This week, CD Projekt Red officially announced a new expansion for The Witcher 3 called Songs of the Past. While it’s being stingy with concrete details beyond a 2027 release window, we did get a few more notable teases during today’s anniversary livestream. The meager morsels provide a decent sense of what to expect from the new expansion and enough intrigue for fan speculation to run rampant for months.
The first question on everyone’s mind is just how big should players expect Songs of the Past to be? The Witcher 3 came out over a decade ago. Could anyone really expect the open-world RPG to get another sprawling update, especially when the internal development team (the studio is collaborating with Fool’s Theory) is in the midst of trying to ship The Witcher 4?
While CDPR has repeatedly signaled that it doesn’t do expansions that are small, staff on the livestream made a more concrete commitment. “Songs of the Past will be aligned with what you’re familiar with in Blood and Wine, and what you’ve come to experience and expect from us when we do our expansions,” said social media manager Laura Beitzel.
For anyone who forgets or never played it, Blood and Wine was longer than many whole games. The roughly 15-hour main campaign took Geralt to an entirely new map and set him about trying to solve a series of murders involving vampires and no shortage of palace intrigue. With a completionist run lasting close to 30 hours, it was even more sprawling than Cyberpunk 2077‘s Phantom Liberty expansion.
The team also confirmed that Songs of the Past will expand The Witcher 3‘s hit minigame Gwent with fresh cards. Blood and Wine also had an entire new Gwent tournament. While I don’t want to get greedy, it would be no small treat to get another one in Songs of the Past.
And then there’s what the expansion will actually be about. We know that The Witcher 4 jumps into the future and switches the narrative focus from Geralt to Ciri. Amid rumors that Songs of the Past will attempt to bridge the space between The Witcher 3 and its sequel, there’s been speculation that it will revolve in part around how Ciri gets her new sword.
Geralt is carrying three in the expansion’s first promotional image, leading to a theory that the new blade will eventually be the one Ciri is seen with in the current Witcher 4 trailer footage. “It is a very important sword for the story and you will get to know it when the game comes out,” community manager Amelia Korzycka said. “So a few more streams before that when [we] reveal it.”
Beitzel gave a more direct clue: “There are some hints waiting for you on a very important evening in Witcher lore, Belleteyn Night, in our Belleteyn celebration that we shared a few weeks ago.” That’s a reference to a special festival, concept art for which CDPR shared earlier this month. It shows Geralt sitting on the ground near a fire while the bard Dandelion strums on his mandolin.
“Tonight, there are no monsters to kill, no roads to roam, Just quiet thoughts and wishes that try to find a home,” read an accompanying caption. “The White Wolf sits still, mesmerized by the dancing flame, While Dandelion strums his lute and hums Geralt’s name.”
Ciri is believed to have been born around the time of the festival, which is supposed to take place around May. While fans can dissect what the rest of this might mean for the plot of Songs of the Past, it at least now seems to strongly suggest we’ll finally get to play a brand-new Witcher 3 expansion in the first half of 2027.
The only bad news is that’s not when the expansion was originally supposed to come out. CDPR confirmed on an earnings call today that it had originally hoped to ship it this year. “We had a moment where our plans for Songs of the Past, [it] would be released this year,” CD Projekt Red joint CEO Michał Nowakowski said. “However we decided, together with the development team, that the game will be launching in 2027 to achieve the best possible result from the consumer standpoint, which in the end, frankly speaking, is the only thing that really matters.”