The Witcher 3 Songs of the Past: What CDPR Has Confirmed

Geralt retired. Blood and Wine left him on a vineyard in Toussaint, and CD PROJEKT RED's VP story director Marcin Blacha told The Guardian the studio thought that ending through before bringing him back. What gets him back on the road in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Songs of the Past is a request Blacha says few people would turn down: his best friend Dandelion needs him at his family home in Letten, and then Dandelion goes missing.

Songs of the Past is the game's third expansion and the first since 2016. It is a paid expansion due in 2027 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. There is no release date and no price, and the stores we checked take wishlists, not pre-purchases. Steam already lists it as requiring The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered.

Here is what CD PROJEKT RED, co-developer Fool's Theory and the storefronts have confirmed as of 25 October, where each fact comes from, and what is still unknown. Whether you get Remastered itself for free is a separate question, answered in our Remastered upgrade guide.

Release date, price and platforms

PlayStation 4, Xbox One and the original Nintendo Switch are not on the platform list. Fool's Theory is the Polish studio behind The Thaumaturge, is also co-developing The Witcher Remake with CDPR, and has leadership made up of Witcher 3 veterans, per CDPR's press release.

How the plan has changed since May

The gamescom showing was not hands-on: PC Gamer and Eurogamer both describe a hands-off demo, which is what Nowakowski had said on the May call to expect. Xbox Wire's editor-in-chief says he watched around 45 minutes of it.

What you need to play it

Remastered, as far as Steam is concerned. The expansion's Steam page says it requires the base game, and names that base game as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered. That is the same Steam app (292030) as the original game, now carrying the Remastered name, so a Steam copy of The Witcher 3 is the base game it asks for.

CDPR's own wording points the same way without using the word "required". Its Songs of the Past page pitches Letten as explored with Remastered's visual, performance and gameplay upgrades, and its PR team wrote on Xbox Wire that the expansion benefits from all of them. The Witcher wiki goes further: it says Remastered will be required, citing CDPR's Day 5 gamescom REDstreams broadcast. We could not find that in a written CDPR source.

That matters if you rolled back. Steam's Classic branch holds Patch 1.32 and its next-gen branch Patch 4.04, per Steam's own branch descriptions (our Remastered mods guide covers rolling back), and we found nothing from CDPR saying Songs of the Past will run on either.

The PC spec on the expansion's Steam page, read 25 October, next to the Remastered page:

The hardware is identical. Storage is not, and the Remastered page also adds VRAM notes (6 GB minimum, 8 GB recommended) that the expansion's page leaves out. CDPR's May support article on the new minimum spec, which says the change covers both the game and Songs of the Past, also gives 70 GB (on an SSD). CDPR hasn't said whether the gap to 60 GB is the expansion itself. All six Remastered PC tiers, and why CDPR's storage figures disagree, are in our Remastered PC requirements guide.

Where it sits in the story. Blacha told The Guardian that Geralt is retired in Toussaint when Dandelion calls, which puts Songs of the Past after Blood and Wine. CDPR hasn't said whether you need a finished Blood and Wine save, or any save, to start it. If you skipped Blood and Wine, it has been free to base-game owners since 25 August, and our Blood and Wine guide covers it.

Letten, Dandelion and the story so far

Dandelion's full name is Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, per the Witcher wiki, and Letten is where the de Lettenhove family comes from. PC Gamer describes Lettenhove itself as the family's manor, where Dandelion invites Geralt at the start.

Where it is. The expansion's vision director told PC Gamer that Letten is a new region in northern Redania: a green valley tucked into a mountain range that the war never reached. On a CDPR gamescom stream on 26 August, Fool's Theory world director Peter Gelencser put it in the north, roughly halfway between Kovir and Kaedwen, on the southern bank of the Nimnar river, per Eurogamer's transcript. Eurogamer's reading of the map puts it not far from Blaviken, relatively close to Kovir (where The Witcher 4 is set), and a long way from the regions The Witcher 3 already covers.

What it looks like. Xbox Wire says the region draws on both English and Polish rural landscapes. Blacha told The Guardian the team went back to Poland's history and countryside for it.

What the gamescom demo showed, per PC Gamer, Eurogamer and TheSixthAxis:

• It opens after a night of Letten's Belleteyn spring festivities. Geralt wakes up, and Dandelion is nowhere to be found.
• Geralt ends up mediating between Dandelion's grandmother and his cousin Lilla, who disagree about whether he is really missing.
• Lilla and Geralt follow a family legend, the curse of Dandelion's ancestor Count Humbert de Lettenhove, into the Garden of Thorns, one of the few blighted parts of Letten.
• The demo ends at a well that seems tied to Dandelion's disappearance, guarded by a boss PC Gamer calls the Slumbering Knight.

Who wrote it. Fool's Theory CEO Jakub Rokosz told Eurogamer the story is original rather than adapted from Andrzej Sapkowski's books, and that it was first conceived at CDPR years ago by base-game writers Ola Motyka and Philipp Weber before being shelved. CDPR's product page says it was first envisioned almost ten years ago. Blacha told The Guardian it sat in a drawer until the long wait for The Witcher 4 opened a gap in the release calendar. Lucca Comics & Games lists Paula Mejsner as the expansion's lead writer at Fool's Theory.

Ciri and The Witcher 4. The Guardian reports the team ruled out the expansion being a prequel to The Witcher 4; it is Geralt's story. Nowakowski did call it a prologue of sorts on the May call, but only in the sense of reminding players about the series, per Eurogamer. Doug Cockle and John Schwab return as the voices of Geralt and Dandelion, per The Guardian.

The chain and the new monsters

The chain is the new weapon CDPR's press release names. It is a callback: CDPR's PR team wrote on Xbox Wire that it nods to the intro cinematic of the original The Witcher, and that it gives Geralt more crowd control. How it worked in the gamescom demo:

• It is equipped like a Sign or a bomb, per PC Gamer. Press a button to throw it, or zoom in to aim at a specific body part, which slows time the way aiming the crossbow does.
• It is a hooked silver chain that wraps around Geralt's arm, per PC Gamer and Xbox Wire.
• It pulls enemies to you. Xbox Wire says it drags enemies close so melee is faster. PC Gamer describes it as useful for yanking single enemies out of a group, or for whipping around to keep a crowd back.
• It breaks guards. In both PC Gamer's and TheSixthAxis's accounts, the demo's boss blocked attacks and Geralt used the chain to pull through that guard.

The other combat additions are thinner. CDPR's product page promises new mutagens and its press release mentions new abilities, and neither has been itemised. Rokosz told PC Gamer he wouldn't say the expansion will feel different, because The Witcher 3 aged really well. He also said Letten's townsfolk can use boats and drive carts, part of what Remastered's systems bring to the region.

How big it is, and the romance question

Size. No hour count has been given. On the 28 May call, Nowakowski said the scope sits a bit closer to Blood and Wine than to Hearts of Stone, while stressing that the comparison is subjective and depends on how you play, per Eurogamer. CDPR's product page promises "dozens of new side quests" and points of interest.

Romance. Not confirmed for any named character. In Eurogamer's gamescom demo, a dialogue option let Geralt hug Lilla after she fell. When Eurogamer asked Rokosz whether that was a romance option, he declined to spoil it. On a CDPR livestream running at the same time, content creator strategist Carolin Wendt said there is more romance for Geralt, per Eurogamer. PC Gamer's preview also reads Lilla as a likely romance. The base game's options are in our romance guide.

The Diablo IV skin and Battle.net

Buying Songs of the Past on Battle.net unlocks a Geralt-themed Barbarian skin in Diablo IV. CDPR's BlizzCon press release of 13 September says it goes to players who pre-purchase the expansion once pre-purchase is available, or who buy it at launch. The same release says more Witcher-themed Diablo IV content arrives in 2027, with details later.

The August press release ties the skin to buying on Blizzard's platform, and neither release offers it through another store. Everything else from that weekend is in our BlizzCon 2026 recap.

Where to see it next: Lucca on 31 October

Lucca Comics & Games runs from 28 October to 1 November in Lucca, Italy. On Saturday 31 October, 18:30 to 20:00 local time (17:30 UTC), at the Auditorium San Francesco, the festival lists Returning to the Path, a Songs of the Past panel in English.

Lucca's listing says the panel opens with a presentation of the Songs of the Past demo, then covers the story of The Witcher 3 and how its third expansion was made more than ten years after launch. The panellists are Miles Tost, level design lead on The Witcher 4 at CDPR, and Paula Mejsner, the expansion's lead writer at Fool's Theory, with Marco Cremona moderating.

The listing doesn't say whether the panel will be streamed, or whether the demo is the gamescom one or new footage. Tickets and the rest of the programme are in our Lucca Comics & Games guide.

What CD PROJEKT RED has not said

• A release date, or even a month or season.
• A price, or whether there will be more than one edition.
• When pre-purchase opens on any store.
• Whether it runs on older builds: Steam's Classic (1.32) or next-gen (4.04) branches, or GOG's equivalents.
• What you need to start it: a finished Blood and Wine save, a minimum level, or any save at all.
• How many hours it runs.
• Who, if anyone, is a new romance option.
• What the new mutagens and abilities are.
• Console install sizes, and whether the 10 GB gap between the expansion page's 70 GB and Remastered's 60 GB is the expansion itself.

Quick Action Checklist

• Wishlist it on your platform if you want release-date news. Steam and GOG take wishlists only so far.
• Want the Diablo IV Geralt skin? Plan to buy the expansion on Battle.net, either as a pre-purchase once that opens or at launch.
• On PlayStation 4, Xbox One or the original Switch? Songs of the Past isn't announced for any of them.
• On PC, check your machine against Remastered's spec now: Windows 11, 12 GB of RAM and a GTX 1660-class GPU at minimum. Budget 70 GB, the figure on the expansion's own Steam page.
• Rolled back to Steam's Classic or next-gen branch for mods? Expect to return to Remastered for this: it is the base game Steam lists as required.
• Haven't played Blood and Wine? It's free if you own the base game, and Songs of the Past picks up after Geralt retires there.
• Watch for news from the Lucca Comics & Games panel on 31 October.