CD Projekt RED, the studio behind the Witcher series, has restated its big goal of releasing an entirely new Witcher trilogy that includes The Witcher 4, which is currently known as Project Polaris, as well as The Witcher 5 and The Witcher 6. The company shared this update during its Q3 2025 earnings call on November 26, 2025. During the call, joint CEO Michał Nowakowski responded to questions about development timelines and the use of their game engine. He explained that the team still intends to release all three games within six years from the launch of the first one. He said that he believes the next games should arrive more quickly and that the plan is to shorten the gaps between The Witcher 4 and The Witcher 5, and between The Witcher 5 and The Witcher 6.
The Witcher 4 marks the beginning of a new saga led by Ciri, who takes over as the main character from Geralt in an older and more experienced form. The game has been in full production since November 2024, and the main development team has been working from a new office building at CDPR’s Warsaw campus since June 2025. CDPR has already stated that the game will not release in 2026. The earliest realistic launch window is late 2027 or sometime in 2028. If everything goes according to plan, the entire trilogy could be finished around 2033, with each new game arriving every two to three years. This faster schedule is very different from the long wait between The Witcher 3, released in 2015, and the upcoming sequel. CDPR is able to move more quickly because of the efficiencies offered by Unreal Engine 5, which the studio has been using for nearly four years during the development of The Witcher 4.
Nowakowski said that CDPR has become highly skilled with Unreal Engine 5 for building large open-world RPGs. He explained that the team has been working with UE5 on The Witcher 4 for almost four years and that they are very pleased with the results so far. According to him, the engine continues to improve thanks to Epic’s work, and the studio is getting better at adapting it to the scale of a massive open-world game like The Witcher 4. Earlier in 2025, CDPR showed a tech demo at Unreal Fest that highlighted steady performance, reportedly running at 60 frames per second on a standard PlayStation 5, as well as rich environments with a high level of detail. The move to UE5 is also helping the team reuse assets, simplify their workflows, and shorten development time for future sequels. This is CDPR’s first major project using an external engine since The Witcher 1, as they have now stepped away from their own REDengine in favor of the speed and flexibility that UE5 offers.
Much of Fool’s Theory, the studio working on the Witcher 1 remake (Project Canis Majoris), has now been moved over to help develop The Witcher 4. Only a small team is still working on the remake, which is heavily dependent on the new technology being built for the next Witcher game. Because of that, the remake is still in the concept stage as of early 2025. CD Projekt reported spending 118 million PLN on development in the third quarter of 2025, with a large share going toward Polaris (The Witcher 4), Project Sirius, which is the multiplayer Witcher game, and Cyberpunk 2 (Project Orion). Cyberpunk 2 is expected to grow to around 400 developers by the end of 2027 and will not launch before 2028. The earnings call highlighted strong financial results, including a net profit of 193 million PLN, which is a 148 percent increase compared to last year. The Witcher 3 also continues to perform well, now exceeding 60 million copies sold worldwide. Because of this financial momentum, the company expressed confidence in releasing a rapid new Witcher trilogy, even though its past AAA projects, such as Cyberpunk 2077, experienced delays.
Source: CD Projekt
