The Witcher 4 Has an Official Release Window, and CD Projekt Red Is Aiming at 2028

The Witcher 4 has an official release window. CD Projekt Red is targeting 2028, which puts the game at least thirteen years behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski gave the window this summer in a video posted to The Witcher’s X account. Before that the studio had only ruled things out, saying it did not plan to ship the game by the end of 2026 without naming what came after.

“I know it’s a bit of a wait, and you’d love to play it sooner, but let the team cook.”

— Michał Nowakowski

The number worth holding onto is not 2028. CD Projekt Red wants the next three Witcher games out inside a six-year window, so a 2028 start for The Witcher 4 puts The Witcher 6 somewhere around 2034. The last trilogy took eight years, from 2007 to 2015, and that was before development cycles across the industry stretched the way they have since. I would bet on the first date and against the last one, because nothing in the past decade suggests a studio of this size can ship three games of this scale back-to-back without something slipping.

Cost is not the lever CDPR is pulling. Nowakowski told The Game Business that quality comes first and the project is not cost-driven, and he reached for Rockstar to make the point, which is where Witcher 4’s similarity to GTA 6 comes from. He said he doubts GTA 6 was built to a budget either. The same interview addressed the Unreal Engine 5 move, which parts of the fanbase took badly, with Nowakowski arguing that CDPR is working with Epic to push the engine somewhere it has not been and that players will still recognise the result as a CDPR game.

The headcount backs the scale talk. CD Projekt confirmed over 500 people on The Witcher 4 in its first-half report, and the studio has pulled three senior developers out of Warhorse Studios in under a year. Karel Kolmann went from lead gameplay designer on Kingdom Come: Deliverance II to senior quest designer, Zdeněk Glatz moved from lead level designer to senior open world designer, and Zbyněk Zelinka arrived from lead technical designer to senior gameplay designer. All three held leadership roles before the move.

One hire matters more than the rest. Karolina Stachyra, the senior writer on The Witcher 3 who wrote the Bloody Baron questline and handled narrative design on Hearts of Stone, is back at the studio, and the fact that a former writer returned to CD Projekt RED after stints on Dying Light 2 at Techland and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 at GSC Game World says more to me than the release window does. The Bloody Baron is the reason people still talk about choice in this series eleven years later, and the person who wrote it is on the fourth game.

That focus shows up in what the studio says it is building. Co-CEO Adam Badowski told an audience at the International Festival of Comics and Games in Łódź that story work is one reason development is taking as long as it is, and that the choices in Witcher 4 are meant to be morally ambiguous and to stay with players afterwards.

“Maximize its emotional impact on players, ensuring it isn’t hollow but truly resonates.”

— Adam Badowski

Badowski also said combat will build on The Witcher 3 rather than replace it, expanding the mechanics instead of starting over. On casting, Yennefer’s return is still a rumour rather than a confirmation: Denise Gough, who voiced the sorceress in the English version of The Witcher 3, reportedly mentioned recording new lines including scenes with Ciri at a book signing. Which project those lines belong to is the open question, since Geralt leads the expansion and Ciri leads the sequel. A signing-event anecdote is thin evidence, but Yennefer in a story where Ciri finally takes the lead is the one piece of casting I would want confirmed ahead of anything about the engine.

That expansion is the thing to actually play before 2028. Songs of the Past was announced in May, puts Geralt back in the lead for a new adventure, and is expected in 2027 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The Witcher 4 follows on the same three platforms with Ciri as protagonist and Geralt in a supporting role, which is the handover the whole plan rests on.