Want to know about 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 a great deal about the upcoming adventure since, with details such as who the playable protagonist is still 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 speculation
Our best guess is that we’ll have to wait until the 2026 until we see the release of The Witcher 4. However, at the time of writing, there is no confirmed Witcher 4 release date.
During an investors call Q&A, Adam Kicinski mentioned that the next entry in The Witcher series would be at least 3 years away. With the change from REDengine to Unreal, the team looks like it needs a bit more time to adjust.
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. It will also be released after the current Cyberpunk 2077 DLC, announced during The Game Awards 2022.
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.”
Make of that what you will. However, we have since gotten a 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, indeed, 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”.
Polaris
The closest to a confirmed title currently is its internal codename: Polaris, 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 set 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.
There isn’t much more The Witcher 4 news, but let’s focus on the positives. 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. “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.
That’s everything we know about The Witcher 4 release date so far. While you wait, you can check out other great RPG games besides The Witcher 3 to get your adventuring fix.
