The Witcher 3 Remastered: Who Gets the Free Upgrade

CD PROJEKT RED announced The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered on stage at gamescom Opening Night Live on 25 August 2026. It ships 29 September 2026, and on five of the storefronts that sell it, existing owners pay nothing.

That is the headline. The fine print is more interesting: the two newest platforms are not on that free-upgrade list, the PC minimum requirements go up on the same day the upgrade lands, and the expansions you may have been putting off buying became free on 25 August rather than in September.

It ships on 29 September 2026

Remastered releases on 29 September 2026. This article was written against the announcement materials — an announcement trailer, a feature list on CD PROJEKT RED's own site, a press release, and the guided presentations the studio ran in Hall 8.1 at gamescom and on its REDstreams broadcasts — not against a playable build. Nothing in it describes how the remaster plays or feels. The PS5 Pro and Nintendo Switch 2 frame-rate targets CD PROJEKT RED gave on its gamescom REDstream are covered in our follow-up on frame rates, saves and mods.

What does exist is a set of concrete, checkable commitments about ownership, platforms and hardware. That is what this post is about. Everything below is sourced to CD PROJEKT RED's own newsroom, support site or storefront listings, with one exception: the frame-rate and resolution targets the studio gave on its gamescom REDstream broadcast, which we cite through RPG Site's and Nintendo Life's reports of that stream.

Does your copy upgrade? Platform by platform

The announcement post names the qualifying storefronts explicitly, then names two more in a separate sentence with a different verb. That distinction is the whole table.

Two rows need unpacking.

Battle.net is a purchase, not an upgrade — because there is nothing there to upgrade from. CD PROJEKT RED's support FAQ says the Remastered upgrade covers all current-generation platforms and lists them as PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. Battle.net is PC. But the press release is explicit that this is new ground: "The Witcher 3 is coming to two brand new platforms," it says, naming Nintendo Switch 2 and Battle.net. If the game has never been sold on Battle.net, there is no prior purchase there to carry an entitlement forward from. CD PROJEKT RED has not published Battle.net entitlement terms beyond the pre-purchase wording, so treat that as the reasoning behind the row rather than a rule the studio has stated.

Previous-generation consoles get the expansions but not the remaster. The support FAQ handles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One separately: those owners can download Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine at no cost, and otherwise nothing about their version changes. The Remastered upgrade list does not include them.

There is one genuine sweetener on Battle.net. CD PROJEKT RED says buying the Songs of the Past expansion there unlocks a Geralt-inspired skin in Diablo IV, with details to follow when the studio attends BlizzCon in September. No terms beyond that have been published.

The expansions are already free, and the base game is gone

This landed on 25 August, not in September, and it is the part worth acting on today.

Every current owner of the base game now has Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. On PC and current-gen consoles you get them by updating the game; on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One they are a free download. Both are also bundled into Remastered.

The storefront side of that change is bigger than the giveaway. Per CD PROJEKT RED's support FAQ:

• The standalone expansions have been delisted.
• The base game listing has been replaced by the Complete Edition, with the expansion content merged in.
• You can no longer buy the base game on its own. Only the Complete Edition is sold now.
• If you already owned an expansion, it stays in your library, and its content is also patched into the base game.
• Save files remain compatible and cross-progression keeps working across the merge.
• Achievements and trophies are unaffected, including the expansion ones.
• You can still start Hearts of Stone or Blood and Wine as a standalone game from the main menu.

You can watch the rename happen live: the Steam listing under app ID 292030 is now titled The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition, and GOG's product page carries the same name.

If you have been sitting on a base-game copy and skipping the DLC, our Hearts of Stone guide and Blood and Wine guide cover when to start each one relative to the main story. They are yours now either way.

The PC minimum requirements rise on the same day

Both the Steam and GOG listings currently carry a publisher note that system requirements change on 2026.09.29, and GOG links out to a CD PROJEKT RED support article carrying the new numbers. Those are the minimums CDPR has published; no updated recommended tier has been posted alongside them.

(The "current" column is Steam's minimum block. GOG's listing for the same game gives 64-bit Windows 10/11 as its minimum OS instead of Windows 7 / 8.1 — the two storefronts disagree on that one row today.)

CD PROJEKT RED gives reasons for each jump rather than leaving them bare. Windows 11 becomes the floor for both The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 because Microsoft ended Windows 10 support on 14 October 2025, so the studio will no longer test on it. Mechanical hard drives are dropped in favour of SSDs. And the game moves to running exclusively on DirectX 12, which is the change with the longest tail — that is a rendering-path decision, not a checkbox.

Read the RAM row again if you skimmed it: six gigabytes to twelve is a doubling.

How to stay on an older build

CD PROJEKT RED links its rollback instructions directly from the requirements notice. These are the studio's standing instructions for reverting The Witcher 3 to an earlier build:

To go back to current on Steam or GOG, repeat the steps and set the branch to None or Disabled respectively.

One caution, and it matters: CD PROJEKT RED has not said what build the Classic branch will hold after 29 September, and it has not published a supported route to keep playing the pre-Remastered version indefinitely. Only the latest version is fully supported, by the studio's own wording. Treat the rollback path as an escape hatch of unknown depth, not a guarantee.

What CD PROJEKT RED says Remastered changes

Here is the studio's own list, from the press release and the official Witcher 3 product page. It is a feature list, not a patch note — no numbers are attached to any of it.

From the press release: upgraded visuals, enhanced combat, improved traversal and movement, new witcher sign effects, revamped mount handling, enhanced monster behaviours, a skill tree revamp, transmogrification, expanded photo mode and new finishers.

From the product page, with a little more shape:

• Improved environment, NPC and monster textures, plus work on foliage.
• Reworked lighting, rendering and ray tracing.
• Revamped animations, new finishers, and an adaptive camera.
• An overhauled skill tree described as modernising character progression.
• Cross Platform Mod Support, transmogrification, realistic light and shadow, immersive meditation, and an expanded photo mode.

The skill tree line is the one that will age our own coverage. Our General skills guide and build guide describe the tree as Patch 4.0 left it, which is the correct description of the game you can play today and will need revisiting once the revamp is actually in hands.

Remastered is being co-developed with Yigsoft, a Hungarian studio CD PROJEKT RED has previously worked with on Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition.

Songs of the Past is the part you pay for

The third expansion got its first look at the same show, and CD PROJEKT RED is direct about the commercial split: Songs of the Past launches in 2027 as a paid expansion, on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. It is wishlistable now; it has a Steam listing of its own.

What is confirmed about it: a new region called Letten, described as a rural, festival-keeping land with something long-dormant beneath it; new abilities; and a new weapon, the chain. Fool's Theory is co-developing — the studio behind The Thaumaturge, also co-developing The Witcher Remake, with leadership drawn from Witcher 3 veterans.

No price. No month. The press release names PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2; CD PROJEKT RED's newsroom post breaks the PC half out into GOG, Steam, Epic Games Store and Battle.net.

What has not been said

The gap between the announcement and the shipping game is where bad articles get written, so here is what CD PROJEKT RED had not published as of 30 August:

• No recommended PC specification for the post-29 September build. The support article carries minimums only. Recommended tiers circulating elsewhere are not on CDPR's page.
• No frame-rate or resolution targets for base PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S. PS5 Pro and Nintendo Switch 2 are the exceptions: on its gamescom "REDstreams: On the Go!" Day 3 broadcast on 28 August, CD PROJEKT RED gave PS5 Pro a 60fps Ray Tracing mode and an unlocked Performance mode shown reaching 90fps, and gave Switch 2 targets of 720p handheld with VRR and 1080p docked, both at 30-40fps. Our follow-up post has the full tables.
• No console install sizes. The 70 GB figure is the PC storage minimum.
• No confirmation on CDPR's own channels of specific upscaling or path-tracing technology names or version numbers. The official product page says lighting, rendering and ray tracing are reworked, and stops there.
• Nothing about existing saves carrying into Remastered. The save-compatibility answer in the support FAQ is scoped to the expansion merge that already happened, not to the September update. Do not read it as a Remastered save guarantee.
• Nothing about whether existing mods survive. Cross Platform Mod Support is listed as a Remastered feature; that is not the same as a compatibility promise for what is in your mod folder today.
• No price or release month for Songs of the Past.

One of those has since been answered in writing. CD PROJEKT RED's support article on Remastered saves and achievements, published after this piece first ran, says current saves "should work with no issues", that skills and settings are reset with immediate reallocation, and that achievements and trophies are shared with the current version of the game. The follow-up post covers that article in full.

The Witcher 3 has sold more than 65 million copies and taken over 250 Game of the Year awards, per CD PROJEKT RED's own boilerplate. A free upgrade to a library that size is a large gesture. It is also, until 29 September, entirely a promise.

Quick Action Checklist

• Update the game today if you own the base game and never bought the expansions. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine are already yours.
• On PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, download the two expansions free — but do not expect Remastered on those consoles; it is not on CDPR's platform list.
• Check which storefront your PC copy lives on. GOG, Steam and Epic are on the free-upgrade list; Battle.net is a fresh purchase.
• If you own the game on the original Nintendo Switch, you can claim Remastered on Switch 2 once it releases. You still need the Switch 2.
• Check your PC against the new minimum before 29 September: Windows 11, 12 GB RAM, an SSD with 70 GB free, and a DirectX 12 GPU.
• If you are on Windows 10 or a mechanical hard drive, decide now whether you are upgrading the machine or rolling back the game.
• Learn the Steam CLASSIC branch or the GOG Classic beta channel now if a rollback is your plan. Epic users have no rollback route at all.
• Wishlist Songs of the Past if you want it, but budget for it — it is paid, and it is a 2027 title.
• Treat anything you read about how Remastered plays before 29 September as a preview impression, not a result.