The Witcher 3 gets a new expansion eleven years later: Songs of the Past debuts August 25

Eleven years later, Geralt has unfinished business with the past

Just when the summer calendar looked settled, CD Projekt RED dropped the news in a short press-room note: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is getting a third expansion, Songs of the Past, to be revealed on August 25 during Gamescom's Opening Night Live. The base game shipped in 2015. Do the maths: eleven years later, Geralt of Rivia is back on the Path.

The company paired the announcement with a line already quoted across the European press: «Our road to Gamescom 2026 starts with Opening Night Live. On August 25, take a look at The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Songs of the Past!», as picked up by 3DJuegos among others. Minimal text, zero screenshots. Pure CDPR.

What we know about Songs of the Past, and what is still smoke

The confirmed part fits in three lines: it exists, it is called Songs of the Past, it will include brand-new Gwent content — the card game that stole more of my hours than the main quest, said with love — and its window points to 2027, no firm date. Everything else is speculation, and should be labelled as such.

New map or reworked region? Before or after Ciri's saga? Familiar faces? CDPR has said nothing at all. My personal bet, and it is only mine: a self-contained story in the Hearts of Stone mould, tighter than Blood and Wine, designed to relight the saga while the rest of the studio cooks the future. If the trailer shows something else on August 25, you may quote this paragraph back at me.

When and where to watch: August 25, 8:00 PM CEST

Mark the calendar: Geoff Keighley's Opening Night Live opens Gamescom on Tuesday August 25 at 8:00 PM CEST, streaming on YouTube and Twitch. Songs of the Past is confirmed for the showcase, as Windows Central also reports.

ONL is a machine of back-to-back announcements, so nobody should expect half an hour of witcher: the realistic outcome is one trailer and, with luck, a date. That will do. After eleven years, two well-cut minutes over Marcin Przybyłowicz's score can do more damage than any marketing campaign.

Why returning to Wild Hunt in 2026 makes perfect sense for CDPR

You can read it as nostalgia, and some of it is. But it is also a cold, rather smart play: The Witcher 3 still sells on its own, lives on every imaginable platform, and both previous expansions sit among the best work the studio has done. Reactivating that player base with new content is marketing that pays for itself — and it keeps the brand warm for whatever comes next.

The numbers explain the move better than any press release. Wild Hunt passed 50 million copies sold a long while ago and still sneaks into every Steam, PlayStation and Switch sale as if it were new. CDPR, meanwhile, has the bulk of its teams on The Witcher 4 — the Ciri-led project known in Poland as Polaris — and on the remake of the first game, neither with a date in sight. A mid-sized expansion fills that calendar gap, gives veterans an excuse to reinstall, and hands newcomers a cheap way into the universe before the next big swing.

The measuring stick the studio built for itself is cruel, though: Blood and Wine remains, for me and for half the industry, the best expansion ever released. Coming back to that bar eleven years later is either bravery or recklessness. On August 25 we start finding out which.