Barley is cultivated more widely than the other major world crops because it adapts well to environmental constraints, such as drought, heat and day length. To better understand the genetic control of local adaptation in barley, we studied development in the nested association mapping population HEB-25, derived from crossing 25 wild barleys with the cultivar Barke. HEB-25 was cultivated in replicated field trials in Dundee (Scotland) and Halle (Germany) differing in regard to day length, precipitation and temperature. Applying a genome-wide association study (GWAS) we located 60 and 66 QTL regions regulating eight plant development traits in Dundee and Halle, respectively. A number of QTLs could be explained by known major genes such as PHOTOPERIOD 1 (Ppd-H1) and FLOWERING LOCUS T (HvFT-1) that regulate plant development. Moreover, we observed that developmental traits in HEB-25 are partly controlled via genotype by environment and genotype by donor interactions, defined as location-specific and family-specific QTL effects. Our findings indicate that QTL alleles are available in the wild barley gene pool showing contrasting effects on plant development, which may be deployed to improve adaptation of cultivated barley to future environmental changes.