Don’t Expect The Witcher Remake Before The Witcher 4

The Witcher Remake has gone quiet for a reason. CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michał Nowakowski laid out what’s holding it back in an interview on The Game Business Show, and it comes down to a studio that’s currently juggling more than it ever has before.

The Technology Dependency Holding It Back

Fool’s Theory was originally brought on to handle The Witcher Remake, first announced back in 2022. According to Nowakowski, that changed once The Witcher 4’s needs came into focus.

“We started a collaboration with Fool’s Theory. They were supposed to work on The Witcher 1 [remake], but we realized that needed a bit more time because of certain technology dependencies with The Witcher 4.”

Those dependencies trace back to CD Projekt Red’s broader shift away from its proprietary RED Engine and onto Unreal Engine. The Witcher 4 is the game setting that standard for the studio, and the remake appears to be waiting on pipelines and tools that come out of that work rather than being built independently.

With that path blocked for the moment, Fool’s Theory redirected toward something else entirely. “We actually had the idea for a third expansion a long time ago, but it was put in a drawer forever,” Nowakowski said. “But one conversation led to another, which led to, ‘Why don’t we make an expansion?'” That conversation became Songs of the Past, The Witcher 3’s first new expansion in over a decade, which Fool’s Theory is now developing as its primary project.

Nowakowski’s Comments Track A Pattern

This isn’t a new development so much as a confirmation of where things have stood for a while. In CD Projekt Red’s Q3 2024 earnings call, Nowakowski described the remake as progressing normally. By the company’s full-year 2024 results, his language had shifted, and he described the project as folded into Witcher 4 development: “Due to production process dependencies, among others related to assets and technology, we have decided to temporarily integrate its development with ongoing work on The Witcher 4. As a result, a small portion of the Fool’s Theory team is currently supporting The Witcher 4 team.”

By the Q3 2025 earnings call, the picture hadn’t changed much. “The majority of the team is currently involved in the other project [Songs of the Past], and also support for The Witcher 4,” Nowakowski said, “so there is some limited team working on TW1, but since it’s very much tied with TW4 development, for TW1 per se, it’s a smaller group of people.”

CD Projekt Red hasn’t given The Witcher Remake a release window, but its own release calendar makes the order fairly easy to guess. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered arrives September 29, 2026. Songs of the Past follows in 2027. The Witcher 4 is targeting 2028. Given how directly Nowakowski ties the remake’s progress to Witcher 4’s technology, it’s unlikely to arrive before that lineup wraps up.