The first episode of Game of Thrones’ sixth season arrives in Australia just before lunchtime on Monday, a full 10 months after fans watched last season’s finale in shock and awe.

The show’s return may well be the television event of 2016 after nearly a year of speculation regarding the fate of Jon Snow and several other beloved characters.

Season five set records as the most pirated television show of 2015, with the finale downloaded an estimated 14.4 million times worldwide.

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In response, HBO has announced it won’t be releasing press screeners in an effort to prevent piracy.

The only person in the world who will watch Game of Thrones before it hits television screens in the US is President Barack Obama.

“When the commander-in-chief says, ‘I want to see advanced episodes’, what are you going to do?” series co-creator David Benioff said at the season six premiere.

Foxtel Play has the exclusive rights to the Stark family in Australia. Photo: Helen Sloan/HBO

So, if you’re not Obama and you’re not willing to risk legal action to stream the show, there’s one main solution — and you’re not going to like it.

Why? It involves signing up to a new service and spending money, something to which younger generations are notoriously averse.

Foxtel has exclusive rights to the show in Australia and is streaming it on its video-on-demand service Foxtel Play.

In an effort to entice Thrones fans to the service, Foxtel announced on Monday it would offer a discounted subscription fee for the three months Thrones is screening.

So, how much will it cost you? Well, to access the service you’ve got to pay $25 a month and the Premium Movies and Drama package which contains Thrones is an additional $5.

That’s $90 all up for the full season, which amounts to $9 an episode.

After the three months is up, you’ll have to go back to paying the full fee of $45 a month to continue accessing the service, which also offers Veep and Orange Is the New Black.

In order to score the deal customers have to sign up between April 18 and April 29. Foxtel Play streams on Smart TVs, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and 4, Samsung Blu-Ray and home theatre systems, PC and Mac computers and selected smart phones and tablets.

If all this sounds unappealing and expensive, there is another way — but it’s not as easy as signing up to Foxtel Play.

HBO Now, HBO’s video-on-demand service, will be streaming the new season. While it is technically a US service, Australian viewers can access it via a VPN (virtual private network).

There’s one problem: HBO is pretty on the ball and has been known to shut down VPN connections that aren’t in the US.

You can theoretically sidestep this issue with a VPN site like Getflix, which claim to use technology that can bypass geoblocking. Sites like this charge a monthly fee of around $5 on top of HBO Now’s subscription fee of $US14.99 a month.

Game of Thrones returns to Foxtel on Monday, 25 April at 11am.