Details about the forthcoming The Witcher IV and its subsequent sequels were revealed at a recent CD PROJEKT RED earnings call. The Witcher IV was announced in December 2024. Not much has been revealed about it since, but co-CEO Michał Nowakowski has said that the development team is now fully staffed and has entered the full-scale production phase. He also added that it will not be released in 2026 and did not provide a planned release date, but did reveal an interesting goal of releasing the entire trilogy within a six-year timespan and that the team is very happy with the switch from using its internal engine to UE5.
“We’ve been using UE5 for The Witcher 4 for almost five years now [IR comment: almost four
years], and we’re very happy with what we’ve achieved. I think you could have seen some of that
with your own eyes with our tech demo reveal at Unreal Fest couple of months ago, and we’re very
happy with the results of that as well – we’ve already said that, but I’m always happy to say it again
– and we’re happy with how the engine is evolving through the Epic team’s eYorts, and how we are
learning how to make it work within a huge open-world game, as TW4 is meant to be.
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” -Michał Nowakowski
It was a bit of a surprise that after using Red Engine to develop the first trilogy that CDPR has chosen to switch over to Unreal Engine 5 for the next round of games, but they are among a number of studios to make a similar choice in recent years. Meanwhile, with The Game Awards right around the corner, some were hoping to see perhaps a new trailer or gameplay footage at this year’s event, but it seems that is not to be either.
I’m very happy to see The Witcher 4 nominated in the Most Anticipated Game category at The Game Awards. Thanks to everyone who has already voted – your support means a lot of to us. We won’t be bringing any new content to TGA this year, but we’re, as always, excited to watch the…
— Michał Nowakowski (@michalnowakow) November 26, 2025
Folks awaiting the remake for the first game will have a bit longer to wait since its team over at Fool’s Theory is primarily working on The Witcher IV. No date for The Witcher Remake was given but it doesn’t sound like it’ll be arriving anytime soon.
“In terms of Fool’s Theory – I think we stated in the past that the majority of the team is currently involved in the other project, and also support for The Witcher 4, so there is some limited team working on TW1, but since it’s very much tied with TW4 development – this is also why we made this move, and we have explained that in the past – so, for TW1 per se, it’s a smaller group of people.”
What about AI?
AI has been a controversial topic within the gaming industry, whether it be for use in game development to it being attributed to mass layoffs as publishers seek lower development costs by replacing staff. The question came up during the earnings call, asking about this, to which Nowakowski clarified that while CDRP does use AI to assist in productivity areas and “it’s not gonna be making The Witcher 5, or 6, or anything like that.”