The Witcher 3 Expansion Teases 3rd Sword, Reveal at Gamescom

You've probably seen the whispers floating around for months now, but it's official: The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past is real, and you're finally getting a proper look at it soon. After a long stretch of leaks and guesswork, the wait is basically over.

Geoff Keighley, the guy behind both The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest, confirmed that The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past will make its first public appearance during Gamescom Opening Night Live on August 25. That's your first real chance to see anything concrete about what CD Projekt Red has been working on.

Nobody's confirmed yet whether you'll get actual gameplay footage or just a cinematic teaser.

Odds are you're looking at something story-focused first — a trailer meant to set the mood and introduce what's being called Geralt's final outing. CD Projekt Red has made it clear that The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past isn't a small DLC drop. It's a full-blown expansion, and the studio wants you to understand that difference.

When CD Projekt Red talks about DLC, they usually mean lighter content — free extras like new outfits, side quests, or small quality-of-life tweaks. Nice to have, but nothing that reshapes your experience. An expansion is a different beast entirely. You're talking about dozens of added hours, brand-new storylines, unique enemies, new gear, unfamiliar faces, and sometimes whole new areas to explore.

Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine set that bar years ago, and plenty of fans still consider them some of the best expansion content ever made in gaming. Now CD Projekt Red is positioning The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past as the true follow-up to those two.

If early expectations hold, you could be looking at roughly 20 hours of fresh content, a new plot, new creatures to fight, new equipment to hunt down, and either a new region or a heavily transformed piece of the existing map. If it delivers on that, you're looking at one of the standout releases of 2026.

In the official key art, Geralt is shown carrying three swords instead of his usual two.

If you've played through the base game and both expansions, you know Geralt has always stuck to two blades — one steel sword for human enemies, one silver sword for monsters. That's been his setup this entire time, so a third sword showing up out of nowhere is a big deal to longtime fans. You'll remember that depending on how your original playthrough ended, Geralt hands his silver sword Zireael over to Ciri.

Because of that, plenty of people are theorizing the third sword connects to her somehow. That said, the blade shown in the promotional art doesn't really match Zireael's design as far as anyone can tell. Maybe CD Projekt Red redesigned it. Maybe it's a completely new weapon tied to whatever story The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past is building toward.

Right now, it's an open question, and it's become one of the biggest talking points around the whole reveal. So where does any of this actually take place? According to insider chatter that's been circulating for a while, The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past might not introduce a brand-new kingdom at all. Instead, you could be heading back into an expanded version of Velen, specifically the southern stretch near the old Nilfgaardian military camps.

That theory holds up pretty well when you think it through. One insider pointed out that no matter which ending you got in the base game, the war is effectively over by the time the story wraps. That means those Nilfgaardian camps would likely sit abandoned or torn down, giving CD Projekt Red a blank canvas to rebuild that whole corner of the map with new villages, new monsters, new quests, and a totally different atmosphere.

This wouldn't be the first time the studio's taken this approach.

Blood and Wine handed you an entirely new kingdom in Toussaint, while Hearts of Stone mostly worked with regions you already knew, layering in new stories and characters instead of building from scratch. If The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past really does expand southern Velen, you'd essentially get a blend of both methods — familiar ground that feels reshaped by everything that's happened since the war ended.

That's honestly a smart direction. Watching how the world shifted after the fighting stopped would tie The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past much closer to Geralt's overall story, while still giving you plenty of new territory to dig into. Obviously, all of this stays speculation until CD Projekt Red actually shows gameplay.

Luckily, you won't be waiting long. Gamescom Opening Night Live on August 25 is where The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past finally gets its real unveiling, and that's when you should get concrete answers about the setting, the story, and what Geralt's last adventure is shaping up to look like.

Between the mystery sword, the return to Velen, and CD Projekt Red treating this as a true successor to Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past is already shaping up to be one of the year's biggest gaming stories. If it lives up to what came before it, this is going to be a send-off worth paying attention to.