The Witcher 4 is currently being developed by CD Projekt Red alongside Canis Majora and Sirius, two spin-off games set in the same universe.

When is The Witcher 4 release date? CD Projekt Red initially confirmed the existence of a new game in The Witcher series via a press release in March 2022 and a title update in October 2022. Following a long wait – one that felt like eternity for fans of the series – The Witcher 4 was officially revealed at The Game Awards in December 2024, alongside its first trailer.

We know that the upcoming open-world game is the first installment in a new trilogy, and sees Ciri take on the role of the protagonist. While CDPR’s global PR director had previously hinted the next installment wouldn’t be called The Witcher 4, the official reveal trailer has confirmed its position as a direct sequel in the mainline series.

The Witcher 4 release date estimate

We estimate that The Witcher 4 won’t be released until at least 2026. At the time of writing, there is no confirmed Witcher 4 release date.

CD Projekt Red CEO Adam Kicinski stated the game was “at least three years away” during an investors call back in 2022. However, the cinematic trailer revealed at The Game Awards 2024 did not include gameplay. This follows The Witcher 3’s “Killing Monsters” cinematic trailer, which dropped just shy of two years prior to The Witcher 3’s launch.

Prior to the reveal trailer, the official CD Projekt X account posted a single image stating that Project Polaris has officially entered the production phase of development. Given the length of production required for a title as ambitious as The Witcher 4, plus the change from REDengine to Unreal, we may not see a gameplay trailer until late 2025.

There is also The Witcher Remake, a separate project made by Fool’s Theory under CD Projekt Red’s supervision. However, it’s since been confirmed that the modernized version of Geralt’s first adventure will arrive after The Witcher 4 and be built in the Unreal 5 engine.

The Witcher 4 trailers

The Witcher 4 was officially revealed at The Game Awards in December 2024, alongside its first trailer. It depicts Geralt’s adoptive daughter, Ciri, embarking on a hunt to slay the Bauk that’s been terrorizing the northern village of Stromford. While Ciri was considered an honorary Witcher, having undergone training at Kaer Morhen, this reveal trailer confirms that she has since undergone the Trial of the Grasses: a painful process that causes apprentice Witchers to mutate, imbuing them with superhuman abilities and their signature feline eyes.

In combat, Ciri wields her signature sword, Zireael, and a magic chain that harks back to the first time we see Geralt in action during his fight with the Striga in The Witcher Enhanced Edition’s trailer. We also see her take a swig of one of the potions that Witchers concoct, giving her enhanced reflexes in combat.

Once Ciri removes the Bauk’s head from its body, she returns to Stromford to find the sacrificial daughter slain by one of her fellow villagers. These final beats call upon the series’ thematic crux – humans are as monstrous as the beasts that harry them. It also hints at the choices and consequences in The Witcher 4’s quests – perhaps, if Ciri hadn’t been so focused on slaying the Bauk, she might have saved this young innocent.

The Witcher 4 Unreal Engine 5

CD Projekt Red’s press release announced that the new The Witcher game will use Unreal Engine 5 instead of the studio’s proprietary REDengine, which is what it’s used for all past games until now.

This is part of a “multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games,” which includes helping Epic “tailor the engine for open-world experiences, beginning with the development of the next game in The Witcher franchise.”

You can make of that what you will. However, since that statement was made, we’ve received confirmation that The Witcher 4 will not be an Epic Games Store exclusive.

The Witcher 4 news

Other than confirming the medallion in the initial teaser is meant to be a lynx, as a nod to the School of the Lynx, all we had before that was a business strategy report from 2021. The studio revealed on Twitter its plans to start “parallel triple-A development” in 2022, focusing on their “two core franchises” – The Witcher and Cyberpunk.

In the report, SVP of business development Michał Nowakowski explains, “We’ll wait until much closer to our game’s launch before we start showing things like trailers, demos, or going in depth about mechanics.”

Previously, CD Projekt Red revealed that they plan to integrate “online experiences” into the next Witcher game. However, joint CEO Adam Kiciński is clear that the studio’s focus on making “single-player, story-driven triple-A RPGs” isn’t changing and that the online technology they’re currently developing will be “seamlessly integrated.”

In March 2024, CDPR revealed that there are over 400 devs currently working on Polaris (The Witcher 4’s internal codename) – ten times the number currently working on the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel. Of course, that’s to be expected considering the order of release priority, but it’s nonetheless a grand undertaking.

Then, in August 2024, Geralt VA Doug Cockle said that Geralt will be part of the game (more on that in our section dedicated to the White Wolf below).

Things got really spicy in December 2024, with the grand unveiling of The Witcher 4 – a six-minute-long feast for the eyes. This was followed by confirmation that Geralt will get involved somehow, as well as the most important bit of news of all – Gwent could very well be back on the cards.

Is Geralt in The Witcher 4?

Despite what we were told even before the game’s release, we may not have seen the end of The Witcher 3’s protagonist, Geralt. In December 2024, CD Projekt confirmed to IGN that “Geralt will appear in the game, but we don’t want to spoil his role precisely. You’ll have to wait to learn more for now.”

CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinksi previously hinted that Geralt will appear in The Witcher 4 somehow. “We are not killing the world and walking away from it,” Iwinski said to Polygon during a 2013 tech demo, “but we definitely want to make this game the finale in a big way.” Tantalizingly, he added, “We might even include Geralt in later games, potentially.” Any more of the White Wolf is a win in our book.

In an August 2024 interview, Geralt VA Doug Cockle said “Geralt will be part of the game, we just don’t know how much, and the game won’t focus on Geralt. So it’s not about him this time.”

However, Cockle later backtracked in a December 2024 Geektown interview. “I said something about this and then I got slapped by CD Projekt,” Cockle says. “I don’t know how true it is – I went off a rumor. I thought I’d seen somebody from CD Projekt say that Geralt will be in Witcher 4 but he won’t be the main character. And I don’t actually know if that’s true now because they came back and they went: ‘We haven’t put anything out there, don’t say anything.’”

Fortunately, with the latest confirmation coming in from CD Projekt, we do know for certain now that Geralt will feature in some capacity. We can imagine he’ll be dragged out of retirement – after all, a lifetime of hunting monsters isn’t something you can easily put to rest. Nonetheless, we’re excited to find out how the White Wolf materializes.

Polaris

The Witcher 4’s internal codename, Polaris, was announced in an update by CDPR in October 2022. If it’s anything like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, it has the potential to be one of the best PC games ever, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Alongside this project, we can expect two other titles in The Witcher universe. However, these are spin-off titles rather than the subsequent games in the new trilogy. The first is codenamed Canis Majoris, while the other is codenamed Sirius.

Canis Majoris and Sirius are the codenames representing two upcoming titles in The Witcher series. CD Projekt Red refers to Canis Majoris as a “full-fledged Witcher game”, which was revealed as a remake of the first Witcher game.

While we know little about Sirius, CD Projekt Red has confirmed that The Molasses Flood is developing it. It’s the studio behind the roguelike survival game The Flame in the Flood and the co-op game Drake Hollow. So, we’d hazard a guess that survival could potentially be the aim of the game in Sirius, but that’s just speculation. Regardless, CD Projekt Red claims Sirius “will differ from our past productions, offering multiplayer gameplay on top of a single-player experience including a campaign with quests and a story,” which is sure to pique the interest of many long-time Witcher fans.

That’s everything we know about The Witcher 4 release date so far, but we’ll be sure to update this page with the latest news as soon as we hear anything. While you wait, you can check out other great RPG games besides The Witcher 3 to get your adventuring fix. We also have a list of upcoming PC games set to release in 2024 and beyond that are worth a look at.