Is there really going to be a new paid expansion released for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2026? Because that’s the suggestion I’ve seen. That’s the rumour that’s been ricocheting around the internet while I’ve been trying to enjoy a leftover sandwich this holiday.
The rumour stemmed originally from someone called Borys Nieśpielak, a trusted source of Polish games industry information – a leaker of sorts. He made a documentary a few years back about Polish indie game development, called We are alright, which is a good watch, and it shows that he has industry connections.
Nieśpielak said in the summer last year that Fool’s Theory, the studio remaking The Witcher 1 for CD Projekt Red, was making a new Witcher 3 expansion, and he reiterated this ahead of The Game Awards in December where he expected the announcement to be made, according to PCGamesN. But such an announcement never came.
Rumour quashed? No, because a separate voice has added strength to it. Polish Noble Securities analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski wrote a report on 16th December – after The Game Awards – which said, “We expect the next paid add-on (DLC) for The Witcher 3 to be released in May 2026.” That’s according to a Google translation of a Polish website report via Reddit.
“We assume sales of 11 million copies at $30 each next year. We estimate the production budget at PLN 52 million. The release should kick off the proper marketing campaign for The Witcher 4,” Chrzanowski added. Later, he predicted The Witcher 4 would be released in Q4 2027.
I wonder: could this rumoured Witcher 3 expansion be the unannounced project referenced in a recent CD Projekt Red financial report?
Partially, it makes sense. From a marketing point of view, beginning The Witcher 4 marketing campaign with a surprise content-drop for The Witcher 3 would certainly cause a stir. And storywise, an expansion could help bridge the gap between leaving Geralt as the main character and Ciri taking over. A paid expansion would obviously bridge a financial gap between now and The Witcher 4 being released, too – The Witcher 4 being the next big thing on the company’s to-do list.
But there are reasons to doubt it too. One big one is Unreal Engine 5. The studio has wholesale moved development from its proprietary Red Engine to Unreal Engine 5 – that’s what The Witcher 4 is being built on and what the Witcher 1 remake, which Fool’s Theory is also tasked with, is being made with too. That Witcher 1 remake has been slightly backbenched while Fool’s Theory helps CDPR make The Witcher 4 – that information was revealed during the recent financial call too. Why, then, give an already very busy developer another project to make and one made using the company’s old Red Engine, which The Witcher 3 uses?
It’s worth remembering how much effort CD Projekt Red puts into expansions as well. You need only look at Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty or The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine as examples of this. They are big, usually overly generous things. They provide a smaller game’s worth of content. They are important enough, then, to be handled internally, and the best time to make them is while you have a still-warm development after a main game has been released.
It’s been 10 years since The Witcher 3 came out. The people who made and led that game have moved on, or are elsewhere in the company. Trying to reassemble some of that team and magic, and muscle memory, would be incredibly hard. And why would you pull people from arguably more important projects, such as The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2, in order to do it?
What’s more, who would the expansion be centered on – Geralt again? Why bring that character back to the fore if you’re trying so hard to get people on board with Ciri as the series’ new protagonist? Blood and Wine was a perfectly fitting swansong for him, for Geralt, and Ciri’s story will be covered by the new game. I don’t see where a new story would fit in – or where it would be needed.
I’ve contacted Nieśpielak and Chrzanowski and CD Projekt Red to see if I can get any more information. But in the meantime, what do you think?