The Witcher 4 Release Date: When Is The Witcher IV Coming Out?

The only official timing is 2028. Michał Nowakowski, one of CD PROJEKT RED’s two joint CEOs, gave it on August 24, 2026, in a video message ahead of gamescom: The Witcher 4 is targeting a 2028 release window. In the same breath he made clear that the studio is not ready to share an exact date. The game itself was not shown at gamescom.

On September 2, 2026, the company repeated the window in writing. Its first-half press release says the planned release window of The Witcher 4 is in 2028. On the investor call the same day, Nowakowski again spoke of a “target release window in 2028.”

Nothing more specific has been set: no month, no quarter, no half of the year. “Targeting” describes a goal, not a firm promise. Any exact date you see elsewhere is an estimate or a rumor – we check the best-known ones in our rumor check. As soon as CD PROJEKT RED names a day, it will appear here and on the overview.

The Witcher 4 is in full-scale production. According to CD PROJEKT RED, pre-production under the codename Polaris ended a few weeks before November 26, 2024, when the studio announced the step. Nowakowski called production the main and most intense stage of development at the time. In May 2026 he said the project was now in its “most intensive phase.”

In September 2026 he explained what full production means: the team knows what kind of game it is making and what its elements are, and is now filling it with content. He added a point that carries weight after Cyberpunk 2077’s troubled launch: the current build can be launched on every target platform. He was careful to say this does not mean a full game with all its content exists yet. More on that under platforms.

It is the largest team in the company. As of July 31, 2026, 519 developers were working on The Witcher 4, out of 1,045 developers at CD PROJEKT RED in total. According to head of investor relations Karolina Gnaś, the studio is using less outsourcing than originally planned. Who leads the team is covered under developers.

Long before 2028 was set, CD PROJEKT RED had ruled out earlier dates twice. On March 25, 2025, CFO Piotr Nielubowicz said the company did not plan to release The Witcher 4 by the end of 2026. The context was the management incentive program, whose first target ends on December 31, 2026: the game would not launch within that period, and the company did not want to say more about timing yet.

On November 26, 2025, Nowakowski was even clearer. The only thing the company was commenting on, he said, was that the game would not launch in 2026; production was proceeding according to the internal plan. In the same call he said The Witcher 4 would not bring any new content to The Game Awards 2025 – and it didn’t.

So 2027 was never officially on the table either. Under the current plan, that year belongs to Songs of the Past, the expansion for The Witcher 3. A “Q4 2027” estimate came from analysts, not from the studio.

Nowakowski himself gave a reference point. On May 28, 2025, he said that at CD PROJEKT RED the journey from pre-production to the final release takes four to five years on average. According to the studio’s own documents, The Witcher 4 was in pre-production by autumn 2022 at the latest.

Our own calculation, not a statement from the studio: four to five years from autumn 2022 would mean a launch between autumn 2026 and autumn 2027. The 2028 window is therefore a little longer than the average Nowakowski described. That fits his description of The Witcher 4 as the studio’s biggest and most ambitious game. It tells us nothing about whether 2028 will hold.

The gap between reveal and launch is worth noting. Cyberpunk 2077 took more than eight years and several delays to go from its first announcement to release. With The Witcher 4, CD PROJEKT RED announced the project in 2022 with nothing but an image and only showed the first trailer once the game was in full production.

CD PROJEKT RED does not publish interim goals such as alpha, beta or gold for The Witcher 4. In September 2026 Nowakowski explained that many milestones are very technical and internal. Progress can therefore only be read from what the studio says in its reports and videos.

The next opportunities for news:

• November 24, 2026: Q3 2026 report with an earnings call. CD PROJEKT RED usually gives the current team size there.
• December 10, 2026: The Game Awards 2026. An appearance by The Witcher 4 has not been announced; in 2025 the studio ruled one out in advance.

There has been no new trailer in 2026 so far. The only new video was the gamescom message – every video is on the trailers page.