Everything we know about The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past DLC: Release date, story, gameplay, new region

Twelve years after The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt came out, Geralt is getting another full expansion. Songs of the Past sends him to Letten, Dandelion’s homeland, and brings a new open-world region, new monsters, new quests, a silver chain for Geralt, and another romance option along with it. CD Projekt Red and Fool’s Theory showed a lot more of it at gamescom, including roughly 15 minutes of gameplay and the early main quest A Bed of Thorns. That footage introduced Dandelion’s family, explained how Letten works as an open world, and confirmed that everything improved in The Witcher 3 Remastered carries over into the expansion. Quick Summary The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past comes out in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. Geralt travels to Letten after Dandelion disappears, which pulls him into the history of the de Lettenhove family and a curse surrounding one of Dandelion’s ancestors. Letten is roughly the size of Blood and Wine, with more detailed NPC routines, denser settlements, and dozens of new quests and points of interest. Lilla, Dandelion’s cousin and Geralt’s companion through the story, is a new romance option. Geralt gets a silver chain for crowd control and armored enemies, while new monsters include Swarmions, the Slumbering Knight, and Thorn Flowers. Table of contentsThe Witcher 3: Songs of the Past release date and platformsWhat is the story of Songs of the Past?Letten is a new open-world regionLilla is a new romance option for GeraltSongs of the Past gameplay and Geralt’s new chainWho is developing Songs of the Past?FAQs The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past release date and platforms Songs of the Past is coming sometime in 2027 to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. There’s no month, exact date, or price yet, though you can already wishlist it. A 2026 release was on the table before CD Projekt Red gave the team another year to work on it. PS4, Xbox One, and the original Switch aren’t getting it, since development is now aimed squarely at current-generation hardware. This one is also a paid expansion, unlike the smaller free DLC CD Projekt Red used to put out for The Witcher 3. The developers are going for the scale of the game’s previous full expansions, with Letten being an entirely new open-world region roughly comparable to Blood and Wine, which cost $19.99 at launch. What is the story of Songs of the Past? A Bed of Thorns opens with Geralt in Letten for the local Belleteyn celebrations. He wakes up hungover the morning after, Dandelion is nowhere to be found, and the bard’s missing lute gives him another reason to think something has gone wrong. Geralt heads to the de Lettenhove estate and meets several members of Dandelion’s family, including his stern grandmother, his cousin Lilla, and his much more serious brother Gustav. The search eventually takes Geralt and Lilla toward the Garden of Thorns and the story of Count Humbert de Lettenhove, an ancestor tied up in an old family curse. Dandelion gets far more attention here than he ever did in the base game, including his life before he became the bard Geralt knows. The story goes back about 11 years to ideas floating around CD Projekt Red during original development, and the expansion is using it to dig into Dandelion’s roots, his friendship with Geralt, family problems, and old regrets. Letten is a new open-world region New region in Redania. Image via CDPR Letten is located in northeastern Redania and escaped most of the warfare that wrecked places like Velen. The countryside draws on England and southern Poland, and what’s been shown so far includes lakeside villages, forests, farmland, rural festivals, and the de Lettenhove family estate. The whole region is freely explorable and is somewhere around Blood and Wine in size, filled with new quests, characters, secrets, and points of interest. CD Projekt Red has also packed the settlements more densely and given NPCs more detailed routines and dialogue than they had before. Those NPCs now do considerably more than stand around, driving carts and using boats among other things. The gamescom demo showed shepherds moving sheep across roads, carts rolling through settlements, children interacting with adults, and villagers drifting back into their routines once Belleteyn wrapped up. Lilla is a new romance option for Geralt Dandelion’s cousin Lilla. Image via CDPR Lilla is Dandelion’s cousin, and she becomes one of Geralt’s main companions during the search. Geralt can romance her, and flirtatious dialogue showed up during the quest. CD Projekt Red confirmed during its gamescom REDstream that Geralt has new romance content in the expansion, though the demo deliberately picked a colder response because the developer playing was keeping him with Yennefer. That suggests the romance is optional and you can keep Geralt loyal to an existing partner. CD Projekt Red hasn’t said whether Yennefer, Triss, or either relationship will physically show up in Songs of the Past, so how Lilla’s romance path works with old saves is still an open question. Songs of the Past gameplay and Geralt’s new chain Geralt’s new chain. Image via CDPR Songs of the Past keeps the sword combat, Signs, alchemy, investigation, dialogue choices, and exploration you’d expect, while folding in the mechanical changes from The Witcher 3 Remastered. That means smoother combat animations, revised enemy behavior, improved movement, an adaptive camera, and reworked character progression. Geralt’s biggest new toy is a silver chain, based on the weapon he uses against the striga in Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Last Wish and in the opening cinematic of the first Witcher game. It fills a similar slot to the crossbow, and you can either throw it quickly or take time to aim. The chain drags ranged enemies toward Geralt, pulls creatures out of groups, and opens up defenses his swords can’t get through. During the A Bed of Thorns demo, Geralt used it on the Slumbering Knight to break its guard and create an opening. New enemies include Swarmions, which come at you in groups, and the Slumbering Knight, a skeletal thing covered in roots. Thorn Flowers are another archespore variant that can attack from underground and fire large poisonous projectiles, with more monsters and bosses still unrevealed. Quests can also use information Geralt picks up elsewhere in Letten. One puzzle shown at gamescom had a dialogue option unlocked by something learned from an unrelated NPC. Who is developing Songs of the Past? Something stirs in Letten. Image via CDPR CD Projekt Red is co-developing Songs of the Past with Fool’s Theory, the Polish studio currently leading the remake of the first Witcher. Several Fool’s Theory developers worked on The Witcher 2 and The Witcher 3, expansion director Jakub Rokosz among them. The story has unusually old roots, with the original concept dating back to The Witcher 3‘s development. Senior quest designer Despoina Anetaki, CD Projekt Red narrative director Philipp Weber, and Fool’s Theory senior writer Ula Moitica were among those who developed or revisited the idea. FAQs When does The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past come out? The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past releases in 2027 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. An exact date has not been announced. Who is the new romance in Songs of the Past? Lilla, Dandelion’s cousin, is the new romance option shown for Geralt. The romance is optional, and players can choose to immediately shoot this option down. Where is Songs of the Past set? The expansion takes place in Letten, Dandelion’s homeland in northeastern Redania. It is a new freely explorable region similar in scale to Blood and Wine. Is Songs of the Past free? No. Songs of the Past is a paid expansion. Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine became free for existing The Witcher 3 owners alongside the gamescom announcements, but the new expansion will be sold separately. Dot Esports is supported by our audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Learn more about our Affiliate Policy