Geralt of Rivia is not done yet. CD Projekt Red announced this morning that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is getting a brand new expansion called Songs of the Past, co-developed with Fool's Theory and coming to PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 in 2027. The announcement dropped from the official Witcher account at 6 AM UTC on May 27, 2026, pulling in more than 119,000 likes within hours. Nobody was expecting this. The Witcher 3 launched in May 2015. Blood and Wine, its second and final expansion, came out in May 2016. After that, CD Projekt Red moved on to Cyberpunk 2077 and then The Witcher 4. Geralt's story seemed closed. Then today happened.

The expansion is called Songs of the Past, and that is the full extent of what is officially confirmed about the story. No plot details, no setting, no trailer, no gameplay footage beyond the key art showing Geralt ready for a fight with something monstrous looming behind him. CD Projekt Red said more details are coming in late summer 2026, which places the full reveal at Gamescom or a dedicated stream sometime around August. What is confirmed beyond the title: it is a full expansion (not a patch or a free content update), it returns to the Path with Geralt of Rivia, and it is being co-developed with Fool's Theory under CDPR's creative direction. Platforms are PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5. No Nintendo Switch 2 mention, which stands out given how well the original Witcher 3 port moved on that platform.

The Co-Developer Behind Songs of the Past

Fool's Theory is a Polish studio based in Bielsko-Biala, founded in 2015 largely by former members of 11 bit studios. They have been growing steadily ever since and already have an established working relationship with CD Projekt Red, most visibly through the ongoing remake of the original 2007 Witcher game. That project is a full rebuild in Unreal Engine 5 that Fool's Theory leads under CDPR's creative supervision. Taking the same co-development model and applying it to a Witcher 3 expansion is a sensible move. CDPR keeps its core team focused on The Witcher 4. Fool's Theory handles the expansion with CDPR's direction, resources, and oversight. Both projects move forward in parallel without cannibalizing the main production. For Fool's Theory, this is a flagship project on one of the best-selling RPGs ever made. For CDPR, it is a way to serve a fanbase that has spent a decade asking for more Geralt without pulling senior developers off Witcher 4.

How the Announcement Actually Happened

CD Projekt Red did not plan to announce Songs of the Past today. A follow-up post from the Witcher account made that explicit: "We originally planned to make this big reveal during our REDstreams tomorrow, but let's say we found something we did not yet expect on RED Launcher." Something appeared on their own launcher before the team was ready, and rather than pull the listing and pretend it never happened, they decided to announce it officially and let the news run. The REDstreams broadcast on May 28, 2026 was already on the calendar as a Blood and Wine 10th anniversary stream, with Kacper Niepokólczycki and Magdalena Zych from the original development team set to revisit Toussaint. The Songs of the Past reveal was meant to be part of that stream. Instead, the internet got it 24 hours early through a launcher leak and CDPR accelerated the timeline.

Why the Timing Matters

Blood and Wine came out on May 31, 2016. Ten years later, almost to the day, CD Projekt Red is announcing a third major expansion for The Witcher 3. That timing around the anniversary is not accidental. Beyond the anniversary framing, Songs of the Past carries real implications for the series. The Witcher 4 follows Ciri, not Geralt. CDPR has stated this consistently since the game was announced. Geralt's story in the main canon was treated as finished after Blood and Wine, which gave him one of the cleaner send-offs in RPG history. Songs of the Past reopens that chapter. Whether it is set before the events of Witcher 3, slots into a gap in the timeline, or picks up after Blood and Wine is completely unknown. The phrasing "returns to the Path with Geralt of Rivia" tells you the protagonist and nothing else.

What This Means for The Witcher 4

The Witcher 4 is still in full production at CD Projekt Red. An Unreal Engine 5 tech demo shown at State of Unreal in June 2025 featured Ciri in a detailed rendered environment, signaling the game is well past early prototyping and into active development. Having Songs of the Past in parallel development at Fool's Theory suggests CDPR is confident enough in Witcher 4's progress to authorize a simultaneous project in the same universe. Counting the ongoing Witcher Remake at Fool's Theory, that puts three active Witcher projects running at the same time right now. Either CDPR has their production pipeline organized better than their Cyberpunk 2077 development suggested, or Witcher 4 is further along than anyone outside the studio currently knows. The most reasonable read is probably both.

Community Reaction

The announcement hit more than 119,000 likes and 28,000 reposts within hours, trending across gaming communities for most of the morning. The split in response is predictable: most players are simply excited to return to Geralt, while a smaller contingent is nervous about what Songs of the Past does to the ending that Blood and Wine provided. That anxiety has a basis. Blood and Wine's closing sequence is one of the few RPG conclusions that actually feels like a conclusion rather than a setup for the next game. Players have praised it for a decade as an example of how to close a character arc with dignity. CDPR is clearly aware of this reputation, which is probably why the announcement phrasing is careful to say "returns to the Path" rather than anything that implies a direct continuation. Whether the expansion respects that ending or leans into it as a starting point is one of the central questions fans will be working through until late summer.

What to Watch Next

More details on Songs of the Past are coming in late summer 2026. Gamescom in Cologne at the end of August is the most likely venue for a full reveal: trailer, setting, story context, and a tighter 2027 window. The May 28 REDstreams event still goes ahead as a Blood and Wine anniversary broadcast, but the Songs of the Past announcement is already out. One practical note buried in the announcement: CD Projekt Red is also updating The Witcher 3's PC system requirements to account for the new expansion, and those updated specs take effect starting with the next game update. If you are running the game on older hardware, checking the new requirements at thewitcher.ly/NewRequirements sooner rather than later is worth the five minutes. The last time CDPR updated Witcher 3's minimum specs in a meaningful way, it caught a few people off guard.