The Witcher 3 Remastered: Every Free Upgrade, the New DLC, and How It All Leads to The Witcher 4

Gamescom's Biggest Surprise: A Free Remaster Confirmed for September 29

On August 25, 2026, during Gamescom's Opening Night Live, CD Projekt Red closed the show with a reveal nobody had on their bingo card: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, arriving September 29, 2026, as a free upgrade for existing owners. This is not the modest patch console players received in December 2022. It is a full pass on combat, movement, monster behavior, progression, loot, lighting, and rendering, layered on top of a game that is already more than a decade old.

The remaster reaches PC through GOG, Steam, Epic Games Store, and - for the first time in the franchise's history - Battle.net, following a new partnership with Blizzard Entertainment. It also lands on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and on Nintendo Switch 2 as a standalone native release rather than a free upgrade, since the Switch original is not covered. Anyone who already owns The Witcher 3 on a qualifying platform gets Remastered at no extra cost, and both previously paid expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, are now permanently free for every base-game owner as well.

A Free-Content Legacy: From 16 DLC Drops in 2015 to Two Free Expansions in 2026

CD Projekt Red's reputation for generosity did not start this week. At the game's 2015 launch, the studio committed to 16 pieces of free downloadable content, delivered in two-item bundles on a rolling weekly schedule beginning shortly after release. The drops ranged from cosmetic sets like the Temerian Armor and a Beard and Hairstyle pack to small side quests, alternate character looks, and additional gear, capped off months later by a New Game Plus mode as the sixteenth and final piece. At the time, CD Projekt's leadership framed the program as a way of thanking players rather than nickel-and-diming them for minor content, a philosophy that became core to the studio's brand identity.

That same instinct is visible in the 2026 announcement. Hearts of Stone, the first paid expansion from October 2015, and Blood and Wine, the acclaimed 2016 follow-up that is frequently cited as one of the best expansions ever made, are now bundled into ownership of the base game at zero additional cost. For newcomers who buy in via the remaster, that means the full Witcher 3 experience - main campaign plus both expansions - arrives without a second purchase, a decade-long callback to the free-DLC strategy that first won the game its early goodwill.

Inside the Remaster: Combat, Traversal, and a Rebuilt Skill Tree

The scope of the rework goes well beyond a visual coat of paint. CD Projekt Red has confirmed reworked combat with new finishing animations and revised effects for Geralt's Witcher Signs, improved traversal and movement including reworked mantling and climbing, enhanced monster behavior and AI, a redesigned skill tree, better horse handling for Roach, an expanded photo mode, and - a long-requested feature — a transmogrification system that lets players keep a preferred appearance while wearing whatever gear has the best stats.

On the technical side, PC players gain access to graphics technology that skipped the 2022 next-gen update entirely: path tracing, ray reconstruction, ray-traced hair, and support for NVIDIA DLSS 4.5, AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS 2.0. CD Projekt Red has not yet detailed exactly how the more demanding rendering options will scale across different hardware tiers, which is likely to become clearer once the studio runs deeper Gamescom-week presentations. The 2022 next-gen update added ray tracing, faster loading, mod-menu integration, and content inspired by Netflix's adaptation; Remastered is being pitched as a considerably larger overhaul that touches the entire game, including both expansions.

Songs of the Past: The Expansion That Bridges Geralt's Story to The Witcher 4

The remaster wasn't the only Witcher 3 news at Gamescom. Songs of the Past, first announced back on May 27, 2026, got its debut trailer during the same Opening Night Live show. CD Projekt Red is co-developing the expansion with Fool's Theory, a studio led by veterans of the original Witcher 3 team, and it is being framed as Geralt's final outing on the Continent before the series hands the reins to Ciri.

The story sends Geralt to Letten, a newly introduced region described as an idyllic land shaped by rural tradition and folklore, concealing a long-dormant evil beneath its surface. The trailer showed new enemy types alongside a new weapon: a chain that can ensnare and drag enemies toward Geralt, a callback to a similar tool briefly glimpsed in the very first Witcher game. Sizing comparisons floated around the reveal point to something in the range of Blood and Wine, which ran roughly 30 to 40 hours. Because Songs of the Past releases after Remastered, it inherits all of the reworked combat, traversal, and skill-tree systems rather than shipping on the older 2022 foundation — and CD Projekt Red has explicitly positioned it as the narrative bridge connecting the end of Geralt's saga to the beginning of Ciri's story in The Witcher 4.

The Next Six Months: September 2026 Through Early 2027

The immediate roadmap is dense. Remastered and the newly free expansions go live everywhere on September 29, including the Switch 2 native release and the Battle.net debut. Two weeks later, CD Projekt Red heads to BlizzCon 2026 on September 12 and 13 in Anaheim, where it plans to reveal more about the Diablo IV crossover tied to the Blizzard partnership — players who purchase or pre-purchase Songs of the Past on Battle.net will unlock a Geralt-inspired skin in Diablo IV, with fuller details promised at the event.

Expect the weeks after launch to be dominated by community reaction: how the reworked combat and skill tree land with longtime players, how the new rendering options perform across different GPU tiers, and how the Switch 2 native version handles the same feature set on portable hardware. CD Projekt Red has said relatively little about Switch 2-exclusive features so far, which makes further clarification likely in this window. Wishlisting for Songs of the Past is already open on Battle.net ahead of its 2027 launch, and marketing for the expansion should ramp steadily through the back half of this period as the studio works to keep momentum between the remaster's release and the DLC itself.

The One-Year Horizon: Songs of the Past Ships in 2027

Looking out to the one-year mark, the headline event is Songs of the Past itself, still dated only to 2027 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC — it is not coming to Nintendo Switch. A firmer release date has not been announced, so expect additional gameplay reveals and marketing beats as the window narrows, likely timed to future showcases in the way Gamescom hosted this first look.

Narratively, this is where CD Projekt Red has the most room to make good on the "bridge" framing. The studio has confirmed the expansion closes out Geralt's story and sets up threads that carry into Ciri's saga, but the specifics of how those threads connect have not been detailed yet. Given how deliberately CD Projekt Red paced the Remastered and Songs of the Past reveals — announcing the expansion months before showing it, then pairing that first look with a surprise remaster — it's a reasonable bet that further Witcher 3 content drops through 2027 will continue to double as scene-setting for the next mainline game, rather than existing purely as a nostalgia lap.

Beyond 2027: The Witcher 4, Ciri, and a New Saga on Unreal Engine 5

A day before Gamescom, on August 24, 2026, joint CEO Michał Nowakowski used a short video to confirm that The Witcher 4 is targeting a 2028 release window, while also clarifying the game itself would not appear at Gamescom 2026 — that spotlight was reserved for the Witcher 3 news. Nowakowski described the team as being deep into a new saga led by Ciri, with more than 500 developers now working on what CD Projekt Red calls its biggest and most ambitious project to date, and asked fans for patience with a brief, memorable line: "let the team cook."

The Witcher 4 marks CD Projekt Red's first departure from its long-running REDengine in favor of Unreal Engine 5, built in close collaboration with Epic Games. A June 2025 State of Unreal tech demonstration - explicitly framed as a technology showcase rather than real gameplay - followed Ciri and her horse Kelpie through the Kovir region into the port town of Valdrest, running at 60 frames per second on a base PlayStation 5 and demonstrating tools like Nanite Foliage, MetaHuman character technology, Unreal's Mass system for crowd simulation, and FastGeo streaming for large open worlds. The studio has described its approach as console-first, building from the PS5 baseline outward, while still committing to a strong PC experience. Ciri leads the new trilogy as its protagonist, with Geralt confirmed to return in an unspecified "special role." Separately, CD Projekt Red also has a ground-up remake of the very first Witcher game in development at Fool's Theory, also built on Unreal Engine 5, expected to arrive sometime after The Witcher 4 ships.

Sources & References

CD Projekt Red Press Center — "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered Announced, Songs of the Past Gets First Look" CD Projekt — Official Remastered / Songs of the Past announcement GameInformer — "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered Is a Free, Huge Upgrade Out September 29" Push Square — "First Look at The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past DLC Shows Chain Combat as Old Expansions Are Made Free for All" ScreenRant — "The Witcher 3: Songs Of The Past Is Officially Geralt's Final Adventure" Wikipedia — The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past GosuGamers — "The Witcher 3 x Diablo IV Crossover Revealed in CD Projekt RED and Blizzard Collab" GosuGamers — "The Witcher 4 Targets 2028 Release Window, CD Projekt RED Confirms" Dot Esports — "The Witcher 4 Is Slated for a 2028 Release" GameSpot — "Witcher 3 Getting 16 Free DLC Packs"