The Witcher 3 Extends Its Golden Joystick Lead With a 2026 Remaster Win

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has collected another major trophy more than a decade after its original release. The RPG's newly released remaster won Best Remake/Remaster at the Golden Joystick Awards 2026, adding another chapter to a long awards history that already placed CD Projekt Red's Geralt adventure ahead of many of its role-playing contemporaries.

The latest result is especially notable because The Witcher 3 was already widely regarded as the most decorated game in Golden Joystick Awards history. Its original release, its expansions, and the broader recognition earned by CD Projekt Red have produced a total that remains difficult for other individual RPGs to approach. With the remaster's success, the game's direct Golden Joystick tally now stands at 10 wins.

That figure can rise to 12 depending on how the awards are counted. Guinness World Records includes CD Projekt Red's Studio of the Year honors from 2015 and 2016 in the broader Witcher 3-related total. Either way, the remaster award gives the series another clear landmark and underlines the unusually long cultural life of a game first launched in 2015.

A crowded Best Remake/Remaster category

The Witcher 3's remaster did not take the award in an empty field. The category included Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, Star Fox, Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 2, Gothic 1 Remake, and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. The nomination list brought together projects with very different approaches to revisiting older games, from faithful preservation-minded collections to more extensive rebuilds.

For useful background on this topic, read The Road Of Dust And Sorrow Delayed to February 19, 2027, With Physical PS5 Release Planned.

For CD Projekt Red, the win represents a return to an awards show where The Witcher 3 has repeatedly succeeded across multiple kinds of recognition. Its prior honors were not limited to a single overall Game of the Year prize. They covered storytelling, visual work, a defining individual quest, performance, anticipation before release, and its acclaimed post-launch content.

The remaster win also shows that the game's awards appeal has extended beyond its original launch period. A remake or remaster category is judged within a different context from a new game release: it asks voters to consider how effectively a familiar work has been updated, presented, or renewed for a contemporary audience. The 2026 trophy suggests that The Witcher 3 still has considerable momentum even when measured against newer efforts to revisit beloved catalog titles.

How The Witcher 3 built its record

The Witcher 3's Golden Joystick history began before players could buy the finished game. It won Most Wanted twice, first in 2013 and again in 2014. Those early results reflected the enormous expectations surrounding CD Projekt Red's follow-up to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and established the game as one of the era's most closely watched releases.

When The Witcher 3 arrived in 2015, it fulfilled that anticipation in emphatic fashion. It won four Golden Joystick Awards that year:

• Best Storytelling
• Best Visual Design
• Best Gaming Moment
• Ultimate Game of the Year

The Best Gaming Moment award specifically recognized the Bloody Baron questline, one of the game's most widely discussed narrative arcs. That story became a shorthand for what many players and critics valued in The Witcher 3: morally difficult choices, character-focused writing, and consequences that could feel weighty even amid a huge open-world adventure.

Winning Ultimate Game of the Year gave the RPG its biggest single accolade at the 2015 ceremony, but it did not mark the end of its run. CD Projekt Red returned to the Golden Joysticks the next year with Blood and Wine, the large expansion that sent Geralt to the colorful but troubled region of Toussaint.

Blood and Wine earned three additional awards: Best Storytelling, Best Visual Design, and Best Gaming Performance for Doug Cockle's portrayal of Geralt. Together with the two Most Wanted awards and the four trophies earned by the base game in 2015, those three expansion awards had previously brought the game's direct total to nine. The 2026 remaster victory makes it 10.

Still ahead of its major RPG rivals

The expanded tally further separates The Witcher 3 from other recent RPG giants that have put together remarkable Golden Joystick showings of their own. Baldur's Gate 3 set a single-ceremony record in 2023 by winning seven awards in one night when Larian Studios' Studio of the Year recognition is included. That achievement demonstrated the scale of the game's impact, particularly during a year in which it became one of the genre's defining releases.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 subsequently matched that seven-award mark last year. Matching Baldur's Gate 3 at one ceremony was an impressive milestone in its own right, particularly for a newer property facing the challenge of making an immediate impression alongside long-established franchises.

Yet The Witcher 3's record has been built differently. Rather than concentrating all its success into one awards season, it has continued accumulating recognition across years. The game won before launch, dominated around its release, returned with expansion content, and has now received a fresh award through its remaster. That longevity is what makes its overall total stand out.

There is a useful distinction between a record for the most wins in a single ceremony and the highest career tally connected to one game. Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 demonstrated exceptional success in concentrated bursts. The Witcher 3, meanwhile, has sustained its presence over a much longer period. The latest award strengthens that second kind of record.

The legacy of Geralt's biggest game

Part of the enduring interest in The Witcher 3 comes from the breadth of what it offers. Geralt's final mainline adventure combined a vast fantasy world with detective work, monster contracts, political conflicts, romance stories, and self-contained quests that often carried the writing quality of a much more focused game. It also became closely associated with Gwent, its in-world card game, which grew popular enough to become a separate release.

The game's reach across PC and console audiences has helped it remain visible for years. Its characters, locations, music, and quests continue to surface in discussions of landmark RPG design. Geralt himself has remained one of gaming's most recognizable protagonists, aided in no small part by Cockle's performance and the distinct personality the game gave its version of the monster hunter.

That lasting visibility does not automatically translate into awards, especially in a remake and remaster category filled with familiar names. The Best Remake/Remaster win therefore matters as evidence that the project resonated beyond nostalgia alone. It indicates that voters found value in revisiting the game in its refreshed form rather than treating it only as a past achievement.

Could another award be waiting?

The Witcher 3's awards run may not be over. CD Projekt Red has a Songs of the Past expansion planned for next year. There is no guarantee that it will become an awards contender, and its reception will naturally determine whether it joins the game's existing list of celebrated add-ons. Still, the precedent set by Blood and Wine makes the possibility easy to understand.

If Songs of the Past lands strongly with players and voters, it could create another opportunity for the 2015 RPG to add to its already exceptional Golden Joystick record. That would be a rare outcome for any game, let alone one that has already crossed an 11-year span between its initial release and its newest trophy.

For now, the 2026 Best Remake/Remaster award is enough to confirm the central point: The Witcher 3 remains a force in awards history. Its direct total of 10 Golden Joystick wins, or 12 when CD Projekt Red's related Studio of the Year awards are counted under the broader Guinness approach, keeps Geralt's journey comfortably ahead of the competition in cumulative terms. Even after all these years, the Path still has room for one more trophy.