CD Projekt Red has put a year on the calendar for its next big RPG. In a video message posted Monday ahead of Gamescom 2026, joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said The Witcher 4 is targeting a 2028 release window, the first time the studio has attached even a broad launch period to the game since its reveal.
“We’re not showing The Witcher 4 at the event and we’re not ready to share an exact date,” Nowakowski said in the message, posted on the official Witcher account. “I can tell you this: The Witcher 4 is targeting a 2028 release window.” He described a brand new saga with Ciri at the helm, built by more than 500 developers at the studio. The update lands almost exactly two months after we covered CD Projekt confirming The Witcher 4 had entered full production, and it moves the conversation from how the game is being made to when it might actually arrive.
A Window, Not a Date
A release window is a softer promise than a date, and CD Projekt Red’s own history explains the caution. The studio has spent years rebuilding goodwill after Cyberpunk 2077’s rushed 2020 launch, and its leadership has repeatedly said future games ship when they are ready. Committing to 2028 without pinning a month lets the studio frame expectations more than three years after The Game Awards 2024 reveal, while keeping room to move.
The scale claims in the video were concrete. Nowakowski said the team has grown past 500 developers, called The Witcher 4 the studio’s “biggest, boldest and most ambitious game to date,” and pointed to a huge open world, action-focused combat, and a story the team hopes will stick with players. The only gameplay-adjacent material shown so far remains the Unreal Engine 5 tech demo from June 2025, which CD Projekt Red said represented how the game could look and run on a base PS5, including ray tracing at 60fps. The studio was careful then to note the demo showed its technology, not the game itself.
The wider franchise is doing its part to fund the wait. CD Projekt Red reported this summer that Cyberpunk 2077 has now sold more than 40 million copies, and The Witcher 3 continues to find new audiences more than a decade after launch, momentum that gives the studio room to take its time on the sequel.
What Gamescom Will Show Instead
Gamescom attendees will get their Witcher fix from the back catalog. CD Projekt Red is bringing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s upcoming expansion, Songs of the Past, to the show, and the expansion is confirmed for Opening Night Live, the kickoff stream hosted by Geoff Keighley on Tuesday at 2PM ET. Songs of the Past is scheduled for 2027, which would make it the franchise’s next release as The Witcher 4 continues in development.
A 2028 target also sketches the hardware picture for launch. The game would arrive late in the current console generation, close enough to the next hardware transition that PC and console buyers alike will be watching specs; we track that timeline in our PS6 release date hub. For now, CD Projekt Red has given itself a deadline it controls, and players a year to circle.
