The Witcher 3 Remastered Unlocks September 29, Free Update Is About 45 GB

Monday is the day. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered, the free overhaul CD PROJEKT RED announced at Gamescom, arrives on September 29, and over the last few days the studio has filled in the practical details we were missing: the exact unlock time, how big the download is, and what happens to the save you have been sitting on since 2015. We covered the announcement and the Songs of the Past expansion when they were revealed in August. This is the launch-week version.

The short version: one global unlock, a download of roughly 45 GB, no preload for the update, and your progress comes with you. If you own the base game on a current platform, you do not need to buy anything.

Video: The Witcher on YouTube

When it unlocks and how big it is

CD PROJEKT RED posted a launch map on the official The Witcher account on September 24, and it is refreshingly simple. Remastered goes live at the same moment everywhere, on every platform and every PC storefront. That works out to 3 AM Pacific and 6 AM Eastern in North America, 11 AM in the UK, noon in Central Europe, 7 PM in Japan and 8 PM on the Australian east coast, all on Monday, September 29. There are no staggered regional unlocks on PC and no console head start.

The next day, community director Marcin Momot answered the question everyone was asking about storage. The Remastered update is about 45 GB on PC via Steam, with the exact figure varying by which language packs you have installed, and about 45 GB on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. On Nintendo Switch 2, where Remastered is a separate product rather than a patch, plan for about 50 GB. Momot also confirmed there is no preload for the update. It is a regular patch to the existing game, so it becomes available at the unlock time and downloads from there. If your connection is slow, the queue starts Monday morning in the US or Monday midday in Europe, not before.

Free upgrade, saves, and the two expansions

Eligibility has not changed since August. If you own The Witcher 3 on GOG, Steam, the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S, Remastered is a free upgrade. Owners of the original Nintendo Switch version get the Switch 2 edition free as well: digital owners can already claim it as a free pre-order on the eShop, and CD PROJEKT RED says physical owners will be able to claim their upgrade on launch day. Two storefronts are new to the game entirely, Battle.net and the Switch 2 eShop, where Remastered is sold as a fresh purchase, listed at $59.99 on the US Nintendo eShop. On top of all that, every base game owner gets Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine at no extra cost, and both expansions are bundled into the Remastered base game.

The save question got an official answer at the start of September. CD PROJEKT RED's support account confirmed that your current saves work with the upgrade, so you pick up exactly where you left off, and that unlocked achievements and trophies carry over too. The one catch is that skills and settings reset because of the changes Remastered introduces, and you reallocate your points right after booting the game. For a lot of us that is a welcome excuse to try something other than the same Quen-heavy build for the fifth time.

As for what you are actually downloading, the official page lists improved environment, NPC and monster textures, major enhancements to foliage, reworked lighting, rendering and ray tracing, revamped combat animations with new finishers and an adaptive camera, an overhauled skill system, transmogrification, an expanded photo mode and cross platform mod support. The Switch 2 version adds motion controls for signs, the crossbow, bombs and potions, gyro aiming, mouse input, and touch controls for maps, menus and Gwent.

Our honest take: this is one of the most generous free updates a publisher has shipped for a game this old, and the launch logistics are clean. One global time, one download, saves intact. The only real friction is the 45 GB with no preload, so if you want to play Monday evening, start the download the moment it appears rather than after dinner. Songs of the Past, the paid third expansion, is still listed for 2027, so Remastered is the whole story for now.