CD Projekt Red Is Remastering The Witcher 3 for Free, and Giving It a Brand-New Expansion in 2027

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered launches September 29, 2026, and the headline term is free. Existing owners on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S get the upgrade at no cost, and the list of improvements runs well past a simple resolution bump. CD Projekt Red is promising upgraded visuals, reworked combat, improved traversal and movement, new visual effects for the Witcher Signs, revamped mount handling, smarter monster behaviors, a skill-tree overhaul, transmogrification, an expanded photo mode, and new finishing moves.

There is a further gift buried in the announcement. Every current owner also receives the two original expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, for free, folding what were once separate purchases into the base package. Between the free remaster and the free expansions, CD Projekt Red is effectively handing longtime owners the complete, best-looking version of the game for nothing, which is a striking way to reintroduce a title that has already sold tens of millions of copies.

The part that should make longtime fans sit up is Songs of the Past, a brand-new paid expansion due in 2027 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X and S, and Switch 2. New story content for a game that wrapped its narrative with Blood and Wine back in 2016 is genuinely unusual, and the details point to real ambition rather than a token add-on.

Songs of the Past introduces a new region called Letten, along with new monsters and returning characters, and it hands Geralt new abilities including a chain weapon that yanks enemies toward him, a notable shift for a combat system built around swordplay and Signs. Wishlists are open now, and while a 2027 window leaves plenty of room for the picture to fill in, the pitch is clear: this is meant to be a substantial return to Geralt's world, not a victory lap.

The remaster comes with two platform reveals that are arguably as newsworthy as the game itself. The first is a native Switch 2 version, with pre-orders already open at Nintendo, extending one of the most portable-friendly big-budget RPGs onto Nintendo's new hardware in a purpose-built form rather than a cloud stopgap.

The second is a first for the series and a genuine eyebrow-raiser: The Witcher 3 is coming to Battle.net through a new partnership between CD Projekt Red and Blizzard Entertainment, launching there alongside the other platforms on September 29. Seeing a CD Projekt Red game arrive on Blizzard's storefront is the kind of pairing that would have sounded implausible a few years ago, and it hints at distribution ambitions that reach beyond this one release.

The easy move with a game this beloved is to repackage it and charge again. CD Projekt Red is doing close to the opposite: giving the remaster and the original expansions away to existing owners, and betting that goodwill now pays off later when Songs of the Past arrives as the thing people actually open their wallets for. It is a canny read of a fanbase that has spent a decade defending this game, and early reactions to the free upgrade have leaned warm for exactly that reason.

It also says something about where CD Projekt Red's attention sits. With the next mainline Witcher still on the horizon, keeping the third game vital, on new hardware, on a new storefront, and with new story content, keeps the series in front of players during the long wait. If you have somehow never played it, September 29 is an almost aggressively good moment to start, and our review explains why The Witcher 3 has stayed a benchmark for the open-world RPG for so long. If you finished it years ago, 2027 now has a reason to pull you back to Geralt one more time.