VIVANT season two filming locations by episode: what is identified so far, and by whom

VIVANT season two premiered on TBS on 26 July 2026, in the Sunday Theater slot at 21:00 JST. This page tracks, episode by episode, which scenes have been tied to which locations in Azerbaijan, and by whom. We are Birtour, a destination management company based in Baku; the eight regions the production partner named are roads and towns we drive every season.

Two dates govern this page and they are deliberately separate. The episode identifications below carry a source-sweep date of 22 August 2026, when four episodes had aired. The visiting logistics, meaning fares, opening hours, gate prices and access, were re-checked on 11 August 2026. We would rather show you two honest dates than one flattering one, and where a section has not been re-swept we say so in the section itself.

One ground rule before the tables. The only location list issued by anyone who worked on the production is the eight regions that Baku Media Center, the partner that handled filming permits and logistics, named when the shoot wrapped: Baku, Sumgayit, Ganja, Nakhchivan, Shamakhi, Gabala, Sheki and Guba (reported by Report.az and Trend.az on 15 November 2025, checked by us most recently on 22 August 2026). Every building-level identification circulating so far comes from media, travel companies or fan sites, so every row below names who made the claim. One item from the latest sweep sits between those tiers: the fan database loca.ash.jp writes that the on-air broadcast credits list Baku Media Center and Azerbaijan's State Tourism Agency among the production cooperators. Verified against the credits themselves that would be TBS-material-tier corroboration; reported by a fan database, it stays at fan tier, and we file it accordingly. For the geography, distances and drive times of the eight regions, see the filming regions map; we will not repeat that table here.

The scale of the shoot is on the record. Masaaki Sasaki, a journalist writing as a Yahoo News expert contributor, reported on 24 July 2026 that filming ran roughly two months from August 2025 across eight locations in Azerbaijan, with the Ministry of Culture, local administration and police giving what he quotes as full support, and Baku Media Center as the local production partner.

Why every row on this page names who identified it

Because the gap between "a production partner said so" and "a fan matched a frame" is the entire value of a page like this, and most of what circulates online collapses the two. One production-sourced list exists and it names regions. Everything else is an inference by a named party, at a known date, and you deserve to see which.

The practical use is simple. If you are building a trip around a scene, a coordinate-backed fan identification is worth a detour; a travel company's itinerary label is worth a shrug.

Which locations appear in the trailers and promo material?

Six have been publicly matched, by five different parties, and none of the matches is a production statement. Travel companies and media tied several places to the released footage before the premiere, each using its own labels. As of our 22 August 2026 sweep no source we found had broken the opening title sequence down shot by shot; that is a gap in the coverage, not evidence the locations are elsewhere.

We run two tours. The ten-day grand tour reaches all eight regions with a Japanese-speaking guide; the four-day tour covers Baku, Shamakhi and Sheki with an English-speaking guide. The tables below give the day on each, separately, for every location that has been identified.

Three notes on that table. Khizi district, where the Candy Cane Mountains stand, is not one of the eight regions Baku Media Center named; our day 3 route from Baku to Guba passes through it. Goal.com Japan's premiere-day roundup lists the Baku Metro as a filming site but explicitly hedges one Caspian coast spot as presumed. And fan blogs stretch the map further: nao-blog1224.com matched official X posts and broadcast footage against street-level imagery to propose the mountain road toward Khinalig in the Guba region (day 3 on our tour), a restaurant scene inside what it reads as the Baku Media Center building (an office, not a visitable sight), and a 12th-century fortress establishing shot whose name is garbled in the source and stays unverified; mizubuta.com flags a derelict stretch of Caspian shoreline as atmosphere-based speculation only. Read that whole paragraph as the lightest tier of evidence on this page.

The buildings themselves have their own pages: the Sheki Caravanserai, the Palace of the Shirvanshahs and the Old City, plus a practical guide to riding the Baku Metro.

Episode 1 (aired 26 July 2026)

Three scenes have published identifications and the rest have none. Japanese coverage numbers this episode 11, continuing season one's count. The premiere drew an 18.8% household rating, 12.1% individual, with a peak of 19.4%, the strongest start of any commercial-network drama this summer quarter (Sponichi Annex, 27 July 2026; figures by Video Research, Kanto region). The story places the episode in Cyprus. The filming identifications point at Azerbaijan, and all three so far come from the fan location database location.la.coocan.jp, which publishes coordinates with each entry.

The airport row deserves its footnote. Sasaki's 27 July article points out that no "Cyprus International Airport" exists, reads the "Cyprus Souvenirs" shop sign as likely CGI, notes Turkish dialogue in the scene, and concludes the terminal is "probably" Heydar Aliyev International. That is a labeled inference arriving at the same answer as the fan database's coordinates, and neither is a production confirmation.

No other episode 1 scene had a published identification when we re-swept the sources on 22 August 2026. We would rather leave the row empty than guess.

Episode 2 (aired 2 August 2026)

Series episode 12. The rating held the summer-quarter lead at 16.4% household, 10.4% individual (Video Research, Kanto region; Oricon, 3 August 2026, with the same figures in MANTANWEB and Sponichi Annex), and Oricon reported #VIVANT as the top worldwide X trend for the second straight broadcast week. The story moved largely to Thailand this episode. The Azerbaijan identifications published so far are fan-database entries only, all in the Sumgayit and Baku area.

Two footnotes from cross-checking the second fan database, loca.ash.jp. It corroborates the Sumgayit cluster, listing a building in a Sumgayit park as Ali's residence and a seaside restaurant it calls West Port Restaurant, a name that conflicts with coocan's Buxara Bulvar; the two entries may describe the same venue or adjacent ones, and we print the conflict rather than pick a winner. It also files the premiere's airport, coastal-road and Sumgayit-capture trio under its episode 12 entry, where location.la.coocan.jp and this page file them under episode 11. We keep coocan's numbering and note the disagreement.

Episode 3 (aired 9 August 2026)

Series episode 13. The rating was 15.1% household, 9.7% individual (Video Research, Kanto region; MANTANWEB, 10 August 2026, with Sponichi Annex, Sanspo and Sports Hochi carrying the same figure), the lowest of the four so far but the third straight week above 15% household. This is the first episode with published Azerbaijan identifications beyond the Sumgayit and airport cluster, and the first where a travel-media outlet corroborates a fan identification: the ending in which Nozaki arrives in the story's Jerusalem.

The palace rows are still not production statements: a coordinate-backed fan entry that a second fan database and one travel-media compilation agree with is the strongest evidence tier any season 2 building has reached, and it remains inference. The palace has its own page: the Palace of the Shirvanshahs.

Episode 4 (aired 16 August 2026)

Series episode 14. The rating rebounded to 16.6% household, 10.8% individual (Video Research, Kanto region; Oricon via Yahoo News, 17 August 2026, with MANTANWEB and Sports Hochi in agreement), which makes the trajectory across episodes 11 to 14 read 18.8, 16.4, 15.1, 16.6, and Oricon reported #VIVANT as the top worldwide X trend for the fourth consecutive week. In the fan databases this is the heaviest Azerbaijan episode yet.

Two notes on that table. Mingachevir, like Khizi in the trailer table above, is not one of the eight regions Baku Media Center named, so that row stands outside the only production-sourced list and rests on the fan databases alone. And the media-tier location coverage of this episode was about Japan, not Azerbaijan: Shukan Josei PRIME relayed viewer complaints that Jerusalem scenes were shot in Gifu, and ENCOUNT reported viewers matching a Nozaki meeting to the Gifu Prefectural Government's 20th-floor observation lobby (both via Yahoo News, August 2026). That confirms the Jerusalem setting is partly shot in Japan, which is exactly why the Shirvanshahs' Palace rows stay labeled as inference rather than production fact.

Episode 5 and onward

Episode 5, series episode 15, airs on Sunday 23 August 2026 at 21:00 JST on TBS. This page adds a row when a party we can name publishes an identification we can attribute, and not before. On the run's length: TBS has announced a two-cour continuous run, unusual for the Sunday Theater slot, and has still published no final-episode date or episode count. Fan and explainer sites now float a December 2026 finale with candidate dates while stating themselves that nothing is announced, and we treat that as arithmetic, not a source. If you are looking for the current week's episode rather than the location record, TBS's own schedule is the right place, not us.

What counts as an identified location here?

A published claim by a party we can name, ranked by how close that party sat to the production. We rank the sources. At the top sits the production side's own statement, and there is exactly one: the eight-region list. Next comes TBS's released material itself, the trailers, announcement videos and official SNS footage. Below that, media reporting that matched footage to the ground (Yahoo News expert articles, BuzzFeed Japan, Goal.com Japan). Below that again, the location labels travel companies attach to their own itineraries and articles (Hankyu Travel, Tabicoffret, skyticket). At the bottom, frame-by-frame matching by fan sites. The "who identified it" column exists so you can see which rung each claim stands on. Who has published what, and on whose authority, is laid out on our VIVANT in Azerbaijan page; the geography lives on the filming regions map.

Can you actually visit these places?

Yes, and most of them cheaply. The Baku sites sit inside one district and a metro ride costs 0.60 AZN. Sheki is a 300 km drive and an overnight. Nakhchivan is a domestic flight. What follows is the practical layer, re-checked on 11 August 2026 against the operators' and reserves' own pages rather than against travel blogs.

The Baku metro, since it is on the list

A single ride is 0.60 AZN. That rate took effect on 1 October 2025, up from 0.50, so any guide still printing 0.50 was written before then, and a good deal of the Japanese-language coverage still does. The network runs 06:00 to midnight across three lines and 27 stations.

You pay one of two ways. A BakiKART is the rechargeable card, bought and topped up at machines inside every station, and it also works on BakuBus. A QR ticket has been accepted at every station and turnstile since 30 December 2023, which is the easier option for a short visit because it needs no card deposit. The full walkthrough, with the station names in Japanese and Azerbaijani, is on our Baku metro guide.

What the sites cost at the gate

Read on 10 August 2026 from the state reserves' own ticketing channel. The reserves now sell dated, timed sessions with QR entry, which changes how you plan a day more than the prices do.

The asymmetry worth planning around: Gobustan shuts at 17:00 while Ateshgah runs to 20:00, so Gobustan goes first on any Absheron day. And because the combination ticket holds for 72 hours, Yanar Dag and Ateshgah no longer have to sit in the same afternoon.

Getting to the ones outside Baku

Sheki has no airport. The nearest is Zaqatala, about 90 km away, which is why the 300 km road and an overnight is the honest answer rather than a flight. Nakhchivan is the opposite problem: no road exists at all, the flight from Baku runs about an hour and a quarter, and the route was suspended and resumed twice during 2026 on weather, most recently reported on 7 July.

One rule catches people out before they even start. Azerbaijan's land borders remain closed to inbound passenger traffic, extended to 1 October 2026, so you arrive by air whatever else you plan. Leaving overland afterwards is permitted, which makes Baku in and Tbilisi out a workable shape and the reverse impossible.

Or with us

Hankyu Travel's TBS-sanctioned official tour went on sale on 25 July 2026: six days from Haneda on Turkish Airlines, from 279,000 yen per person, visiting Baku, Sheki, Shamakhi and Gobustan across eleven departures from 30 November 2026 to 27 October 2027 (PR TIMES, 24 July 2026). It is selling. When we checked the product page on 22 August 2026, the first departure on 30 November 2026 was marked confirmed to operate at 279,000 yen, the 4 February 2027 date was waitlisted, the Haneda grid had grown from the press release's eleven departures to twelve, and the line had grown into a family of courses on Hankyu's own VIVANT page: departures from Shizuoka, Kansai and Fukuoka alongside the Haneda base course, a business-class variant and a single-traveler course. The Narita departures on that page belong to Hankyu's VIVANT Thailand course, not to Azerbaijan. It is a tidy package with flights included; it reaches three of the eight regions.

Birtour's ten-day tour is the only one that covers all eight regions Baku Media Center named. Ground services are published from 1,078 USD per person; the tour page has the day-by-day route and the cost guide shows how the price moves with group size and what the flight from Tokyo adds at August 2026 fares.

What we would not recommend

Do not build a trip around a fan-site identification you have not read the evidence for. The coordinate-backed entries on this page are useful; the atmosphere-based guesses in the same paragraph are not, and both circulate onward looking identical once they have been quoted twice.

Do not plan a self-guided Sheki day trip from Baku. It is 300 km and four to four and a half hours each way, and the people who try it see the Khan's Palace at closing time and drive back in the dark. Stay the night.

Do not put Nakhchivan at the end of your trip. Two flight sectors, two nights, and a route with a 2026 weather record is the wrong thing to schedule against an intercontinental departure.

Do not treat this page as a broadcast schedule. It is a location record with attribution and a stated sweep date, and when the two purposes conflict we keep the attribution and lose the immediacy.

Disclosure

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. We did not work on the production.

Sources for the episode identifications, checked by us on 28 July 2026 and re-swept on 22 August 2026:

• Baku Media Center's eight-region statement, reported by Report.az and Trend.az, 15 November 2025
• Sponichi Annex on the premiere ratings, 27 July 2026
• Oricon (3 and 17 August 2026), MANTANWEB (3, 10 and 17 August 2026), Sponichi Annex, Sanspo and Sports Hochi on the episode 2 to 4 ratings; figures by Video Research, Kanto region
• Oricon News on the premiere date and key visual, and Oricon's streaming-lineup explainer, July 2026
• Walkerplus on the two-cour continuous run, 7 April 2026
• Masaaki Sasaki's two Yahoo News expert articles, 24 and 27 July 2026; no newer Azerbaijan article of his surfaced in our 22 August 2026 sweep
• The fan location database location.la.coocan.jp, VIVANT season 2 page, and the second fan location database loca.ash.jp, VIVANT 2026 page
• The travel.co.jp editorial compilation on the episode 3 ending, updated 17 August 2026
• Shukan Josei PRIME and ENCOUNT, both via Yahoo News, on the episode 4 Japan-side locations, August 2026
• BuzzFeed Japan on the June 2025 announcement visual, 11 June 2025
• Tabicoffret (17 July 2026, updated 27 July), skyticket (8 January 2026), Goal.com Japan (26 July 2026)
• Hankyu Travel's official-tour press release on PR TIMES, 24 July 2026, and its ET391T product page and VIVANT feature page, checked 22 August 2026
• eiga.com and Natalie, checked 22 August 2026 for the theatrical-film position; eiga.com's VIVANT items since its 31 March 2026 two-cour announcement are cast articles of 16 June and 21 July 2026, none of which mentions a film
• Shukan Josei, issue dated 11 February 2025, cited only as the unverified origin of the theatrical-film rumor

Sources for the visiting logistics, checked by us on 10 and 11 August 2026: the Baku Metro operator's own fare and timetable pages, the state reserves' official ticketing channel and the Yanar Dag reserve's own site, and the published position on domestic flights and land borders.

Ratings, streaming availability and third-party tour prices are those companies' published figures, not ours.