The Witcher 4 won't be out until sometime in 2027 at the soonest, CD Projekt says

The Witcher 4 doesn't have a release date yet, although it's a safe assumption that it remains a long way off. The real optimists out there might be hoping that it'll be out sometime before the end of 2026—that's nearly two years away, after all—but I'm sorry to say that CD Projekt threw a bucket of cold water on that thought during today's fiscal year 2024 earnings presentation, saying definitively that it ain't gonna happen.

The first mention of the 'not in 2026' timeline came during a look at the "consolidated net profit goals of the motivational program to align top managers goals with the CD Projekt group objectives." While normally the sort of corpo-financial nonsense I'd pay good money to avoid having to listen to, in this case there was a comment that caught my attention: "Even though we do not plan to release The Witcher 4 by the end of 2026, we are still driven by this financial goal."

The goal in question is related to CD Projekt's share-based incentive programs, and I'm not the only one whose ears pricked up at the news that 2026 is out of the question, but 2027 is a possibility: It came up in the first question in the subsequent Q&A portion of the call, but CD Projekt declined to confirm a specific post-2026 release year..

"We are not going to announce the precise launch date for the game yet," CD Projekt chief financial officer Piotr Nielubowicz said in response to the inquiry. "All we could share now to give more visibility to investors is that the game will not be launched within the time frame of the first target for the incentive program, which ends December 31, 2026."

Ah well. The 2026 target was probably a little over-optimistic, but those high hopes weren't entirely without justification. CD Projekt said in November 2024 that The Witcher 4 had entered "full production," and while joint CEO Michał Nowakowski warned a few days later that the studio was going to be "smarter" and more careful about how it markets new games, it dropped a surprise cinematic reveal trailer just a few weeks later at The Game Awards.

Given that flurry of activity, and the fact that the possibility of a 2026 release has been mentioned around these parts once or twice in the past, and you can understand why some people might think, "Well, maybe." Well, no. Sorry.