Film Festival with movies in competition and something to prove. One camps out at a flashy, palatial hotel on the Croisette, while the other is ensconced in a luxurious hilltop hideaway.” Executive producer David Bernad recently added to this, saying: “Early on, Mike talked about wanting to do season four as the life of an artist – the loneliness and the pain. That’s a throughline that runs throughout the season. As we located the show at the Cannes Film Festival, this idea of fame popped up, and who has the world’s attention? Who can grab it, and who is the plus-one in a relationship? What are the things that satisfy us? Is it the love of an intimate partner, the love of strangers? What do we prioritise in people?” This instalment will track the characters as they navigate “the ups and downs of the festival and the pain of being here and the love and excitement of being here.” Bring it on.
Who will be behind the scenes on The White Lotus season four?
White, naturally, but another beloved behind-the-scenes fixture crucially won’t be: Cristobal Tapia de Veer, the show’s revered, three-time Emmy-winning composer, who created that iconic “ooh-loo-loo-loo” melody in the opening credits which went onto become a remixed club hit. On 2 April 2025, he told The New York Times that his working relationship with White had been a “struggle” from the very beginning, and that during the making of season three they had their “last fight forever” and decided to part ways.
White responded on Howard Stern, saying of his collaborator: “I don’t think I ever had a fight with him – except for maybe some emails. It was basically me giving him notes. I don’t think he liked to go through the process of getting notes from me, or wanting revisions, because he didn’t respect me. I knew he wasn’t a team player and that he wanted to do it his way. I was thrown that he would go to The New York Times to shit on me and the show three days before the finale. It was kind of a bitch move. By the time the third season came around, he’d won Emmys and he had his song go viral, he didn’t want to go through the process with me, he didn’t want to go to sessions. He would always look at me with this contemptuous smirk on his face like he thought I was a chimp or something… he’s definitely making a big deal out of a creative difference.”
Regardless, this loss will certainly be a big blow to the series, which is remembered for that hair-raising theme tune as much as it is the plot twists and all-star casts. And it’s anyone’s guess what the new White Lotus opening music might sound like.
When will The White Lotus season four be released?
Filming has now begun and will continue until the end of October 2026. With this timeline in mind, and given that there was a more-than-two-year gap between season two and three, it seems likely that the next instalment will arrive in 2027 at the earliest.
Will there be more seasons of The White Lotus after season four?
Probably. In a Deadline interview, HBO’s Francesca Orsi, the executive who oversees the network’s drama slate, said of White: “I imagine he is going to go beyond four. He hasn’t confirmed it, but I think he has more to say than just one more season.”
Will there be an all-star edition of The White Lotus in the future?
Quite possibly. White has told The Hollywood Reporter that he’d “love” to do one, and Orsi has added: “I don’t think that’ll be season four, but that’s still on the horizon. It’s still in discussion but it’s too early.” Patrick Schwarzenegger, who played douchey big brother Saxon in the latest season, also revealed that White had floated the idea of bringing “all the douchiest guys together” from past seasons for a new instalment. (Just thinking of Saxon, Jake Lacy’s entitled Shane and Theo James’s tech bro Cameron in the same room sends shivers down my spine.)
An all-star season “would be cool”, continued White, though tricky from a scheduling standpoint “because all of these people end up becoming huge, huge stars. A lot of these kids that are easy to get are suddenly not so easy to get… but hopefully they’d come back.” For White, they surely would.
