Prepare for Songs of the Past

What you should do first

Songs of the Past is not a patch and not a free epilogue. It is a paid third expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, co-developed by CD Projekt Red and Fool’s Theory, published by CD Projekt, and scheduled for 2027. CD Projekt Red has not named a day. Some Steam and store searches have shown Q4 2027; that quarter remains unconfirmed. Your job in 2026 is to make sure Geralt can actually enter Letten when the chapter ships: right hardware, right edition, right save, and a clear list of what nobody has announced yet.

This page is the checklist. Combat details live in the How to Play Guide. Geography lives in the Letten Map Guide. Plot framing lives in the Story Overview. Inputs live in the Controls Guide. Read those after your library and your save file are in order.

Everything about Songs of the Past

Install Witcher 3 Remastered

The expansion requires the free Witcher 3 Remastered upgrade dated 29 September 2026. Existing owners on Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S receive that upgrade at no extra charge. Nintendo Switch owners can claim Remastered on Nintendo Switch 2. Battle.net is a new PC storefront for the Remastered build; it is not a last-gen port.

Remastered is more than prettier trees. Combat targeting, camera follow, animations, accessibility, and presentation all change, and Songs of the Past is built on that branch. If you skip the upgrade, you will not launch Letten. Read the Remastered notes before you respec a character or throw out an old save because a UI panel looks different.

DirectX 12 is the PC rendering path going forward. If you still boot an older DirectX 11 shortcut, plan to retire it. Path tracing, upscalers, and the new lighting stack sit on current hardware; the system requirements tool is the place to check GPU headroom rather than guessing from 2015 specs.

Editions and the Complete Edition SKU

Several storefronts have already collapsed the old SKU maze. The base game plus Hearts of Stone plus Blood and Wine now ship as a Complete Edition, and that Complete Edition is becoming the only purchase option on Steam and other digital shelves. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine became free for people who already owned the base game. New buyers get those two expansions in the Remastered package.

Songs of the Past is not inside that bundle. It is a separate paid DLC, Steam app 5006530, attached to base game 292030. Wishlist it from the official stores. Price is unannounced. Blood and Wine launched at $19.99, which is useful only as a sense of scale for a Toussaint-sized region. Do not treat that number as a leak for Letten.

If you own a physical disc or cartridge, keep it. Console upgrades have required the original media in past Witcher 3 generations. Confirm the exact claim flow for your platform on the platforms page rather than assuming a digital copy will appear automatically on every account.

Platforms that will actually run it

Supported platforms are PC (Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, Battle.net), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2. PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and the original Switch are out. There is no split campaign, no extra witcher, and no online session. You play Geralt in a single-player story.

Cross-saves between storefronts are not something CD Projekt Red has documented for this expansion. Stay on one ecosystem if you care about carrying a Toussaint ending into Letten. Mods are a separate promise: cross-platform mods are still coming, with no date. Do not delay a Remastered install waiting for a workshop button that has not shipped.

Keep a save after Blood and Wine

The story sits after Blood and Wine. Geralt is in Toussaint when Dandelion calls him to Letten. CD Projekt Red has not published a hard requirement that you finish Hearts of Stone or Blood and Wine first, but the chapter is written as a last ride after Toussaint, and dialogues are expected to notice the work you did. A Corvo Bianco save with the duchy settled is the cleanest role-play and the cleanest flag set.

Practical save hygiene:

• Keep at least one manual save after the Blood and Wine credits, stored in a slot you will not overwrite during a New Game Plus experiment.
• Keep a second copy in cloud or USB if your platform allows it.
• Do not delete old Toussaint slots until Remastered has imported them and you have loaded Geralt at the vineyard once.
• If you never finished Blood and Wine, finish it on Remastered. The expansion is written as a last ride, not as a replacement for Toussaint.

Level and gear expectations have not been published as a hard gate. Treat Letten like Blood and Wine: a late-game region that assumes you already know Signs, oils, and decoctions. Grandmaster sets, mutations, and crossbow habits all still matter because the silver chain occupies a quick-use slot rather than replacing the swords.

Wishlist, Gwent, and what is still unknown

Wishlist now. A 2027 window can hide a spring date or a winter date, and store pages that flash Q4 2027 can change. New Gwent cards are confirmed. New monster contracts and extra achievements are confirmed. The full card list, the full bestiary, and the full quest log are not.

Still unknown, and worth refusing to invent:

• Exact release day and month (CD Projekt Red has said 2027).
• Price and regional SKUs.
• Whether every Blood and Wine mutation and every grandmaster diagram is required.
• Full official control remap tables for the chain (see the Controls Guide).
• How much of Letten is locked behind the main quest versus open from Belleteyn night one.
• Cross-platform mod timing.

What you do not need to wait for: a Remastered install, a Toussaint save, and a storefront decision. Those three items are available to handle before 2027. Once they are done, learn the chain in How to Play, skim the Letten Map Guide so Belleteyn and the Garden of Thorns are names instead of surprises, and keep the Story Overview closed until you want mild preview spoilers.

If you have not touched The Witcher 3 since 2016, budget real time for Remastered itself. The expansion is a chapter, not a tutorial. Letten expects you to investigate, overhear, and fight with the same patience Toussaint rewarded. Set that habit now, on current-gen hardware, so the first hungover morning in Dandelion’s homeland is a story beat instead of a driver update.