CD Projekt Red confirmed on its Q3 earnings call that The Witcher 4 will not arrive in 2026 and that the studio still intends to release the three-game Witcher trilogy across a six year period. When asked about timing and development risks during the investor call, Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski answered bluntly that the company is not sharing a target release date yet and that 2026 is off the table for TW4.
“We’re not disclosing any details regarding the target release date, so there’s not a point in time I could refer to when answering such a question. The only think we’re commenting is that we’re not launching in 2026, and we’re also not typically getting into any specifics regarding technical or design matters. There’s nothing out of the ordinary, I’d say, in that area happening with TW4 – it’s just full scale production proceeding at its pace, as per our internal plans. I think that’s as much as we can say.”
Nowakowski went on to reiterate the studio’s plan for multiple Witcher games, saying the team still expects to deliver the trilogy within six years so the gaps between TW4, TW5 and TW6 will be shorter than the long waits fans have seen before.
“In a way, yes, I do believe that further games should be delivered in a shorter period of time – as we had stated before, our plan still is to launch the whole trilogy within a six-year period, so yes, that would mean we would plan to have a shorter development time between TW4 and TW5, between TW5 and TW6 and so on.”
That combination of a firm no for 2026 and an intent to tighten the gaps between entries puts CD Projekt Red in a familiar balancing act: avoid the rushed launch problems that haunted Cyberpunk 2077 while trying to move faster between major releases. The studio has been hiring to support those goals, recent headcount increases noted the company bolstered teams across projects, including The Witcher 4, which signals extra capacity behind the plan in our report on the hiring update. Fans should also remember that CD Projekt Red told audiences The Witcher 4 would not be showing new content at The Game Awards, a reminder that major public reveals are not guaranteed before the studio is ready to commit to dates and footage in our earlier coverage. If you want to read the full Q3 transcript yourself CD Projekt posted it on its investor site.
Is the six year trilogy plan realistic or too optimistic given scope and quality expectations? Leave a comment and tell us what you think, and follow us on X, Bluesky, and YouTube.
