Sumgayit: Azerbaijan's third city, 40 minutes up the Caspian coast
Sumgayit · about 40 minutes from Baku
Sumgayit is Azerbaijan's third-largest city, on the Caspian coast about 35 km north of Baku. Built out as a Soviet industrial centre and granted city status in 1949, it is a working city rather than a sightseeing stop, with a renovated seafront boulevard. It entered Japanese travel searches in 2025 as one of the eight regions Baku Media Center named for the filming of VIVANT season two.
- Region
- Sumgayit
- From Baku
- 35 km · about 40 minutes
- Best season
- Spring to autumn
- Time to spend
- 1 to 2 hours
- The renovated Caspian seafront boulevard, the city's main public space
- A planned Soviet industrial city of the late 1940s, read best as living history rather than a monument
- One of the eight regions Baku Media Center named for the VIVANT season two shoot
- 35 km from Baku, which makes it the easiest of the eight filming regions to reach
Sumgayit is the page on this site we can write only by lowering the brochure voice. It is Azerbaijan's third-largest city, 35 km up the Caspian coast from Baku, and it exists because Soviet planners in the late 1940s needed a chemical and metallurgical centre near the capital. City status came in 1949. Nobody routes a holiday through it for its monuments, and we will not pretend otherwise. Two things still put it on this site: a seafront that locals genuinely use, and a Japanese TV drama.
What is there to see?
The renovated seafront boulevard is the reason to get out of the car. It runs along the Caspian with the usual furniture of a post-2010 Azerbaijani public space: promenades, playgrounds, tea houses, and locals in numbers on summer evenings. Around it sits the city itself, a grid of planned Soviet blocks that reads as living history if industrial urbanism interests you, and as background if it does not. An hour or two covers it.
Sumgayit and VIVANT
Sumgayit is one of the eight regions that Baku Media Center, the partner that handled filming permits and logistics for VIVANT season two, named when the shoot wrapped (reported by Report.az and Trend.az on 15 November 2025). The announcement names regions, not buildings.
For episode 1, the Japanese fan location database location.la.coocan.jp pinned two scenes to this area with coordinates: the road the bus carrying Nogi and Drum travels, on the Caspian coast north of Baku, and the spot where Nogi and Drum capture Ali, in Sumgayit itself. Those are fan identifications, not production statements. Our episode tracker records each claim with its source, week by week, and the filming regions map has the distances for all eight regions.
That makes Sumgayit an oddity among the eight: one of the few regions with a published scene identification, and at the same time the least touristed of them all. If you want to stand where a scene was shot rather than in a landmark that appears in promotional footage, this is currently one of the better-evidenced places to do it.
Birtour is not affiliated with TBS, with the VIVANT production committee, or with the travel companies selling packaged VIVANT departures. We are a destination management company based in Baku.
How do you visit?
From Baku it is about 40 minutes by car on the coastal highway, and suburban trains run through the day. On our ten-day tour covering all eight filming regions, Sumgayit comes on day 3, passed on the route north toward Guba rather than held for a full day. The four-day tour runs west to Shamakhi and Sheki and does not reach it. Independent visitors can treat it as a half-day trip from Baku at most; combining it with the road north makes more sense than a dedicated outing.
- Is Sumgayit worth visiting as a tourist?
- Be honest with your expectations. Sumgayit is a working industrial city, not a sightseeing destination, and no guidebook pretends otherwise. What it offers is a renovated Caspian seafront boulevard, the texture of a planned Soviet city of the late 1940s, and, since 2025, a place in the VIVANT season two filming map. It is 40 minutes from Baku, so seeing it costs little time.
- Where is Sumgayit?
- On the Caspian coast about 35 km north of Baku, roughly a 40 minute drive. It is Azerbaijan's third-largest city after Baku and Ganja, and the closest of the eight VIVANT filming regions to the capital.
- Was VIVANT season 2 filmed in Sumgayit?
- Sumgayit is one of the eight regions Baku Media Center, the production partner for permits and logistics, named when filming wrapped in November 2025. For episode 1, the Japanese fan location database location.la.coocan.jp pinned two scenes to the area with coordinates: the coastal bus road north of Baku and the capture of Ali. Those are fan identifications, not production statements, and our episode tracker attributes each one.
- How do you get to Sumgayit from Baku?
- By car or taxi it is about 40 minutes on the coastal highway. Suburban trains also run between Baku and Sumgayit through the day. On our ten-day tour the city comes on day 3, passed on the route north; it is not a stop where a full day is spent.
- Which Birtour tour visits Sumgayit?
- The ten-day tour covering all eight filming regions passes Sumgayit on day 3, on the way north toward Guba. The four-day tour does not reach it: that route runs west to Shamakhi and Sheki and covers three of the eight regions.