Witcher 3 PC requirements boosted ahead of new Songs of the Past expansion, now requires 12GB RAM, Windows 11

The Witcher 3 is getting a new expansion, and CD Projekt is now refreshing the game's minimum spec requirements to reflect the upgrades from the fresh storyline.

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Today, CD Projekt announced Songs of the Past, the third major expansion for The Witcher 3. The news confirmed earlier reports, however the rumors were wrong about the release date--Songs of the Past won't launch in 2026, and instead due out sometime next year.

Also included in the reveal was an update to The Witcher 3's main PC spec requirements. The game now requires 12GB of RAM, a graphics card with at least 6GB of VRAM with GPUs like NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1660 and AMD's Radeon RD 5500XT being examples, as well as incompatibility with HDDs and pushing users to move to SSDs. CD Projekt further confirms that gamers will need to play The Witcher 3 on Windows 11. Songs of the Past will probably work on Windows 10, yet CD Projekt says that it cannot ensure that it will.

We've included the full post below because it's worth reading. The devs make it clear that you can roll back any patches to ensure compatibility, but this shows a clear shift from the developer to modern platforms--which makes sense, given the age of Windows 10 and the fact that Microsoft has ended security updates for the OS.

Starting from the next update, the new minimum requirements are as follows:

• 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
• OS: 64-bit Windows 11

These minimum requirements reflect how hardware capabilities and software usage have evolved since we last changed the system requirements. In particular:

Windows 11 will be the minimum required OS for both The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 following Microsoft's end of support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. Without ongoing security updates, official platform support, and continued GPU driver support, we will no longer test our games on Windows 10.

HDDs will no longer be supported, as SSDs offer faster load times, smoother asset streaming, and improved overall performance.

The game will exclusively run using DirectX 12, which allows us to support ongoing technical improvements and modern hardware more effectively.

Only processors supported on Windows 11 will be supported by us.

Only graphics cards with ongoing active driver support for gaming on Windows 11 will be supported.