CD Projekt RED has revealed that The Witcher 4 is targeting a 2028 release. Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski shared the window in a video published ahead of gamescom 2026, while confirming that the game itself won’t be shown at this year’s event.
To our beloved fans, players, and community:
— The Witcher (@thewitcher) August 24, 2026
As we near #gamescom in just a few days, CD PROJEKT RED Joint-CEO Michał Nowakowski would like to personally invite YOU to join us there, and hear about the future of The Witcher franchise! pic.twitter.com/Jyam30SrQH
Development is already well underway, with The Witcher 4 having entered full-scale production and serving as the start of a new saga led by Ciri. CDPR has spent the past few years gradually showing more of the project, from its cinematic reveal to the Unreal Engine 5 tech demo, and Nowakowski says more than 500 developers are currently working on what the studio considers its biggest and most ambitious game to date.
The Witcher 4 won’t be shown at gamescom 2026, where CD Projekt RED is instead focusing on the newly announced The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past. The expansion will be shown during Opening Night Live on Aug. 25 before receiving a larger presentation at CDPR’s booth and through daily REDstreams during the convention.
CD Projekt RED announced its new Witcher saga in March 2022 alongside its move from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5. The original announcement only showed a Witcher medallion covered in snow with the words “A New Saga Begins,” while the game itself was still known internally as Project Polaris.
Ciri was confirmed as the lead when The Witcher 4 was revealed at The Game Awards 2024. Its nearly six-minute cinematic trailer followed her on a witcher contract involving a village preparing a young woman for a ritual sacrifice, establishing Ciri as a professional monster slayer rather than bringing Geralt back as the main character.
CD Projekt RED and Epic Games showed the technology behind The Witcher 4 at State of Unreal in June 2025. The Unreal Engine 5 demonstration followed Ciri and her horse Kelpie through Kovir before reaching the port town of Valdrest, with the demo running at 60 FPS on a base PlayStation 5. Kovir has appeared throughout Witcher lore but will make its first appearance as an explorable region in the game series in The Witcher 4.
The presentation also showed several technologies being developed by CDPR and Epic for large open worlds, including FastGeo Streaming, Nanite Foliage, Unreal’s Mass system for crowds, MetaHuman technology, and a new animation framework. CD Projekt RED has been working with Epic on Unreal Engine tools since the companies announced their partnership alongside The Witcher 4 in 2022.
It’s worth noting that while the tech demo did use The Witcher 4 as its backdrop, it was not a slice of the game’s content.
