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| Where Was Cupertino Filmed? All 2026 Series Filming Locations Revealed. |
Cupertino may be set in the technology-heavy world of Silicon Valley, but the 2026 CBS legal drama was filmed largely in New Jersey, with production turning warehouses, court buildings, restaurants and ordinary residential streets into convincing stand-ins for Northern California. The series uses locations across Kearny, Perth Amboy, Dunellen, Cranford, Bloomfield, Fort Lee and Hasbrouck Heights, giving viewers plenty of real-world places to look for while watching. And yes, some of them are surprisingly ordinary. That is television for you: an industrial warehouse can become a prestigious Silicon Valley law office with enough set dressing, while a New Jersey street suddenly gets a California makeover.
Kearny, New Jersey, is the production's main base and arguably the most important filming location for Cupertino. In the warehouse district along the Hackensack River, a large industrial building was transformed into the show's primary studio space. Inside, production crews constructed the offices of Price and Siffre, the independent law firm created by Michael Price and Olivia Siffre after their careers in the technology industry take a dramatic turn.
The sets were designed with curved ceilings, greenery and deliberately unfinished architectural details to capture the fashionable but slightly rough-around-the-edges look associated with Silicon Valley start-up offices. It is a clever bit of television trickery: the characters are supposed to be operating in California, while much of their professional world was actually assembled inside a New Jersey warehouse.
Perth Amboy Municipal Court in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, provided a much more recognisable setting for the series. The production spent roughly a week inside the municipal courthouse filming important courtroom sequences, making the location particularly relevant to Cupertino's legal-drama side.
With Michael Price and Olivia Siffre taking on cases involving workers, whistleblowers and people caught in the orbit of powerful technology companies, courtroom scenes are central to the show's story. The real municipal setting therefore gives those sequences a grounded appearance rather than making every legal confrontation look as though it was shot on a studio set.
The production also used a bank building at the intersection of Maple Street and Smith Street in Perth Amboy for scenes involving financial transactions and meetings. The location fits neatly with the show's wider story, where money, corporate power and the battle to establish a new law firm are just as important as the cases themselves. In Cupertino, financial pressure is not exactly a background detail, so having a real banking environment adds another layer to the world being built around Price and Siffre.
Holly Street in Cranford, New Jersey, was used for upscale neighbourhood scenes and exterior driving sequences. Production crews dressed the street and used vehicles carrying California licence plates to make the New Jersey setting resemble Northern California.
It is one of those small production tricks that can completely change how a familiar location reads on screen. A quiet suburban road, the right cars and a little visual dressing can apparently transport an entire television audience several thousand miles west without anyone having to pay for the flight.
East Passaic Avenue in Bloomfield, New Jersey, became another substantial production zone. The crew established a large base camp there while filming inside a local banquet hall for major gathering and event sequences. The steps of a nearby neighbourhood church were also used for exterior shots. Together, the locations provided Cupertino with spaces suitable for larger scenes involving multiple characters, giving the series somewhere to move beyond offices, courtrooms and private conversations.
For its more polished social scenes, Cupertino headed to Ventanas Restaurant Lounge at 200 Park Avenue in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The production took over the venue for two days in August, using the restaurant for high-end dining and corporate nightlife sequences.
Considering the show's focus on wealthy technology executives, business relationships and the considerable sums of money floating around its story, a stylish restaurant is a fairly natural choice. It also gives the characters somewhere to have conversations that presumably could not happen in yet another glass office.
IHOP on Route 17 in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, supplied a very different atmosphere. The production obtained a one-day filming permit to shoot inside the restaurant for more everyday character scenes. That contrast is useful for the series because Cupertino is not only about billionaire technology figures and expensive corporate disputes. Its story also follows people trying to build a new professional life after being pushed out of a powerful industry. Sometimes a restaurant is more useful for showing ordinary life than another glamorous boardroom ever could be.
North Avenue in Dunellen, New Jersey, was part of one of the production's largest outdoor footprints. The crew used the downtown area for street-level dialogue and transitional scenes, with equipment staging and filming activity spreading through the surrounding streets.
The production also worked along North Washington Avenue, Front Street and Lincoln Avenue, temporarily turning parts of the local streetscape into the visual world of the series. With trucks, equipment and controlled street activity occupying several blocks, this was one of the locations where the scale of a television production would have been particularly difficult for local residents to miss.
The Dunellen transit and downtown area is especially interesting because it demonstrates how Cupertino created its California setting without relying entirely on purpose-built sets. The series can move from its carefully constructed law offices into real streets and public-facing environments, helping the fictional Silicon Valley world feel considerably larger. It is also a reminder that television geography is often wonderfully deceptive. The audience sees California; the production team sees a New Jersey street, a collection of permits and probably a very long list of logistical problems.
Filming for the first season took place during spring and summer 2026, with major location work running from April through September. Not every precise filming position was publicly identified while cameras were rolling, which is understandable for a production that needs to keep streets accessible and scenes uninterrupted. The locations that were made available, however, show just how extensively New Jersey was used to recreate the world of Cupertino, California.
There is a practical reason behind that decision. Although Cupertino is set in Silicon Valley, production was based primarily on the East Coast, making use of New Jersey locations and local production infrastructure. Tax incentives were an important consideration, while the show's New York-based creative team also made the region a practical choice. The result is a series that looks westward on screen while keeping a significant portion of its production footprint firmly in the Northeast.
The location choices also work surprisingly well with the story. Cupertino follows Michael Price, played by Mike Colter, after he loses his position at a fast-growing technology company and finds himself fighting over the stock options he believes he was unfairly denied.
He teams up with fellow former attorney Olivia Siffre, played by Rachel Keller, and legal assistant Christy Palladino, played by Ella Stiller, to establish Price and Siffre. The firm turns its attention towards employees, whistleblowers and others facing powerful technology companies, creating a legal drama that mixes individual cases with the larger struggle of keeping a new practice alive.
That story explains why the locations need to cover such a broad range. Courtrooms represent the legal battles, corporate-looking interiors establish the technology world, restaurants provide social spaces and ordinary streets bring the characters back into everyday life. Busy Philipps, Nik Dodani, Renée Elise Goldsberry and guest star Method Man expand the ensemble, while the series' tech-thriller elements bring subjects including artificial intelligence, intellectual property, workplace disputes and corporate surveillance into the legal cases.
My take on the filming locations is that Cupertino has made a smart choice by refusing to depend entirely on obvious California scenery. New Jersey doing Silicon Valley is slightly hilarious when you think about it, but that is exactly why the locations are interesting. A warehouse beside the Hackensack River becoming a glossy technology law office is the sort of behind-the-scenes detail that makes television more entertaining once you know it.
The mix of courtrooms, restaurants, suburban streets and industrial spaces also gives the show a more lived-in quality than simply filming every scene against a futuristic office backdrop. I particularly like the use of ordinary places because they make the fictional world feel less manufactured. The California licence plates are a nice touch too. It is essentially cinematic sleight of hand, and honestly, if the audience buys it, the production has done its job.
For viewers hoping to turn Cupertino into a travel itinerary, several of these locations are real places that can be visited, although filming activity itself has already moved on. Kearny, Perth Amboy, Dunellen, Cranford, Bloomfield, Fort Lee and Hasbrouck Heights each reveal a different part of how the series was constructed. Just don't expect to walk into a warehouse and find Michael Price waiting behind the desk at Price and Siffre. That particular Silicon Valley exists mostly for the cameras.
The bigger appeal is seeing how a series supposedly rooted in Cupertino and Silicon Valley was actually brought to life across New Jersey. Once you know the locations, details such as the streets, buildings, restaurants and courtroom interiors become easier to spot while watching. Would you visit these Cupertino filming locations yourself, and which one would you put first on your travel list? Let us know which location caught your eye most.