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. However, we’ve not heard much about the upcoming adventure since then, with scant details available and mysteries still unresolved. Who the playable protagonist is remains a mystery.
That said, we do know that the upcoming open-world game is the first installment in a new trilogy, though it remains unclear whether it will follow the characters and events of the previous games. While it’s safe to assume this new entry to the series won’t be called The Witcher 4, we will call it that for now, for lack of a more official term.
The Witcher 4 release date estimate
We estimate that The Witcher 4 won’t be released until at least 2025 due to CD Project Red CEO Adam Kicinski mentioning that the game is “at least three years away” in 2022. However, at the time of writing, there is no confirmed Witcher 4 release date.
There was the most minor of updates on 26/11/24, when the official CD Projekt X account posted a single image stating that Project Polaris has officially entered the production phase of development. This tracks with Kicinski stating a release date of 2025 at the earliest.
During an investors call Q&A in 2022, Adam Kicinski mentioned that the next entry in The Witcher series would be at least three years away. With the change from REDengine to Unreal, the team likely needs more time to refine the game and develop it.
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 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 teaser is meant to be a lynx, as a nod to the School of the Lynx, before this announcement, all we had 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.
Polaris
The closest to a confirmed title currently is The Witcher 4’s internal codename, Polaris, which 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.
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. The game’s director has confirmed that Geralt will appear in The Witcher 4 somehow, and we’d guess that he travels to another Witcher school to interact with the new Witcher, who could be our protagonist.
“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, Feralt VA Doug Cockle says that “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.”
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.
