The Witcher IV

Did You Know?

• The game introduces new playable regions, including Kovir, which was only mentioned in previous Witcher games and explored in the books.
• The player may summon Ciri's horse, Kelpie, at will.

Development

CD Projekt Red announced a new Witcher game in March 2022, and by October revealed that the entry, internally codenamed Project Polaris, would start a new trilogy. In November, Sebastian Kalemba was appointed game director for Polaris after serving as creative director on the project for 15 months. The game remained in pre-production from May 2022 until November 2024, when full production began. Staff moved from Cyberpunk 2077 work after the Phantom Liberty expansion, with the Polaris team reaching 403 members in March 2024, 499 by March 2026, and 513 by May 2026—more than double The Witcher 3's core team of 240.

A small team from Fool's Theory, developer of the 2007 Witcher remake, was temporarily assigned to assist due to shared assets and technology. Polish analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski claimed development would cost $390 million with another $390 million for marketing, making it one of the most expensive video games to develop. Game director Kalemba stated the developers intend to expand player agency through more narrative choices, enhance gameplay flexibility in character builds and encounters, and create greater coherence across main missions, side quests, and open world activities.

Marketing and release

The Witcher IV was announced with a cinematic trailer at the Game Awards in December 2024, created in collaboration with Platige Image, the studio behind previous Witcher game intro cinematics. The trailer was pre-rendered in-engine on a then-unannounced GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card. A tech demo running on PlayStation 5 was showcased during the State of Unreal presentation in June 2025. CD Projekt's chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz stated in March 2025 that the game would not release before 2027. It is scheduled for release in 2028 on PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S. Joint CEO Michał Nowakowski stated the studio will most likely not release expansions for the planned trilogy, as doing so would be difficult given their goal of releasing the titles within a six-year timeframe.