CD PROJEKT RED closed out gamescom Opening Night Live by giving Geralt fans two things they did not expect on the same night: a release date and a price tag of zero. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered arrives September 29, 2026, and it is a free upgrade for anyone who already owns the game on a qualifying platform. The studio also handed out Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine to every existing owner at no cost, and teased a brand new expansion called Songs of the Past for 2027. Here is what is actually changing, which platforms are getting it, and why the Battle.net announcement is stranger than it sounds.
What Remastered Actually Changes
This is not a resolution bump with a new lighting pass slapped on top. CD PROJEKT RED is co-developing Remastered with Yigsoft, a Hungarian studio that already worked on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, and the feature list reaches well past visuals.
The announced improvements include:
- Upgraded visuals and performance across the board
- Enhanced combat, including new finishers
- Improved traversal and movement
- New visual effects for witcher signs
- Revamped mount handling
- Enhanced monster behaviors
- A reworked skill tree
- Transmogrification
- An expanded photo mode
The skill tree revamp is the one worth watching. The original 2015 build funneled most players into the same handful of alchemy and fast attack setups, and a genuine rebalance would change how a 2026 replay feels more than any texture pass could.
Every Platform, Including Two New Ones
Remastered launches on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. It also lands on two platforms The Witcher 3 has never officially occupied.
Nintendo Switch 2
A native Switch 2 version arrives the same day, with pre-orders already open. Anyone who bought the game on the original Switch gets the Switch 2 upgrade free, which is a notably generous read of a platform transition that other publishers have been charging for.
Battle.net
CD PROJEKT RED has partnered with Blizzard Entertainment to bring Remastered and Songs of the Past to Battle.net on September 29. Buying the expansion through Blizzard's storefront unlocks a Geralt-inspired skin in Diablo 4, with more details promised when CD PROJEKT RED shows up at BlizzCon in September. A Polish RPG shipping on Blizzard's launcher is not a sentence anyone was writing a year ago.
Songs of the Past Takes Geralt Somewhere New
The other half of the announcement was a first look at Songs of the Past, a paid expansion arriving in 2027 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch 2. It sends Geralt to Letten, a new region built around rural tradition, folklore, bountiful harvests, and festivals, with something considerably worse waiting underneath all of it.
Geralt picks up new abilities and a new weapon for the trip, a chain, and the expansion promises never-before-seen enemies alongside returning faces. Fool's Theory is co-developing with CD PROJEKT RED, which matters: the Polish studio's leadership includes Witcher 3 veterans, and the team is also working on The Witcher Remake. Songs of the Past is available to wishlist now on select platforms.
The short version is that CD PROJEKT RED spent gamescom giving things away. A remaster that costs nothing, two expansions handed to every existing owner, and a free Switch 2 upgrade all landed in the same announcement, with a paid expansion a year out as the actual business case. The Witcher 3 has sold more than 65 million copies and collected over 250 Game of the Year awards since 2015, so the audience for a modernized version is already enormous, and September 29 is close enough that nobody has to take it on faith for long.
What do you think, is a free remaster enough to pull you back into Velen for another 100 hours? Come argue about builds in the NerdBlocks forum.
