The Witcher 3 Remastered is live — free systems remaster, not a texture pack

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered is live September 29, 2026 — a free systems remaster for existing owners, not a texture-pack pad. CD PROJEKT RED’s See what’s new post, published the day before go-live, locks the window on PC (Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, Battle.net), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2. The August 25 announcement set the same spine: free upgrade for owners within the same platform ecosystem, physical or digital, plus Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine for base-game owners. Steam’s app 292030 presents as Remastered on launch morning — corroboration only.

The sharp take: Remastered is a systems rebuild with visual work inside it. Treat it as that, and the changelog reads cleanly.

Skill tree rebuilt — and your points reset

Gameplay changes lead with the skill system. Skills move into a skill tree; each skill has three ranks, and unlocking now depends on prerequisite skills rather than spending a fixed pool of points first. CD PROJEKT RED flags the consequence in caps-adjacent language: skill points have been reset. Bonuses and synergies are rebalanced; some skills are renamed to match their effects. If you are mid-Path on an old save, plan a respec pass before you assume yesterday’s build still holds.

Bard’s Ballad, HD Reworked, mod.io — and the PC stack

Accessibility gets its own Settings section, including the Bard’s Ballad preset (also offered when starting a new game on Just the Story). It is framed for players who want lower cognitive load — vitality regen options, infinite breath, unlimited item and boat durability, ignore weight, faster boats, toggle Witcher Sense — each toggleable after the preset.

On visuals, the changelog credits textures and models updated from The Witcher 3 HD Reworked Project, folded into the official build alongside a broader rendering pass (shading, foliage, Signs VFX, native DirectX 12 on PC, and more). That is official credit for community assets inside CDPR’s Remastered package — not a third-party mod you have to chase.

Modding ships cross-platform support powered by mod.io from the main menu, tied to a CD PROJEKT RED Account. On PC specifically, CDPR lists path tracing, NVIDIA DLSS 4.5 (with Ray Reconstruction), AMD FSR 4, and Intel XeSS 2.0 among the Remastered options — as the studio lists them; we are not scoring performance here.

Songs of the Past stays 2027 — paid, separate

Do not collapse timelines. Songs of the Past is CD PROJEKT RED’s separate paid expansion for 2027. It is not today’s free Remastered upgrade, and this brief does not invent a day or month inside that year. Remastered is the free systems go-live on September 29; Songs remains on its own calendar.

If a platform window or upgrade path moves, CD PROJEKT RED moves it first. Until then, September 29 is the Remastered lock — free inside the same ecosystem, systems-first, Songs still next year and paid.