The Witcher 4 is currently in production. The development team at CD Projekt Red is confident that they can release all three parts of the trilogy in quick succession.
What does the team aim to achieve? During a meeting to present the financial results from the third quarter (available as PDF) of 2025, Michał Nowakowski discussed the current status of projects at CD Projekt Red. The Witcher 4 and the rest of the planned trilogy were also mentioned.
Currently, The Witcher 4 is said to be in the “Full-Scale” production phase. At this point, he could not provide details about the game’s development process. All that is known is that the next installment with protagonist Ciri will not be released in 2026.
However, the development seems to be progressing well enough that the team is confident they can deliver the next games in a shorter timeframe. The developers plan to release The Witcher 5 and 6 within six years after the release of part 4.
This means that The Witcher 6 could be released as early as 2033 if The Witcher 4 celebrates its release in 2027. According to the developers, an important tool is essential for this success.
Developers have become faster with a tool
How do they want to achieve the goal? The reason for this ambitious plan is the Unreal Engine 5. The tool is used to complete the game and has already impressed with a tech demo. The team clarified that the actual game would not look like this demo, but development should progress much faster:
We are satisfied with the development of the engine through the efforts of the Epic team and how we are learning to implement it in a massive open-world game like The Witcher 4. In a way, I do believe that further games should be released in a shorter time.
Thus, there should be a shorter time span between parts 4 and 5, as well as between parts 5 and 6. The team has been working with the engine for four years and is excited about what they have achieved so far.
Whether the plan will ultimately work out remains to be seen. After all, game development increasingly takes longer. Ambitious AAA productions are typically no longer completed in 2 or 3 years, but rather in over 6 years.
Accordingly, it would be remarkable if the entire Witcher trilogy were to be released within 6 years. Especially since CD Projekt wants to avoid a catastrophic launch like that of Cyberpunk 2077. Therefore, they have also lowered the expectations slightly regarding the graphics.
At least in one thing, the developers want to stay true. There should be a certain type of quests that will not exist in The Witcher 4, so that players would feel like they are in the midst of a good book: After Witcher 3, they want to avoid a certain type of quests in the sequel
