Star Wars: The most important planets (and moons) in the franchise
The Star Wars Galaxy has a lot more to offer than Tatooine.
“If there’s a bright center of the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.” That’s how Luke Skywalker describes Tatooine, the desert world he grew up on, in the very first Star Wars film. And yet, despite its apparent obscurity, it seems like the camera can’t away from the barren world. Tatooine is home to Mos Eisley, where even in a particularly seedy galaxy “you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” It’s the base of operations for Jabba the Hutt, the most notorious criminal of the powerful Hutt syndicate. It was the home of the Boonta Eve Classic, one of the most prestigious events in the galactic podracing circuit. And, right, it was also the birthplace of Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker. We see it in all three Star Wars film trilogies; in The Mandalorian, in The Book of Boba Fett, in Obi-Wan Kenobi; and now it’s been revealed by developer Ubisoft as a major locale in the upcoming Star Wars: Outlaws open world video game.
Despite what Star Wars might have you believe, though, there are plenty of other planets in the Galaxy worth visiting. So if you happen to find yourself in that neck of the universe, here are some other places worth seeing apart from the furthest spot from its bright center.
Star Wars planet: Ahch-To
As seen in: Episodes VII-IX
Mostly a water world with a few rocky islands, Ahch-To is most significant as a world with connections to the very beginning of the Jedi Order. In the Sequel Trilogy, it’s here that Rey finds the long-lost Jedi Master Luke Skywalker making his home, living among what may be the oldest Jedi enclaves known to anyone in the galaxy. Variety reported earlier this year that James Mangold is set to direct a film exploring the history of the first Jedi; perhaps it’s here we’ll see more of Ahch-To in its heyday.
Star Wars planet: Alderaan
As seen in: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Episode IV (briefly)
Alderaan had a reputation as one of the most peaceful and cultured worlds in the Galaxy, an idyllic locale for vacation or education in high demand among the denizens of Star Wars’ most cultured and aspirational. Until, of course, Grand Moff Tarkin blew it up to demonstrate the power of the Death Star in the original Star Wars film. Star Wars source books cite the world’s population as 2 billion at the time it was destroyed. This is where Leia grew up with her adoptive parents, Queen Breha and clandestine Rebellion mastermind Senator Bail Organa. We got to see some of it for ourselves in the Obi-Wan Kenobi streaming series, checking in on a young Leia. Considering how thoroughly actress Vivien Lyra Blair killed it in her breakout role as a young Leia, we wouldn’t be too surprised to see her further misadventures there again.
Star Wars planet: Batuu
As seen in: Galaxy’s Edge
The planet Batuu is significant as the only Star Wars planet you can easily visit in real life – or, at least, the only one you can visit where everyone will play along. Disneyland and Disney World’s Galaxy’s Edge is a deeply immersive depiction of a Star Wars locale set in time between The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker, where visitors can interact with denizens of the galaxy from shopkeepers, stormtroopers, and resistance fighters entirely in character. For anyone who’s ever dreamed of living in the Star Wars Galaxy, it’s the thrill of a lifetime. In fiction, Batuu is one of the last trading posts you’ll find in the Galaxy before reaching uncharted space, and home to a secret Resistance base that the First Order is starting to get wise to. It’s also where notorious pirate Hondo Ohnaka currently keeps the Millennium Falcon parked as part of a business arrangement with the vessel’s proprietor, Chewbacca. If you see Hondo, tell him he still owes me 200 credits.
Star Wars planet: Bespin
As seen in: Episode V
Don’t expect to set foot on Bespin – it’s a gas giant. But that gas is a valuable fuel commodity in the Galaxy when processed correctly, and that’s why Cloud City exists. Cloud City is a luxurious mining station where the dining is exquisite, the gambling halls are high stakes, scoundrels on the run from the Empire are welcome, and everyone falls under the caped protection of its ever-smiling operator Lando Calrissian. We first see Cloud City in Empire Strikes Back, and it seems as if it’s the nicest place our heroes have yet had the occasion to visit until they find they’re sharing their stay with Darth Vader. It’s here that Luke had his climactic confrontation with Darth Vader and learned the truth of their connection. If you visit, stay out of the wind tunnels.
Star Wars planet: Corellia
As seen in: Solo: A Star Wars Story
The homeworld to much of the Galaxy’s human working class. Basically a planet-wide Detroit. Much of the Galaxy’s standard starships come from Corellia, as do its most daring pilots. Han Solo has long been said to hail from Corellia, with some references dating back to 1977 (though it was referred to as “Crell” at the time), but we first get to see the world ourselves on film in Solo: A Star Wars Story, which depicts his upbringing there with partner-in-crime Qi’ra during the movie’s first act.
Star Wars planet: Coruscant
As seen in: Episodes I-III
The de facto capital of the Galaxy, and probably the “bright center of the universe” Luke had in mind in the first place. A striated planet-wide city with thousands of levels, Coruscant is home to trillions of sentient beings. For centuries, maybe millennia, it was the central location for the Jedi Order, as well as the Galactic Republic itself, and subsequently the Empire. As home to the Galactic Senate, Coruscant is among the most diverse locales in the Galaxy, though it tends to be humans who hold wealth and power. Although it appears a flawless futuristic paradise on its surface, the lower you descend into the city’s levels, the more crime and poverty you’ll find. As the home of the Jedi Order, most stories heavily featuring the Jedi set before the rise of the Empire tend to feature Coruscant in some capacity.
Star Wars planet: Crait
As seen in: Episode VIII
The salt flats of Crait are featured in the final act of The Last Jedi, as the home of a long-abandoned rebel base taken up once more in a desperate run from the First Order by the Resistance. With uncanny parallels to the Rebellion’s stand against an encroaching Empire in The Empire Strikes Back, it’s here that Luke Skywalker- or at least, a projection of him- makes his final farewells before confronting his fallen pupil Kylo Ren one last time. There really isn’t a lot to see here, other than the stunning native fox-like vulptex creatures with crystalline fur. But as both the Rebellion and the Resistance can attest, it does seem like a pretty ideal place to get away.
Star Wars planet: Dagobah
As seen in: Episodes V-VI
Just as the best way to hide a book is in a library, the best place to hide yourself from The Living Force is among the living. A swamp planet teeming with so much life that any manner of Force detection is rendered irrelevant, Dagobah is where Jedi Grandmaster in exile Yoda made his home for the last years of his life following the fall of the Jedi Order, awaiting the arrival of his final pupil and the Galaxy’s last hope. One of Dagobah’s most remarkable features is its caves which preserve locuses of The Force which allow those who enter it to confront their innermost fears. One such cave is where Yoda took Luke to prepare him for his confrontation with his father, and to steel him against the Dark Side potential which lurked within him. Featured in the first line of ‘Weird’ Al Yankovic’s ‘Yoda.’
Star Wars planet: Dathomir
As seen in: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
“Nothing there but fog and witches.” That’s how one scavenger described the world of Dathomir, but it’s one of the most important sites to the Dark Side of the Force. Home to the Nightsisters, a powerful all-female enclave of Dark Side practitioners unaffiliated with the Sith, the Nightbrothers, an all-male tribe of Zabrak warriors which produced Darth Maul and his brother Savage, and the rancor beasts favored by Jabba the Hutt, Dathomir was devastated in the Clone Wars by the forces of General Grievous after a failed attempt to assassinate by the Nightsisters’ leader, Mother Talzin, to assassinate Count Dooku. One of the most complex figures in the Clone Wars animated series, Dooku’s personal assassin Asajj Ventress, originally hailed from Dathomir, as did Merrin, one of the massacre’s last survivors and an ally to Cal Kestis in the Star Wars Jedi video games.
Star Wars moon: Endor
As seen in: Episode VI, Ewoks
The planet Endor itself is a gas giant; our real point of interest here is Endor’s Sanctuary Moon, usually called The Forest Moon of Endor, or even just Endor for short. Best known as the home of the Ewoks who played a crucial role in one of the final battles against the Empire, the Sanctuary Moon is home to many other native, non-humanoid species both bestial and sentient, most of whom can be seen in the now largely non-canonical Ewoks animated series from the 1980s. Before the Empire set up shop here to drain the planet of its life force to power the shield generator around the second Death Star, the rest of the Galaxy didn’t visit Endor often, if at all, and most of its culture remains untouched by greater Galactic influence. Considering that Ewoks seem pretty okay with eating people, maybe that’s for the best.
Star Wars planet: Exegol
As seen in: Episode IX
We didn’t know about this planet at all until the last film in the Skywalker Saga, but it’s apparently Emperor Palpatine’s home away from home. After Darth Vader sacrificed himself to kill his master, somehow, Palpatine returned; and Exegol is where he spent 30 years rebuilding his Empire in secret for a grand assault on the Galaxy as prepared by the campaign of the First Order. Not for the photosensitive, Exegol is a dark planet shrouded in heavy clouds that crackle with lightning, and houses ancient sites and artifacts of the Sith like a dark counterpart to Ahch-To. It’s also where Palpatine grows Snokes in big jars of clone juice.
Star Wars planet: Geonosis
As seen in: Episode II
The rocky world of Geonosis is home to the insectoid Geonosians, and their droid factories where the Separatist Alliance built their army to oppose the Republic in the Clone Wars as led by Count Dooku and orchestrated by Emperor Palpatine. This is the world where the Clone Wars began, where Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padmé Amidala are chained up to be eaten by giant beasts for the Geonosians’ amusement, where Anakin lost his hand in a fight with Dooku, where Jango Fett lost his head in a fight with Mace Windu, and where Yoda spoke his immortal line, “Around the survivors, a perimeter create.”
Star Wars planet: Hoth
As seen in: Episode V
The Normandy Beach of Star Wars, in that just as every World War II video game has a D-Day sequence, every Star Wars game for a while by necessity came with a Battle of Hoth level. This snowy ice planet was home to the Rebellion’s Echo Base, which Leia, Han, and Luke called home when the Empire titularly struck back in The Empire Strikes Back. Luke fights a wampa, Han guts a tauntaun for warmth, and the rebels hogtie some elephantine AT-AT imperial walkers with their snowspeeders here before beating a hasty retreat from the Empire. Not much to see if you want to visit, but still the site of an exciting historical battle.
Star Wars planet: Ilum
As seen in: The Clone Wars, Episode VII
Ilum is one of the most important worlds to the Jedi, as the closely guarded secret homeworld to the richest source of lightsaber crystals in the Galaxy. For over a thousand years, every creche of Jedi younglings would make a pilgrimage to Ilum to find the crystal which resonated with them for their final trial before constructing their lightsaber and becoming full initiates to the Jedi Order. Tragically, if you’ve only seen the Star Wars films, you have seen this world once before. Stripmined of its valuable crystal resources, Ilum was transformed by the First Order into Starkiller Base, which channeled its power to destroy entire worlds held by the New Republic. The Resistance had no choice but to destroy the planet as the Rebellion once destroyed two Death Stars before it, but it came at a high price. Where a new Jedi Order will find the kyber crystals necessary to continue their legacy is one of the big problems Rey is probably going to have to solve.
Star Wars planet: Jakku
As seen in: Episode VII
Although the Emperor and Darth Vader fell at the Battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi, the Empire’s last stand occurred about a year afterward in The Battle of Jakku. Elaborated upon in expanded universe sources such as Aftermath: Empire’s End by Chuck Wendig, we can see the remnants of that final battle for ourselves in The Force Awakens, as the scavenger Rey makes her home amongst the wreckage she salvages in exchange for food rations. It’s another place probably best left alone unless you’re particularly interested in Galactic Civil War history, though it also holds significance as the place Rey met Finn, BB-8, and commandeered an impounded Millennium Falcon.
Star Wars moon: Jedha
As seen in: Rogue One, The High Republic
Jedha is a moon of the oceanic NaJedha we first see long after its halcyon days, as the base of Saw Gererra’s radical Partisan group of guerilla fighters opposing the Empire and the testing grounds for the Death Star in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. But 370 years before that, Jedha was one of the most important spiritual sites not just to Jedi, but all those who devoted themselves to The Force, as a site of sacred pilgrimage. We meet two of Jedha’s last devotees to The Force, Chirrut Îmwe and Baze Malbus, in Rogue One, but the world is populated with many more in the days of the High Republic, currently being explored in novels and comics contemporary to that time period in Galactic history. The Force is far greater than the Jedi and Sith alone, and Jedha is where those greater boundaries were often explored.
Star Wars planet: Kamino
As seen in: Episode II
This technologically advanced water world hidden for years from the Galactic Senate by the machinations of Senator Palpatine is the cloning capital of the galaxy, and the homeworld of the clone army that the Republic would use against the Separatists. The Mandalorian bounty hunter Jango Fett was contracted by the Kaminoans as the genetic template for the clone army commissioned in secret by Palpatine himself through the intermediary of the lost Jedi Master Sifo-Diyas, where they were prepared for a war
Star Wars planet: Kashyyyk
As seen in: Episode III, the Star Wars Holiday Special
The jungle homeworld of the Wookiees has a rich history of unique traditions among its particularly hirsute people, although it is often exploited for resources and slave labor by would-be malefactors, most notably the Empire. Kashyyyk occupies the same star system as Trandosha, another inhabited world in the same star system – a rarity within the Star Wars Galaxy. The lizardlike Trandoshans make a sport of hunting and killing or selling Wookiees to the slave market, making the worlds’ peoples bitter enemies. Chewbacca has a family on Kashyyyk including a wife and son he spends his time with when he’s not bumming around the galaxy with Han Solo. This is where the notorious Star Wars Holiday Special takes place, making it the first planet in the Star Wars Galaxy viewers saw after the first movie, and where Yoda narrowly escapes the Jedi Massacre of Order 66 in Revenge of the Sith.
Star Wars planet: Lothal
As seen in: Star Wars: Rebels
The rolling green plains of the unassuming backwater world of Lothal provide the setting for the Star Wars: Rebels animated series, which the Force-sensitive Ezra Bridger calls home when the Empire ostensibly arrives to build a new experimental TIE Fighter factory there. Their true purpose is far more sinister: unbeknownst to all but the Emperor, Lothal houses an ancient temple which provides a gateway to the World Between Worlds, a nexus which allows those who enter it to access any point in space and time. Ezra and his Rebel allies ultimately succeed in denying the Emperor access to the temple, but its secret history is yet to be fully explored.
Star Wars planet: Mandalore
As seen in: The Clone Wars, The Mandalorian
Mandalore is the homeworld of the Mandalorians, a proud culture of warriors with a rich variety of subcultures each with their own traditions. During the Clone Wars, the controversial Duchess of Mandalore was part of a regime which attempted to downplay the Mandalorians’ warrior roots to foster a more peaceful image towards the rest of the Galaxy, creating unrest in more radical Mandalorian cells such as the Deathwatch. The culture and traditions of the Mandalorians, referred to by many of its people as “The Way,” form the backbone of The Mandalorian streaming series as scattered survivors return from exile to the homeworld the Empire drove them from.
Star Wars planet: Mon Cala
As seen in: The Clone Wars
If a top-of-the-line starship doesn’t come from Corellia, it’s probably from the water world of Mon Cala, home of aquatic sentient species like the Quarren and the Mon Calamari – including the Rebellion’s Admiral Ackbar. Mon Cala hasn’t made an appearance in live action, but a civil war among its people figures significantly into an arc of the Clone Wars animated series. It’s often said that the aquatic environs of Mon Cala are what give its residents such a natural sense of what’s required for a spacefaring vessel.
Star Wars planet: Moraband
As seen in: Knights of the Old Republic, The Clone Wars
Known as Korriban in the Pre-Disney Expanded Universe, the barren world of Moraband was home to the Sith Academy long before the thousand year old Rule of Two established that only two Sith Lords could exist at any time. Moraband is best characterized by its towering tombs to the most notorious figures of the ancient Sith Order, from Ajunta Pall to Darth Bane.
Star Wars planet: Mustafar
As seen in: Episode III, Rogue One
The hot, volcanic world where the fallen Anakin Skywalker had a showdown with Obi-Wan Kenobi, where his former master would leave him for dead. Mustafar was once a world held by the Separatist Tecno Union for its droid construction resources. But once the Techno Union was destroyed by Anakin himself, Palpatine gave the world to the arisen Darth Vader as a home base for his personal castle. Here, Darth Vader seethes in a boundless sea of hatred, recuperating between missions for the Emperor in the bacta tanks which prolong his unnatural life.
Star Wars planet: Naboo
As seen in: Episode I
The green planet of Naboo is known for producing some of the most illustrious political figures in Galactic history from its capital city of Theed, from Queen Amidala to Emperor Palpatine himself. It’s also home to the aquatic Gungans who live beneath the planet’s surface in its deep oceans, where there’s always a bigger fish. The Trade Federation’s blockade of Naboo in The Phantom Menace is essentially what started up this whole mess in the first place.
Star Wars planet: Nal Hutta
As seen in: Clone Wars, Expanded Universe
Although yet to be featured on film, Nal Hutta is of particular significance as the swampy homeworld of the Hutt clans. Along with the city of criminals and cutthroats which spans the world’s moon of Nar Shaddaa, this place is truly the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in the Galaxy, no matter what Ben Kenobi tells you. If there’s a capital of the Galaxy’s criminal underworld outside the auspices of the Republic and the Empire alike, Nal Hutta is it.
As seen in: The Mandalorian
The mostly dormant volcanic world of Nevarro is the setting for much of The Mandalorian, where Din Djarin first meets the client who assigns him to retrieve The Child on behalf of the designs of Imperial remnant commander Moff Gideon. Here, Din collects assignments from Bounty Hunters’ Guild broker Greef Karga, who appoints himself High Magistrate of the planet after the last Imperial holdouts are driven away. By the end of Season 3 of the series, Nevarro is the place Din himself calls home along with his adopted son.
Star Wars planet: Scarif
As seen in: Rogue One
The exciting final act of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story takes place on a beachhead on the tropical world of Scarif. For Imperials, Scarif is a dream assignment as one of the Galaxy’s prettier outposts and home to research and development for some of the Empire’s most top secret operations, until a ragtag contingent of Rebels conspire a desperate attempt to transfer the Death Star plans to allied forces. Thanks in part to the firing of the Death Star itself, every last Rebel on that mission perishes in the attempt, but their efforts are not in vain.
Star Wars planet: Takodana
As seen in: Episode VII
“I didn’t know there was this much green in the whole galaxy,” Rey remarks when she first arrives on Takodana in The Force Awakens. Coming from Jakku, the contrast is quite stark. Takodana is a neutral world in the Galaxy’s various conflicts known mostly to pirates and smugglers as a place to put their grudges away and temporarily break bread or have a drink together. For a thousand years, the place has been run by the diminutive Maz Kanata, feared and respected by all as she maintains strict rules against breaking the peace. Beneath its surface, Takodana Castle holds treasures and bounties untold – including, as Rey discovers, Luke Skywalker’s lost lightsaber from his battle with Vader on Hoth.
Star Wars moon: Yavin IV
As seen in: Episode IV
Another gas giant’s moon, the tree-lined Yavin IV is home to ancient temples of a sect of Force users which may predate the Jedi themselves. But most importantly to our story, it’s the location of the Rebel base during the original Star Wars film and the Death Star’s true target. After Princess Leia is forced to surrender the base’s location to the Empire, Luke and his new friends in the Rebel Alliance take the Death Star down in the Battle of Yavin before it can unleash its planet-busting attack, an occasion so significant that we mark our calendars with it. That’s no moon… it’s history.
Get ready for everything coming up with our guide to upcoming Star Wars movies & TV shows, or dive into the past with our Star Wars watch order.
