The Witcher 4 Isn’t Arriving Until 2027 at the Earliest, So Take It Easy

The Witcher 4 may have entered its “most intensive” production phase but it won’t be gracing your whirring machinery any time in the next year or two. During a financial call for people in suits with lots of money, the developer said they were hoping to give shareholders value for money, “even though we do not plan to release The Witcher 4 by the end of 2026.” Basically confirming what you probably could’ve guessed anyway: there’s no plan to bring the RPG sequel out before 2027.

The earnings call was mostly a slew of graphs and tables with lots of numbers. Horrifying stuff. But there were some comments from executives which eliminated the possibility of an early release for the anticipated open world RPG, as spotted by PC Gamer.

“We are not going to announce the precise launch date for the game yet,” said CD Projekt Red’s chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz when asked about plans for the release during a Q&A session. “All we could share now to give more visibility to investors is that the game will not be launched within the time frame of the first target for the incentive program, which ends December 31, 2026.”

Elsewhere in the call, the studio also asserted that they won’t be using generative AI to help with development, mostly because of the legal problems it could cause in regards to copyright and such.

“Gen AI, to be honest, is quite tricky when it comes to legal IP ownership and so on, and many other aspects,” said joint CEO Michał Nowakowski when asked about it. “So when it comes to implementation of any gen AI in the actual games, we really have nothing happening when it comes to Witcher 4 or any projects in the near future.”

Although that doesn’t rule out the company using the technology in the future, as even Nowakowski admits the studio has been “investigating the potential use of AI solutions in our future products, including development of our own customized AI models.”

The recent Witcher 4 trailer confirmed that Ciri, not Geralt, would be the star of the next adventure. It saw her doing battle with an ancient spidery evil and suffering an unheroic outcome typical to The Witcher games. Placing Ciri at the centre of the story will let the game explore sexism within the fantasy world, say CD Projekt. Which could be an interesting angle if done intelligently. You may also be glad to know that the in-universe card game Gwent will be making a return.