The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered Launches September 29 as a Free Upgrade, With New Switch 2 and Battle.net Versions

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered arrives on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, and for anyone who already owns the 2015 role-playing game it is a free upgrade. CD PROJEKT RED is releasing the new version at no charge on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and on the same day it brings the game to two platforms it has not appeared on before: a native build for Nintendo Switch 2, and a release on Battle.net through a new partnership with Blizzard Entertainment.

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The free upgrade covers the base game and both of its expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. CD PROJEKT RED gave all existing owners those expansions at no cost on August 25, 2026, weeks before the remastered build. Save files carry over, and on Xbox the title becomes an Xbox Play Anywhere game after launch, so a digital purchase also unlocks a PC copy through the Xbox app.

A remaster of a game this old is unusual for a studio with other Witcher projects in development. The notable part is the shape of the release: CD PROJEKT RED is treating it as a platform expansion, shipping to two new storefronts at once and pairing the free update with a paid expansion planned for next year.

What is actually in the Remastered upgrade

The feature list is broader than a visual pass. CD PROJEKT RED says Remastered includes upgraded visuals, enhanced combat, improved traversal and movement, new witcher sign effects, revamped mount handling, enhanced monster behaviours, a skill-tree revamp, transmogrification, an expanded photo mode and new finishers.

Put more concretely, the changes include:

• Reworked combat and sign casting, rebalanced stamina, new execution finishers and refined monster hitboxes.
• Better traversal and handling for Roach, the horse, aimed at cramped areas such as the city of Novigrad.
• Transmogrification, which lets players keep a piece of gear's statistics while changing how it looks.
• A rebalanced skill tree, intended to make hybrid builds more viable on the Death March difficulty.
• Upgraded water, foliage and armour textures, with more camera control in photo mode.

Combat has been the most persistent criticism of The Witcher 3 since its release. A remaster that rewrites stamina, sign casting and hitboxes addresses the part of the game that reviewers and players have argued about for more than a decade, rather than only adding resolution.

Two new platforms, one new partner

The Switch 2 version is a native build rather than a port of the older Switch release. Nintendo's successor console gets the same September 29 date as the other systems, and pre-orders have been open since the announcement.

Battle.net is the bigger change. The Witcher 3 has not been sold on Blizzard's launcher before, and CD PROJEKT RED describes the release as the product of a new partnership with Blizzard Entertainment. Buyers who purchase the Songs of the Past expansion on Battle.net will unlock a special Geralt-inspired skin in Diablo 4. The publisher said further details would follow when it attends BlizzCon in September.

Reaching Battle.net matters to both companies. CD PROJEKT RED gets access to a storefront and social graph it does not own, while Blizzard gets a marquee single-player role-playing game on a platform whose catalogue is dominated by its own titles. For players, the practical effect is another PC storefront selling The Witcher 3 alongside Steam, GOG and the Epic Games Store.

When it unlocks and how large the download is

CD PROJEKT RED is running a single global unlock rather than a staggered rollout. Remastered becomes available at 10:00 UTC on September 29, which is 3 a.m. PDT, 6 a.m. EDT, 11 a.m. BST, 12 p.m. CEST, 7 p.m. JST and 8 p.m. AEST. There is no preload, so the update becomes downloadable at those times rather than earlier.

The download is large. CD PROJEKT RED's social media director, Marcin Momot, said on September 25 that the update is about 45 GB on PC through Steam, on PlayStation 5 and on Xbox, and about 50 GB on Nintendo Switch 2. He noted the PC figure can vary with the language packs a player has installed. Those are update sizes, not full install footprints.

An update this size reflects how much of the game is being rebuilt. Texture, terrain and lighting changes touch assets that are already on disk, so a machine that runs the 2015 release will still need room for a second copy of much of its data while the update installs.

A single unlock time changes the shape of the launch

Running one global unlock instead of regional releases spreads the load differently. There is no preload, so the whole audience starts pulling the same update at 10:00 UTC, which concentrates demand on storefront bandwidth during the first hours. It also means players everywhere wait the same amount of time from the announcement to the release, rather than one region getting the game days before another.

For CD PROJEKT RED, a simultaneous launch concentrates the review and streaming window too. Outlets and creators can publish around one moment instead of chasing a rolling release, which is part of why the update's size and unlock schedule became news in their own right.

Saves, achievements and Play Anywhere

Progress is preserved. CD PROJEKT RED says existing save files carry over to Remastered, and Pure Xbox reports that unlocked Xbox achievements transfer as well. The Xbox version becomes an Xbox Play Anywhere title after launch, which means a digital copy bought on console also grants a PC version through the Xbox app. The publisher is also discounting The Witcher 3 on Xbox Series X|S by 50% ahead of the release, bringing the digital edition to $24.99.

For anyone who has not bought the game yet, that price is the real entry point. The free upgrade only benefits existing owners, so a remaster that anchors a new expansion also works as a catalogue sale, and the original 2015 release is among the most awarded role-playing games ever made.

Who gets the free upgrade, and who pays

The upgrade is automatic for existing owners on qualifying platforms. CD PROJEKT RED has described it as a free upgrade for The Witcher 3 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, while buyers who do not own the game yet pay the standard price, which has been cut on Xbox ahead of launch. The remaster is aimed at people who already know the game and at newcomers drawn in by the discount and the new expansion.

One detail remains open. Digital owners on Xbox Series X|S are confirmed for the free upgrade, and Pure Xbox reports that the physical edition may qualify as well, but the outlet said it had not found definitive confirmation. Anyone holding a disc should check before assuming the download will be free.

Songs of the Past points to 2027

Remastered is not the only Witcher 3 project in motion.

At gamescom Opening Night Live on August 25, 2026, host Geoff Keighley announced the remaster and shared a first look at a paid expansion, Songs of the Past, due in 2027 for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. It takes players to a new region called Letten, which the studio describes as an idyllic land of rural tradition that hides a dark secret below the surface.

CD PROJEKT RED is co-developing Songs of the Past with Fool's Theory, a studio whose leadership includes veterans of the original Witcher 3, and Remastered with Yigsoft, a team that has worked on the game before. Farming out parts of a large update to external studios is common in the industry, but it also shows how the company is stretching its production capacity across a remaster, an expansion and other projects.

The two expansions are already free

The two expansions the remaster bundles have been free since August 25, 2026.

That decision pulled the game's best-regarded add-ons into the base package for every current owner, more than a decade after the 2015 release had run its original commercial life. It also removed a friction point ahead of the remaster: new buyers who pick up the discounted version now get the complete story without paying for downloadable content separately.

The Battle.net promotion adds a cross-promotion layer. Purchase Songs of the Past there and a Geralt-themed cosmetic appears in Diablo 4, tying a single-player role-playing game to Blizzard's long-running action role-playing series.

Why it matters

A free upgrade of this size is a bet that engagement is worth more than a second sale.

CD PROJEKT RED keeps existing owners in the ecosystem, sells the game again to newcomers at a discount, and creates a reason for lapsed players to return before Songs of the Past arrives in 2027. The Battle.net release extends that reach to an audience that may not use Steam or GOG.

The timing also keeps the Witcher name in circulation while the studio's other Witcher projects are still some distance away. Free updates and remasters are a low-risk way to hold a franchise's visibility without shipping a new title, and a simultaneous global launch avoids the staggered regional rollouts that can drain momentum from a release.

For players, the cost of entry is bandwidth and disk space. The update is free, but it is roughly 45 GB on most platforms, and Switch 2 owners need about 50 GB available. Anyone planning to play on day one should start the download at the unlock time rather than expecting a preload.

What to watch

The first question is how the Switch 2 build performs. A native version of a game this large is a test of the console's hardware and storage, and early impressions will show whether it holds up in dense cities and open countryside alike.

The second is how the combat changes land. A skill-tree revamp, rebalanced stamina and new finishers can alter a game that some players have completed several times, and the reaction will shape how CD PROJEKT RED approaches future reworkings.

The third is Songs of the Past. A 2027 expansion for a 2015 game is an unusual bet on a very old audience, and its reception will show how much appetite remains for new Witcher 3 content rather than remasters alone.

Discussion around the announcement has already run to dozens of pages on forums such as ResetEra, where the free-upgrade terms and the Switch 2 version drew the most attention. That is a useful signal for CD PROJEKT RED: the audience for this game is still large, and it is paying close attention to the terms on which the new version arrives.

Cover: Geralt of Rivia in combat in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Screenshot by Bandai Namco Entertainment Europe via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.