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| Where Was Best of the Best Filmed? All 2026 Netflix Movie Locations Revealed. |
Best of the Best was filmed entirely in New Jersey, USA, despite the story presenting its fictional university setting as UCLA in California. Principal photography ran from 28 July to 11 September 2025, covering a 38-day schedule across northern New Jersey. The production used real campuses, streets, residential areas and a historic performance venue to recreate the sunny California college world, proving once again that Hollywood can make New Jersey pretend to be almost anywhere if the camera angle behaves itself.
Kean University in Union, New Jersey, served as the main stand-in for the fictional UCLA campus. Its exterior walkways, modern plazas and academic buildings provided much of the university environment seen throughout the film. The location works particularly well for the story because Best of the Best spends so much time following Maya and Anjali through college life, from ordinary campus routines to the increasingly demanding world of competitive dance. Visitors can explore the university's surrounding public areas, although access to particular campus buildings or filming spaces can depend on university rules and events.
Montclair, New Jersey, was another important part of the production, with neighbourhood streets and residential spaces transformed into locations representing student accommodation, housing complexes and social settings away from campus.
Rather than relying entirely on obvious university scenery, the filmmakers used the area's residential character to give the characters a more lived-in environment. That helps the fictional college world feel less like a collection of sets and more like somewhere students might actually spend their time between rehearsals, classes and the next argument about choreography.
An additional location associated with the Montclair portion of the production is Montclair's downtown and surrounding residential streets, which fit naturally into the film's broader depiction of student life outside the university grounds.
The area is known for its mixture of older buildings, local businesses and residential streets, giving the production plenty of visual variety without making every scene scream "we are filming a movie here". For viewers planning a trip, it also offers the chance to experience the wider setting that helped give the film its New Jersey identity.
Newark Symphony Hall in Newark, New Jersey, provided one of the production's biggest and most recognisable environments. The historic performance venue was used for the film's large-scale Bollywood-fusion dance championship sequences, where the story's competitive side reaches full volume.
Its auditorium supplied the stage, seating and grand interior scale needed for huge choreography numbers, making it considerably more useful than trying to squeeze a national dance competition into somebody's school gym and hoping nobody notices.
The venue itself is one of Newark's long-standing cultural landmarks, so it brings plenty of character before the dancers even start moving. Its theatrical interior gives the competition scenes a much bigger sense of occasion, which suits a story built around teams fighting for a national title.
For fans visiting Newark, the building is a particularly interesting stop because the connection between the film's fictional competition world and the venue's real performance history makes it more than just another address on a filming-location map.
Bayonne, New Jersey, was used for several street-level sequences, with filming taking place along the east side of Broadway between 41st Street and East 45th Street, as well as sections around East 42nd and East 43rd Streets. These streets supplied urban neighbourhood backdrops and locations for dialogue scenes outside the university environment. The choice gives the movie a different texture from the campus sequences, allowing the characters' lives to extend beyond lecture halls and dance rehearsals.
The Broadway corridor in Bayonne is therefore one of the more specific locations fans can identify when retracing the movie's production. The surrounding blocks provide a distinctly urban New Jersey setting, which contrasts nicely with the film's fictional Southern California identity. It is also a reminder that filming locations do not always have to be glamorous landmarks; sometimes a normal-looking street ends up on screen while everyone walking past has absolutely no idea they have wandered into movie history.
Jersey City, New Jersey, supplied additional outdoor streetscapes, city transitions and community backdrops used to expand the world surrounding the characters. The city's dense urban environment gives the film another visual layer beyond the university and residential locations, helping connect the characters' campus life with the wider communities around them. Its combination of streets, buildings and city scenery makes it a practical choice for productions that need an American metropolitan backdrop without having to actually shoot every scene in California.
Another place worth adding to a Best of the Best location trip is Liberty State Park in Jersey City, although it should be treated as a related destination rather than a confirmed filming location for the movie. The waterfront park offers spectacular views across New York Harbor and a completely different atmosphere from the streets used in the production. It is the sort of place that can turn a location-hunting trip into an actual holiday rather than an increasingly desperate exercise in standing beside random buildings and asking, "Was this the bit?"
The film's California identity is particularly interesting because none of the principal photography took place on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles according to the production information provided. Instead, New Jersey was dressed and framed to represent the fictional Southern California university environment.
That means fans should not assume that every campus shot they recognise was filmed in California simply because the story says UCLA. Movie geography has always played fast and loose with reality, and Best of the Best appears to have embraced that tradition with enthusiasm.
There is also an important reason to be cautious when discussing exact addresses. Not every individual filming spot was publicly disclosed while production was underway, partly because revealing precise locations during an active shoot can attract unwanted attention and interfere with cast and crew working conditions.
A street appearing in a movie does not automatically mean its exact filming position was officially announced at the time. For that reason, location guides should distinguish between documented production sites and guesses based purely on what happens to look familiar on screen.
For anyone hoping to recreate Maya and Anjali's journey, the confirmed production trail gives you a fairly varied New Jersey itinerary: Kean University in Union, Montclair's residential areas, Newark Symphony Hall, Bayonne's Broadway corridor and Jersey City's urban streets.
Together, they cover the fictional campus, student life, competition venue and wider city environments featured in the film. The result is a location map that feels surprisingly broad for a production that completed its principal photography within just 38 days.
My take after looking at the locations is that Best of the Best has a genuinely fun production story because the movie's geography is almost a character in itself. The biggest trick is convincing viewers that New Jersey is UCLA, and honestly, cinema has pulled off stranger things with considerably bigger budgets. Kean University makes sense as the campus substitute, while Newark Symphony Hall sounds like the natural showstopper for those enormous dance sequences.
Bayonne and Jersey City add the everyday urban texture that keeps the film from feeling trapped inside one university. Montclair is probably the most interesting choice for viewers who enjoy seeing ordinary neighbourhoods transformed for screen. The whole setup also makes a location trip more appealing because you are not simply ticking off famous landmarks. You are following the production through places that actually helped build its fictional world, which is considerably more entertaining than chasing one suspiciously familiar brick wall.
As Best of the Best heads towards its 18 September 2026 global Netflix release, these New Jersey locations offer fans plenty of opportunities to see the real-world settings behind the fictional story. Just remember that being able to visit a city or public area does not necessarily mean every filming position or building interior is open to visitors, so respect local access rules and the people who actually live and work there. And if you have already spotted another location from the film that deserves a place here, tell us which scene caught your eye and where you think it was filmed — the hunt for Best of the Best locations is clearly not finished yet