The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered launches on 29 September 2026, and if you already own the game, you pay nothing. The upgrade arrives on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and, for the first time as a native version, Nintendo Switch 2. Saves carry over, skills get reset, and on PC you will need Windows 11 and an SSD.
Three weeks have passed since the gamescom reveal, and CD PROJEKT RED has shared a lot more than it did on that first night: PS5 Pro modes, Switch 2 frame rates, what happens to mods and saves, and the price of entry for new buyers. I have put all of it in one place, along with a separate list of what the studio still has not said.
Who gets the remaster for free
Everyone who owns The Witcher 3 on a platform the remaster is coming to. On PC that means GOG, Steam and the Epic Games Store, plus Battle.net from 29 September: it is the first time CDPR has released one of its games on Blizzard's store.
- PS4 and Xbox One owners get the remaster through the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S versions. The free move to the new consoles has been in place since 2022. The old consoles themselves get no remaster, only the expansions for free.
- Original Switch owners can claim the Switch 2 version at no cost. Digital owners can already pre-order it on the eShop, physical owners claim it on launch day.
- Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine have been free for every base game owner since 25 August, and both are part of the remaster. On PC and current consoles they arrive with a game update, on PS4 and Xbox One you download them separately.
There is one catch for new buyers. A few days after the reveal, the Complete Edition on Steam went up from $39.99 to $49.99. CDPR has not explained it, but the timing is hard to miss. Other stores still run discounts on the game.
As for why it is free, CD Projekt joint CEO Michał Nowakowski told The Game Business that charging existing owners was never even discussed. The money is meant to come from the new Songs of the Past expansion, more on that below.
What changes in the game itself
This is not a sharpness filter. Paweł Sasko, associate game director at CDPR, compared the remaster to Cyberpunk 2077's update 2.0 when speaking to Kotaku, and said gameplay was what drew the most criticism, which is why it is being reworked first.
- Combat. New targeting, gap-closing moves, a camera that pulls back when there are many enemies, and finishers that use signs, Aard included.
- Skills. The tree has been rewritten, with fewer passive abilities and more active ones. That is why your skill points get reset on the switch and you will spend them again.
- Transmogrification. You can keep one armour's stats with another's look, and the same for weapons.
- Movement. Reworked mantling and climbing, monster behaviour, looting, quest tracking, UI, tutorials and meditation. There are new accessibility options and an expanded photo mode.
A note on Roach. Horse handling has been reworked, but CDPR lead level designer Miles Tost told Fall Damage there will be a toggle: if you dislike the new Roach, you can switch back to the old one, habit of getting stuck in doorways and all.
Graphics and PC requirements
The studio's list of visual changes is long: new textures, reworked lighting and foliage shading, a new shading model, subsurface scattering, a new tone mapper, better HDR and ray-traced hair. On PC there is full path tracing with Ray Reconstruction.
All three upscalers are in: DLSS 4.5 with Dynamic Multi Frame Generation, FSR 4 and XeSS 2.0. According to NVIDIA, DLSS 4.5 frame generation can add up to five generated frames per rendered one, but only on RTX 50 cards. We covered how to turn on Ray Reconstruction, and what to do if the option is greyed out, in a separate guide.
The textures had help from someone every Witcher 3 modder knows: HalkHogan, creator of the HD Reworked Project. On Nexus Mods he wrote that he is working with CDPR and that his mod will no longer be needed once the remaster is out. By his account almost every character, monster, animal, plant, Geralt's armour and Roach's gear has been redone. The remaster is co-developed with the Hungarian studio Yigsoft, which also helped on Phantom Liberty.
The price of all this shows up in the requirements. The game moves to DirectX 12 only, and the bar rises noticeably.
| Component | Minimum | Recommended |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 11 | Windows 11 |
| CPU | Core i5-8400 or Ryzen 5 2600 | Core i7-8700K or Ryzen 5 3600X |
| GPU | GTX 1660, RX 5500 XT 8GB or Arc A580 | RTX 2060 SUPER, RX 6600 XT or Arc B580 |
| RAM | 12GB | 16GB |
| Storage | 70GB SSD | 70GB SSD |
Windows 10, hard drives and DirectX 11 are dropped entirely. We went through exactly what changes, and how to roll back to the old version if your hardware cannot keep up, in our piece on the new requirements. The Steam page still lists the old numbers with a note that they change on 29 September.
PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox and Switch 2: frame rates
The PlayStation figures came from CDPR engineer Tim Green on a gamescom stream. On a base PS5, the ray tracing mode runs at 30fps and the performance mode at 60. On PS5 Pro, ray tracing goes up to 60fps, and the performance mode is uncapped and reaches about 90 if your TV supports VRR and a high refresh rate. Every mode on the Pro uses PSSR upscaling.
On Xbox Series X|S the remaster supports Xbox Play Anywhere, so one purchase covers console and PC. The studio has not given numbers for Series S yet.
The Switch 2 version is native, not cloud. According to CDPR it runs at 1080p and 30 to 40fps docked, closer to 40 on 120Hz TVs, and at 720p with the same 30 to 40fps in handheld. The official remaster screenshots in this article were captured on PC with Switch 2 settings, so they are a fair idea of how the game will look on the console.
The Switch 2 has its own tricks: signs, crossbow, bombs and potions on motion controls, gyro aiming, mouse controls, and touch for the map, menus and Gwent. On a physical edition, the studio said news will come when the time is right.
And the Steam Deck. A CDPR developer told PC Gamer that the remaster will look much better on the handheld at the same cost, because the rendering engine has been rebuilt and many systems now run faster.
Saves, achievements and mods
CDPR's support page keeps it short: your current saves should work with no issues. Skills and settings are reset, and you can reallocate points straight away. Achievements and trophies are shared with the old version, so you will not have to earn them again.
Mods are trickier. The studio warns that mod effects stay in save files, so if your game is heavily modded, copy your saves before the update. Mods that change combat and skills will almost certainly break, because those systems have been rewritten.
On the plus side, the remaster ships with cross-platform mods. They are made on PC in The Witcher 3 REDkit and installed on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S straight from the in-game menu through mod.io, once you link it to your CD PROJEKT RED account. Not everything from PC will be allowed on consoles, as each platform has its own rules. Switch 2 will get most mods, but not, for example, the 8K texture mode.
Songs of the Past, and Geralt in Diablo 4
The remaster also lays the groundwork for Songs of the Past, a paid expansion due in 2027. There is no exact date or price. It is being made with Fool's Theory, a studio staffed with Witcher 3 veterans.
- A new region called Letten, Dandelion's homeland. Expansion game director Jakub Rokosz told TechRadar the bard will be shown as more than comic relief: he has a family, a past and a problem that pulls Geralt back onto the Path.
- A chain as a new weapon. It appeared in the intro of the first Witcher in 2007, but, as CDPR told PC Gamer, it was impossible to make at the time.
- New monsters, mutagens and Gwent cards. After gamescom, a closed-door demo heads to PAX Australia in October.
Battle.net comes with a story that has already annoyed some fans. BlizzCon revealed a Geralt look for the Barbarian in Diablo 4, but you only get it by buying Songs of the Past on Battle.net specifically, pre-orders included. More Witcher content for Diablo 4 is promised for 2027.
What CDPR has not said yet
Launch is two weeks away and some practical questions remain open. As of 15 September the studio has not announced:
- The unlock time on 29 September and whether there will be a preload.
- The update size. All we know is that the PC game needs 70GB on an SSD.
- Frame rate and resolution on Xbox Series S and Series X.
- The price and date of Songs of the Past, and whether the Switch 2 remaster gets a physical release.
I will update this page as answers come in. My take is simple: an eleven-year-old game is getting, for free, what other studios charge full price for, and the only things worth sorting out in advance are Windows 11 and 70 free gigabytes on an SSD.
Sources
Date, platforms, free upgrade, feature list, Battle.net, Songs of the Past and co-developers: CD PROJEKT RED press release of 25 August 2026. Full list of visual changes: Game Informer. Xbox Play Anywhere, mods on Xbox and Songs of the Past details: Xbox Wire.
Switch 2, controls and the free move for Switch owners: CD PROJEKT RED press release after the Nintendo Direct. Switch 2 resolution and frame rate, mods and physical release: Nintendo Everything, from CDPR's stream of 28 August. PS5 and PS5 Pro modes: Push Square, quoting Tim Green.
Saves and achievements: CD PROJEKT RED support page. Expansions in the base game: second support page. Cross-platform mods: DualShockers. Path tracing and DLSS 4.5: VideoCardz and NVIDIA's announcement.
Paweł Sasko: Kotaku. Michał Nowakowski: GamesRadar+, from The Game Business interview. HalkHogan and HD Reworked Project: GosuGamers. The Steam price rise: GamingBolt and the Steam store price on 15 September 2026. Geralt in Diablo 4: Aroged. Roach, Steam Deck, the chain and Dandelion: Fall Damage, PC Gamer and TechRadar interviews as listed in the game's Steam news feed.
