The Rings of Power Season 3 will film Rivendell scenes in Switzerland’s Lauterbrunnen Valley, showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con 2026. The valley is the same alpine setting Tolkien walked through as a 19-year-old in 1911, an experience he later credited as the direct inspiration for Imladris.
Tolkien himself made the connection explicit. In a 1967 letter to his son Michael (published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien), he wrote that Bilbo’s journey “from Rivendell to the other side of the Misty Mountains… is based on my adventures in 1911.” He described the group walking on foot, packs loaded, through mountain paths from Interlaken to Lauterbrunnen and on toward the head of the Lauterbrunnenthal. The valley’s sheer walls and its 72 waterfalls are unmistakably echoed in his 1937 painting of Rivendell, a composition of deep cliffs and cascading water that looks lifted straight from the Swiss Alps.
The name “Rivendell” itself carries the geography in it. It renders the Sindarin Imladris, “deep valley of the cleft” (from imlad, glen or deep valley, and rist, cleft or ravine), into the Westron tongue via the Old English roots riven (split) and dell (valley). The place was always, in Tolkien’s mind, defined by its topography: hidden, steep-sided, cut through by water.
In the lore, Elrond founded Imladris in the Second Age year 1697, retreating north with survivors from Eregion after Sauron’s forces destroyed that Elven realm. Season 3 picks up five years after the Fall of Eregion shown in Season 2, placing it right at the earliest days of the refuge’s existence. Sauron besieged the newly established valley but was forced to withdraw when Numenorean forces arrived. Elrond would hold Imladris for the next several thousand years, eventually becoming Gil-galad’s vice-regent in Eriador with the valley as his seat.
The SDCC panel was moderated by Benjamin Walker, who plays High King Gil-galad in the series, which gave the exchange a pleasantly self-aware quality. Payne and McKay confirmed on-location filming in Lauterbrunnen without specifying how much of Season 3 takes place there. The show has been guaranteed by Amazon through Season 5, and with Imladris still in its infancy at the Season 3 timeline, the production will likely have reason to return to Switzerland as the settlement grows.
Let’s see if this is something that Amazon and the lore-breakers at The Rings of Power can actually get right.
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Season 3 premieres on Prime Video on November 11.
