The Witcher 3 Remastered Lands September 29 on Xbox Series X|S

Geralt Gets a New Coat of Paint

More than a decade after it first released, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming back in a big way. CD PROJEKT RED announced at gamescom Opening Night Live that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered is heading to Xbox Series X|S on September 29, 2026, according to a post on Xbox Wire authored by CD PROJEKT RED Expert PR Manager Marta Piwonska.

The remaster promises a wide range of visual and gameplay upgrades designed to modernize the experience without stripping away what made the original so beloved. If you have never spent 80 hours wandering through Velen or haggling in Novigrad, this is a very good time to start.

What Is Actually Changing

On the visual side, the upgrades are substantial. The Remastered version brings improved textures across environments, NPCs, and monsters, alongside a reworked lighting system. CD PROJEKT RED describes the goal as more natural illumination with dramatically improved light and shadow rendering throughout the open world. The team specifically highlights how the changes will register in everyday moments: the way sunlight filters through foliage while you track a monster through the wilderness, or the warm glow settling over Novigrad’s market streets at dusk.

Ray tracing improvements are also part of the package. According to Xbox Wire, the combination of all these changes is intended to make the world feel fresh again, even to players who have seen every corner of it before. That is a reasonable ambition for a game that has already been reissued once, on the previous console generation.

Beyond the visuals, the post notes that changes have been made to combat and traversal, framing modernization as a core consideration alongside the graphical work. Specific details on those gameplay adjustments were not fully detailed in the announcement, but the framing suggests CD PROJEKT RED is treating this as more than a simple resolution bump.

Songs of the Past Is Coming in 2027

Here is the part that will really get Witcher fans talking. Tucked into the Remastered announcement trailer was a glimpse of Songs of the Past, a brand new expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD PROJEKT RED confirmed the expansion is targeting a 2027 release.

Details at this stage are thin. The trailer apparently offered a glimpse rather than a full reveal, and the Xbox Wire post is careful to note the team will get to that news later. But the very existence of a new expansion for a game that originally released before a lot of current Xbox owners were in high school is genuinely striking. CD PROJEKT RED has been open about its ongoing commitment to the Witcher franchise, and Songs of the Past suggests that commitment runs deeper than a simple catalog remaster.

A Second Look at a Familiar World

The Witcher 3 already received a next-gen update for Xbox Series X|S back in 2022, so players on current hardware are not coming in completely cold. The Remastered release, however, appears to be a more thorough overhaul rather than an incremental patch, built around the idea of bringing the game up to what CD PROJEKT RED calls more contemporary standards.

For players who never finished the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions, or who bounced off the original combat, the September 29 release date gives a clear target. And with Songs of the Past on the horizon in 2027, this fall might be the best possible time to finally see what all the fuss about Gwent was about.