As had been rumoured and now confirmed, CD PROJEKT RED today announced The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Songs of the Past DLC to arrive in 2027.
CD PROJEKT RED said they're co-developing the expansion with Fool's Theory, a team comprising industry veterans who worked on The Witcher 3. Exact details on it are pretty light, with more details to come sometime in "late summer" 2026. This will be the third major expansion for the game since the release back in 2015.
They've also mentioned that the system requirements needed will be changed from the "next update" that will exclusively require DirectX 12 (so for Linux / SteamOS, it will use VKD3D-Proton). Here's the new minimum specifications they provided:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600, Intel Core i5-8400
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660, AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB
VRAM: 6 GB
RAM: 12 GB
Storage: 70 GB SSD
They did say an older version of the game will remain available - so that's good for those can't run the very latest.
That is about as much as we know right now - no other details were formally revealed.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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12 comments
Arehandoro 6 hours ago
that will exclusively require DirectX 12Booooo.
2 Likes
wow, that's awesome they're still releasing stuff for this game! As an avid rpg fan/player I know the fanbase will be super excited. I could never get into these games since I can't stand pretty much any form of melee combat (and that's all there is) but I'm excited for all the fans out there!
2 Likes
PlayingOnLinuxphone 5 hours ago
As long as they don't improve the character physics/controls I don't care. Witcher 1 is still the only Witcher I could enjoy (and I know the controls were weird, but at least they worked).
1 Likes
Quoting: ArehandoroYeah, DX12 version runs like shit compared to the DX11 one.that will exclusively require DirectX 12Booooo.
Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphoneAs long as they don't improve the character physics/controls I don't care. Witcher 1 is still the only Witcher I could enjoy (and I know the controls were weird, but at least they worked).Good to see I'm not the only one with a soft spot for Witcher 1.
Last edited by Ehvis on 27 May 2026 at 1:10 pm UTC
0 Likes
I am incredibly salty about this, because the dx12 renderer in this game is terribly broken!
I did indepth testing, and on both AMD and Nvidia, is anywhere from 40-50% less performant than DX11 and as a consequence, it needs upscaling to get the same performance than DX11. Some people even say that they are using a D3D wrapper and that the D3D12 implementation is not native, which may explain the terrible performance loss.
And now DX12 will become the only renderer available. Great job CDPR for artificially inflating the system requirements. It's not like DX12 offers any visual benefits other than Raytracing which is broken on Linux anyway.
I did indepth testing, and on both AMD and Nvidia, is anywhere from 40-50% less performant than DX11 and as a consequence, it needs upscaling to get the same performance than DX11. Some people even say that they are using a D3D wrapper and that the D3D12 implementation is not native, which may explain the terrible performance loss.
And now DX12 will become the only renderer available. Great job CDPR for artificially inflating the system requirements. It's not like DX12 offers any visual benefits other than Raytracing which is broken on Linux anyway.
0 Likes
Quoting: StellaSome people even say that they are using a D3D wrapper and that the D3D12 implementation is not native, which may explain the terrible performance loss.That is a fact. It uses the D3D11on12 wrapper, which is a Microsoft DLL. But even Microsoft states that it should not be used for performance critical tasks since it is not very efficient. But that is how they hacked in RT support. On testing, I've found that on the same settings (so no RT), D3D12 runs at half the framerate of D3D11.
3 Likes
Liam Squires-Hand 5 hours ago
Well, maybe that renderer will see improvements for the release. They must be confident on it to remove DX11 😅
1 Likes
Quoting: Liam Squires-HandWell, maybe that renderer will see improvements for the release. They must be confident on it to remove DX11 😅If it's really a wrapper, I don't see how that would work. the game would be inherently limited by the poor performance of their shortcut wrapper. Rebuilding the whole game to take advantage of DX12 from the beginning would be a solution. But that would take too much time.
0 Likes
Liam Squires-Hand 4 hours ago
Quoting: StellaWell the same way DXVK, VKD3D-Proton and so on improve. Wrappers are just code, anything can be optimized....or ripped out.Quoting: Liam Squires-HandWell, maybe that renderer will see improvements for the release. They must be confident on it to remove DX11 😅If it's really a wrapper, I don't see how that would work. the game would be inherently limited by the poor performance of their shortcut wrapper. Rebuilding the whole game to take advantage of DX12 from the beginning would be a solution. But that would take too much time.
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It doesn't use 11on12
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The Witcher 3 uses RedEngine 3. CyberPunk 2077 uses RedEngine 4. Often time these engines are replaced peicemeal between versions. It is possible they “ported” it to RedEngine 4 for this or backported the D12 parts which would resolve the performance issues that were there in RedEngine 3 D12.
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Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphoneAs long as they don't improve the character physics/controls I don't care. Witcher 1 is still the only Witcher I could enjoy (and I know the controls were weird, but at least they worked).I fully agree. I hated the second part and after watching a few parts of a Let's Play video I bought the third part and quit not long after leaving the tutorial area. The gameplay was basically reduced to rolling around all the time.
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