The Witcher 4: Polaris Is At Least Three Years Away

CD Projekt Red's next mainline Witcher game, codenamed Polaris, is at least three years away according to studio president and joint CEO Adam Kiciński.

Following the studio's announcement that it plans to release the new Witcher trilogy over six years starting with Polaris, Kiciński was asked during an investors' call when players can expect the next mainline game to be released.

"For Polaris we are preparing technology. This is the first project to be released on the new engine, Unreal Engine 5, [so] there is a need for some extra work making this technology," he said. "For this project, for sure we need some extra effort to deliver."

Kiciński went on to say that the second and third new Witcher trilogy games would go much smoother due to this foundation being created now. He was then asked, as the two "smoother" to develop games will take on average three years each, would it be reasonable to ascertain that the next mainline game is more than three years away, to which Kiciński said yes.

As Polaris was only announced in March, however, three years may still be on the earlier side of this assessment. Senior vice president of business development Michał Nowakowski commented during the same call that, based on past experiences, creating a new game alongside new technology like CD Projekt Red is doing with Polaris usually takes four or five years, though this won't necessarily be the case this time.

CD Projekt Red confirmed ahead of the call that at least five new Witcher games would be released in the coming years, alongside a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel and a game based on the studio's first brand new IP.

Outside of Polaris and its two sequels, CD Projekt Red's The Molasses Flood studio is working on a new Witcher game with multiplayer elements and a currently unconfirmed third developer is creating another "full-fledged Witcher game".

Very little is known about any of the games however, with Polaris being the only one with some context behind it thanks to CD Projekt Red announcing that it had entered pre-production back in May, and that it's being developed using Unreal Engine 5.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.