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- The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's third expansion, Songs of the Past, was supposed to launch this year
- CD Projekt Red decided a 2027 release would "achieve the best possible result from the consumer standpoint"
- The studio also confirmed that a demo of some sort will be at Gamescom 2026
As the rumors claimed, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's third expansion, Songs of the Past, was originally slated to launch this year before being pushed to 2027.
That's according to CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michał Nowakowski, who revealed in the company's latest financial earnings call (via Eurogamer) that the team "had a moment where our plans for Songs of the Past would be released this year" but decided with the development team that "the game will be launching in 2027 to achieve the best possible result from the consumer standpoint, which in the end, frankly speaking, is the only thing that really matters."
"For several quarters, we've been disclosing that our pipeline includes some unannounced projects being in an advanced production stage," added chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz. "One of those is the expansion being co-developed by Fool's Theory. Our early plans assumed that Songs of the Past could be released this year; however, we decided that it will be launching in 2027."
While sadly we won't be playing Songs of the Past this year, CDPR has confirmed that the expansion will be at Gamescom 2026 in August. However, there won't be a hands-on demo on the show floor, but rather a presentation like previous Witcher 3 expansions.
"I cannot really talk through the details, but what I would suggest is that historically when we were showing Witcher games, we were typically doing a guided demo kind of experience, so probably you should be thinking more along those lines rather than a hands-on experience," Nowakowski explained.
"These are big games, very large RPG experiences, and having a five-minute session with a game like that would not really give you a lot. So we're more likely going to be following the trail of what we've been doing in the past with The Witcher 3 or, for that matter, with Cyberpunk when we were announcing it as well."
They were also asked about the scale of Songs of the Past and if it will be Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, with Nowakowski saying that "when it comes to scope," it's like the latter, "but this is super-subjective."
"It really depends on how you're going to play - what's your playthrough," he said. "But we're definitely making a proper big expansion is the message I would send out there."
On the topic of The Witcher 4, Nowakowski referred to Songs of the Past as a "prologue", but didn't specify if the expansion would be a prelude to the upcoming game, or its own standalone story for The Witcher 3.
"First and foremost, we really wanted to deliver a great experience to the fans - a really cool expansion that's going to make people happy that they can come back to The Witcher 3 setting," Nowakoski said. "But of course indirectly, yes, it is a reminder [about the franchise]. It is, in a way, a prologue, although it's not a prologue in a verbatim way in [that] it's a prologue for the actual Witcher 4."
He also agreed that the expansion could be looked at as a way to maintain certain chatter on The Witcher 3, but said, "all of those are additional side effects."
"The core thing from our perspective is really delivering a high-quality fun experience to the existing fans of The Witcher," Nowakoski added.
Songs of the Past will arrive before The Witcher 4. When asked if the upcoming game would also receive expansions, the CFO reiterated the company's "ambitious" plans to release three Witcher games within a six-year period, but admitted, "it would be difficult, to be very honest, for us to add an expansion to the upcoming trilogy - this is where we are here and now with this particular issue."
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