Eleven years after Geralt first rode out of White Orchard, CD Projekt Red is giving The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt a major do-over. Announced during Gamescom Opening Night Live 2026, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered arrives on September 29, 2026, and it will be a free upgrade for everyone who already owns the base game.
This is more than a coat of paint. CDPR is co-developing the remaster with a studio called Yigsoft, and executive producer of external projects Jakub Kutrzuba told PC Gamer the team asked itself what the game would play like if it launched in 2026. "We put a lot of our time into how the game actually plays," Kutrzuba said, pointing to the animation system, camera work, enemy behaviour, and pathfinding. "The game just plays smoother, you know? There's no immersion-breakers anymore, I would say."
What's changing
The list of upgrades is long, and a chunk of it is graphics jargon, but the gameplay-facing changes are real. Highlights include:
- Reworked combat, with new finishers and refined animations
- Improved traversal, movement, and mount handling
- A reimagined skill tree built for more flexibility
- Armor transmogrification so gear looks how you want
- Enhanced monster behaviors and an adaptive camera
- Expanded photo mode, "immersive meditation," and cross-platform mod support
On the technical side, CDPR is layering in path tracing on PC, ray reconstruction, raytraced hair, PlayStation 5 Pro support, Xbox Play Anywhere support, and upscaling via Nvidia DLSS 4.5, AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS 2.0. The remaster will replace the current Complete Edition on storefronts when it launches.
Free expansions and the Switch 2 question
As of the announcement, the two original story expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, are now free for all base game owners. Most players who bought the Game of the Year or Complete Edition already had them, but anyone on just the base game gets them at no cost.
CDPR also cleared up how the Nintendo Switch 2 upgrade works after some confusion. Players who own The Witcher 3 digitally on Switch can already place a free pre-order for the Remastered version on the eShop. Physical owners could not pre-order, prompting worry, so the studio's support account confirmed that physical copy holders will be able to claim the free upgrade when Remastered launches on September 29. No physical release of the remaster itself has been announced for PS5 or Switch 2. There's also a crossover perk: buying the remaster on Battle.net nets a Geralt skin in Diablo 4.
The bigger picture: Songs of the Past
The remaster is paving the way for Songs of the Past, a brand new Geralt expansion CDPR finally showed in trailer form. It's coming in 2027, roughly 12 years after the base game. Co-developed by Fool's Theory, it takes Geralt to a new forested region called Letten, the homeland of his friend Dandelion, whose friendship is at stake in the story. Geralt wields a new chain weapon that Eurogamer notes resembles the one Ciri carries in The Witcher 4 trailer, hinting at a narrative thread across the series.
For anyone tracking upcoming releases, this is a rare consumer-friendly deal: The Witcher 3 Remastered lands as a free upgrade on September 29, 2026, with Songs of the Past following in 2027, all while The Witcher 4 stays in full production toward its 2028 target.