CD Projekt Red announced at Gamescom that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered launches Sept. 29, 2026, across PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, Nintendo Switch 2 and Battle.net. Existing owners of the base game receive the upgrade at no charge.
The remaster is not a texture pack. CD Projekt Red level design lead Miles Tost confirmed the scope: updated visuals, overhauled combat, new finisher animations, entirely new skill trees, and revised effects for Witcher signs. Movement and traversal have been reworked, and Roach's handling—a persistent fan complaint since the game's original 2015 release—has been rebuilt.
Monster behavior receives its own overhaul. Enemies use improved AI and reaction systems, a change the studio says required rebuilding underlying encounter logic rather than patching surface animations. The remaster also adds transmog options, letting players apply any armor's appearance to their equipped gear without affecting stats.
Photo mode expands with new tools, and the remaster introduces cross-platform mod support—a first for the title, which has sustained one of PC gaming's most active modding communities for over a decade. Loot has been reworked and quest tracking updated. The studio also added immersive meditation mechanics and a new targeting system.
Both prior paid DLC expansions—Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine—are included in the remastered package at no additional cost for existing owners. Together the two expansions added roughly 30 hours of content when they launched in 2015 and 2016; Blood and Wine alone was sized comparably to a standalone game.
The announcement came as a surprise at Gamescom. CD Projekt Red had been under fan pressure to communicate progress on Songs of the Past, the next expansion for the title. The studio delivered a first look at Songs of the Past alongside the remaster announcement, though no release date for that expansion was given.
For CD Projekt Red, the no-cost upgrade strategy carries a specific business rationale. The Witcher 3 has sold more than 50 million copies across all platforms since 2015. Reactivating that installed base without a paywall maximizes the addressable audience for Songs of the Past, which will carry its own price when it launches. The remaster functions as a retention and re-engagement vehicle rather than a revenue event in isolation.
The Switch 2 inclusion is notable. Nintendo's successor console launched in 2025, and third-party support from a title of The Witcher 3's stature gives CD Projekt Red a presence on that platform at the moment its user base is still forming. The original Switch version of The Witcher 3, released in 2019, required significant visual compromises; the remaster's dedicated Switch 2 version suggests CD Projekt Red treated the port as a distinct engineering effort rather than a downscale.
PS5 Pro support is also confirmed, targeting Sony's higher-end hardware tier for players seeking the ceiling of the visual upgrade. The combination of Switch 2 and PS5 Pro versions means the remaster spans the full current-generation console range from lowest to highest performance profiles.
CD Projekt Red operates under ongoing investor scrutiny following the troubled 2020 launch of Cyberpunk 2077 and the subsequent multi-year recovery effort. The Witcher 3 remaster arrives as the studio works to reestablish development credibility before The Witcher 4, which remains in production. Delivering a well-received remaster on the announced date would reinforce the operational reliability the studio has been rebuilding since Cyberpunk 2077's patch-driven rehabilitation.
