CD Projekt Red’s Project Hadar is still one of the more carefully guarded projects in modern RPG development, but its latest status update gives the mystery a slightly more useful outline. The new intellectual property remains in the concept phase and pre-production, yet the studio says the group working on it has grown beyond 30 people. Its aim is to build that team to as many as 50 developers by the end of 2026.
That does not mean the studio has a game ready to unveil, nor does it establish a release window, platforms, setting, characters, combat system, or even a genre. It does mean Hadar has progressed past being merely a name on a corporate roadmap. The team is now exploring possible gameplay elements through prototypes, the practical stage where broad ideas get subjected to the most fearsome opponent in game development: whether they are actually fun, coherent, and possible to build at scale.
For anyone hoping the veil would lift to reveal a trailer, a logo with excessive embers, or a protagonist staring moodily at a distant monolith, this is not that sort of update. It is a staffing-and-process update. But those are often the clearest way to measure where a long-term project really sits.
Hadar is growing, but it is still small by CD Projekt Red standards
The studio first disclosed Project Hadar in 2022 as an entirely original IP. Since then, official detail has been limited, and the September 2, 2026 earnings discussion preserved that approach. Karolina Gnaś, CD Projekt Red’s vice president of investor relations, described Hadar as being in the concept phase. The project’s more than 30 developers are focused on trying approaches, developing ideas, and prototyping gameplay elements.
That wording matters. In a concept-stage production, a team may be deciding what a game is before it commits fully to making every piece of it. The questions can be large and foundational: Is the world open, segmented, or structured around a hub? Is progression driven by gear, skills, companions, investigation, survival systems, or something stranger? What makes the player’s actions satisfying minute to minute? And, perhaps most importantly for a studio known for giant narrative RPGs, which familiar assumptions should carry over and which should be left at the tavern door?
Prototyping is where those questions become playable experiments rather than presentation slides. Plenty of concepts sound excellent in a meeting. Far fewer retain their charm after someone has spent an afternoon repeating the central loop, encountering edge cases, and discovering that a supposedly revolutionary mechanic is mostly an elaborate way to open doors slowly.
The plan to potentially reach 50 people by year’s end is a meaningful expansion, but it should not be mistaken for a full-scale production surge. It is an incremental build-out while the project is still finding its shape. Recruitment activity earlier in the summer pointed to work on an “emotional, open-world experience,” although that phrase is broad enough to accommodate many interpretations. It indicates an aspiration or direction, not a complete design document the public can reliably reconstruct.
The Witcher 4 remains the studio’s giant gravitational object
Context makes Hadar’s scale clearer. CD Projekt Red has said that nearly 500 people are working on The Witcher 4, which is targeting a 2028 release. Against that figure, a Hadar team of 30-plus people, with a prospective cap of 50 by the end of the year, looks exactly like what it is: a project in early formation beside the company’s major active production.
That is neither a bad sign nor evidence that Hadar has been shelved. Large studios routinely place most of their resources on the next major release in an established series while a smaller group lays the groundwork for future projects. A new universe needs time to define its creative identity, technology needs, pipeline, and the kinds of stories it can tell. Those decisions are especially consequential when the studio is not adapting an existing setting with years of audience expectations, characters, lore, and visual shorthand already in place.
There is also a straightforward reason not to rush outward-facing announcements at this point. Technical development milestones can be important internally without translating into a useful public reveal. A prototype may prove that traversal works, establish a camera language, or demonstrate how several systems interact. None of that necessarily makes for a trailer that communicates what the finished game will be.
The studio’s leadership has emphasized that the The Witcher 4 team is concentrated on building the game through to release rather than publicly narrating every technical step. Hadar appears to be receiving a similarly disciplined treatment, only much earlier in its cycle. For players, that means patience is not a marketing slogan here; it is the accurate reading of the project’s status.
What “gameplay prototyping” can and cannot tell us
It is tempting to treat the start of gameplay prototyping as confirmation that the core experience is locked. It is safer to see it as proof that the studio is testing candidates for that core. A prototype can become the seed of a final game, get dramatically reworked, or disappear entirely after teaching the team what not to pursue.
That uncertainty is useful, particularly for a new IP. CD Projekt Red has an unmistakable public association with story-heavy role-playing games, enormous settings, and consequential character arcs. Yet Project Hadar has not been formally defined as a Witcher-like RPG. The reference to an emotional, open-world experience suggests a broad direction, but it does not verify combat perspective, party design, dialogue systems, fantasy or science-fiction setting, multiplayer, or any other feature fans might be tempted to add to the evidence board with red string.
For now, the strongest facts are deliberately modest:
- Project Hadar is CD Projekt Red’s original IP, first revealed in 2022.
- It remains in pre-production and concept-stage work.
- The team numbers more than 30 people.
- The studio hopes to expand that group to up to 50 developers by the end of 2026.
- Its current work includes testing ideas and prototyping gameplay elements.
- No release date, platform list, or detailed public premise has been announced.
That list may be less flashy than an imagined cinematic reveal, but it is far more useful than speculation dressed as reporting. It also explains why Hadar should not be measured against an established blockbuster’s marketing cadence. It is not competing for attention with The Witcher 4 so much as quietly building the foundations needed to become its own thing.
A long wait would fit the project’s current position
Because Hadar is still in concept work while The Witcher 4 is aimed at 2028, it is reasonable to expect the newer IP to arrive substantially later. That is an inference, not a declared schedule. The studio has not provided a Hadar launch target, and hiring a few dozen developers does not provide enough information to calculate one.
Still, the timeline helps establish expectations. A project revealed in 2022 could pass well beyond six years from its first mention before release, especially if it is expected to become a major open-world production. The studio is also continuing to support its existing catalogue over extended periods, including work connected to The Witcher 3 more than a decade after the base game launched. Long horizons are part of the picture.
That may be frustrating for those eager to know what Hadar is, but it can also be read as a sensible refusal to overpromise. A fresh setting has to earn its name, its atmosphere, and its reasons for existing beyond “the team needed another enormous map.” The prototype stage is where those reasons begin to survive contact with actual controls.
Players looking for a refresher on why moment-to-moment design can matter as much as a game’s high-concept pitch may enjoy The Unwritten Rules of Couch Multiplayer, Now Written Down. And for a broader look at the ways emerging technology keeps pushing interactive storytelling toward new forms, see Venice Immersive’s 10th Edition Shows XR Chasing Shared Spaces, Smart Glasses and Better Storytelling.
The meaningful update is that the experiment has a team
Project Hadar’s present-day identity is still mostly a blank page, and CD Projekt Red is not pretending otherwise. The notable development is that the project has moved into an active exploratory phase with a growing team, rather than remaining a distant entry in the studio’s plans. More than 30 developers are already involved, and a move toward 50 would give the concept work a somewhat broader runway.
There will be plenty of time later for fans to debate lore, trailers, release timing, and whether any fictional tavern sells a suspiciously overpowered card game. At the moment, Hadar is doing the quieter work: testing possibilities and finding the playable idea sturdy enough to support an entirely new world.
