The Witcher 4 is making steady progress after entering full production last year, though it won’t launch next year or even be available until 2027 at the earliest. However, if you’ll remember, it’s the start of a new trilogy and CD Projekt RED committed to releasing all three games within six years.
Fortunately, that hasn’t changed, and The Witcher 5 and The Witcher 6 (if that’s what they’re called) could end up having shorter development cycles. Co-CEO Michał Nowakowski said this during a CD Projekt Group conference, noting that the team has been using Unreal Engine 5 for “almost four years” on The Witcher 4 and is “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 efforts, and how we are learning how to make it work within a huge open-world game, as The Witcher 4 is meant to be.”
When asked if subsequent titles may have a “shorter and more predictable cadence,” Nowakowski responded, “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 The Witcher 4 and The Witcher 5, between The Witcher 5 and The Witcher 6 and so on.”
The Witcher 4 currently has almost 450 developers working on it. While there’s no release window – and it certainly won’t have anything new to showcase at The Game Awards – development is currently on track. Aside from Ciri as the protagonist, very little is known about the story, but it could feature elements from Crossroads of Ravens, Andrzej Sapkowski’s upcoming prequel novel.
