The setting of Friday Night Lights is the fictional Texas town of Dillon, Texas.

Real vs. fictional town

  • The TV series and its storylines all take place in the invented town of Dillon, Texas, a small high school–football-obsessed community.
  • For filming, production used real Central Texas locations in and around Austin (including places like Pflugerville and other nearby towns) to stand in for Dillon.

Book and movie background

  • The original non‑fiction book that inspired Friday Night Lights followed the 1988 Permian High School Panthers in Odessa, Texas , a real West Texas city.
  • The 2004 movie adaptation also centers on Permian High and Odessa, even though the later TV series shifts to the fictional Dillon to tell a broader, more flexible story.

TL;DR: The show’s town is Dillon, Texas (fictional), but it is loosely rooted in the real football culture of Odessa, Texas.