CD Projekt Red Begins Hiring For Its First Original IP Project Hada

CD Projekt Red is quietly building something you haven't seen before, and this time it has nothing to do with The Witcher or Cyberpunk. Project Hadar marks the studio's first fully original IP created entirely in-house, and if you've been curious about what's coming next from the Polish studio, this is where you should be paying attention.

You won't find a ton of concrete details floating around yet, since Project Hadar was only announced back in 2022 and was little more than an early concept at that point. Since then, things have clearly picked up. Earlier this year, one of CD Projekt Red's joint CEOs confirmed the team has locked in the foundations of the new IP.

Those confirmed foundations are now translating into actual hiring and prototyping.

Designers are sketching out ideas. They're building prototypes. They're testing them directly in Unreal Engine. Now you're seeing the next stage begin, as CD Projekt Red has opened several new job listings tied specifically to Project Hadar, and one of them gives you a clearer sense of what to expect.

An engineering director posting calls for someone ready to help shape "the next immersive game in the Hadar world," describing it as an emotional open-world experience meant to stay with players long after they've finished it.

This isn't the first hint that Project Hadar is being built around a strong emotional core. A separate listing from last year for quest designers asked candidates to be passionate about narrative-driven, emotionally grounded storytelling, which lines up with how CD Projekt Red usually approaches its games.

If you're a fan of The Witcher and Cyberpunk, this should be encouraging news. You're getting confirmation that CD Projekt Red isn't stepping away from open-world storytelling, just expanding into new territory with it. Right now, The Witcher 4 is deep in development, with The Witcher 5 and The Witcher 6 both planned to arrive within six years of that release.

Cyberpunk 2 isn't the only CDPR project taking shape right now.

There's also a Boston-based CD Projekt Red team working on Cyberpunk 2, which you may have heard could include an online component with similarities to something like GTA. It's now been roughly four years since work on Project Hadar began, and it seems the team has finally landed on a direction for the kind of game they're making.

You can tell they're past the pure brainstorming phase, since they're now actively building prototypes and testing mechanics they want included in the final experience. What stands out most is that Project Hadar isn't just being framed as an open-world game; it's being framed as a story-first experience, with that same emotional weight you'd expect from CD Projekt Red's other releases.

One report notes that the open-world description didn't show up in every job listing tied to the project, which isn't too surprising given the studio's track record with expansive worlds. According to CD Projekt Red's Q1 2026 financial presentation, Project Hadar currently has 24 developers attached to it, compared to 513 working on The Witcher 4 and 163 on Cyberpunk 2.

With new hiring rounds now underway specifically for Project Hadar, you can expect that number to climb by the time the Q2 report comes around. Right now, Project Hadar is still in its foundational stage, with the team working out what kind of universe this is going to be.

Nailing down that universe involves several key creative decisions.

That means figuring out the setting, the tone, the characters, and the world itself, whether that leans sci-fi, fantasy, space-based, medieval, or something closer to the modern day. It sounds like the broad direction has already been decided internally, but since development is still early, plenty of details could shift before anything is locked in.

This next phase is really about building out the world in more depth: developing lore, establishing a visual identity, and figuring out what the first game within this universe is actually going to be about, all while keeping that emotional narrative front and center.

CD Projekt Red already has an incredibly packed lineup ahead of Project Hadar even releasing. Beyond The Witcher 3's new expansion landing in 2027, there's The Witcher 4, 5, and 6, a Witcher 1 remake, an online Witcher project, Cyberpunk 2, an online Cyberpunk mode, and a newly launched Cyberpunk trading card game.

On top of the games, there's a second season of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners coming, along with the final season of The Witcher's live-action series, plus likely more anime spin-offs down the line. It's clear CD Projekt Red is taking its time with everything on its slate, a lesson that seems directly tied to the rocky launch of Cyberpunk 2077 years ago.

With that in mind, the slow, methodical approach to Project Hadar makes a lot of sense. Given everything the studio has planned, Project Hadar looks like one of the more exciting long-term bets in its lineup, and it's shaping up to be a project worth keeping an eye on as more updates roll in over the next few development cycles.