CD Projekt has announced The Witcher 3 Remastered, a major upgrade for the 2015 game, available free to owners of the original on GOG, Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, or Xbox Series X/S. The announcement came during Gamescom 2026's Opening Night Live event, which also revealed a new expansion, Songs Of The Past, and made the existing expansions Hearts Of Stone and Blood And Wine free.
Remaster promises major gameplay changes
The remaster is described as a significant upgrade, not just in visuals but with promised changes to combat, traversal, horse-riding, and the skill tree. This addresses long-standing criticism of the original game's weak combat. However, there is no mention of improving the inventory system, another major complaint.
CD Projekt developer Miles Toast appeared on stage to discuss the remaster, describing a revamped ability system not specifically mentioned in the trailer. The full list of features includes upgraded visuals, enhanced combat, improved traversal, new witcher signs FX, revamped mount handling, enhanced monster behaviours, skill tree revamp, transmogrification, expanded photo mode, new finishers, and cross-platform mod support. Additional improvements include immersive meditation, refined animations, new quest tracking, UI improvements, looting rework, refreshed motion blur, new accessibility features, updated textures, foliage shading rework, tutorial modernisation, HDR improvements, GTAO, improved menu navigation, ray tracing improvements, global lighting rework, new shading model, subsurface scattering, new tone mapper, PlayStation 5 Pro support, Xbox Play Anywhere support, Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive features, Nvidia DLSS 4.5, AMD FSR 4, Intel XESS 2.0, path tracing on PC, ray reconstruction on PC, ray-traced hair, native DX12, and rendering parallelisation.
Free for existing owners, new DLC announced
The remaster is free for those who own the original game on any of the listed platforms. It will also be available on Battle.net for the first time, and can be claimed for free on Nintendo Switch 2 by owners of the Switch 1 version. Existing expansions Hearts Of Stone and Blood And Wine are also free, either for those who had the base game or when purchasing the remastered version separately.
The new expansion, Songs Of The Past, is being developed by Fool's Theory, a studio composed of many The Witcher veterans. It will take advantage of all the improvements from the remastered version. The expansion takes place on the continent of Letten, and the trailer shows Geralt fighting tree monsters. The new chain weapon seen in the trailer is a nod to the original The Witcher game's intro, and may be the same weapon Ciri uses in The Witcher 4 teaser trailer, though CD Projekt has not confirmed this connection.
Release date and availability
The Witcher 3 Remastered releases on September 29. The DLC, Songs Of The Past, was leaked multiple times, but CD Projekt kept it secret, with the expansion developed by external developer Yigsoft.
