Cyberpunk 2: 163 Developers, a Dystopian Chicago and No Date Yet

Six years ago, Cyberpunk 2077 was the most troubled launch in modern AAA gaming, a game so broken on old consoles that Sony pulled it from the PlayStation Store. Today it has sold more than 40 million copies, its Phantom Liberty expansion has sold 15 million, and a second anime season has just arrived on Netflix. The comeback is complete. Now CD Projekt Red has to do it all again.

Cyberpunk 2 (still officially referred to by that working name, and developed under the codename Orion) has passed its concept phase and entered pre-production, CD Projekt's finance chief Piotr Nielubowicz confirmed in March 2026. As of April 30, 2026, 163 developers were working on it. There is no release date, and no window.

What is confirmed

CD Projekt is unusually open about its pipeline, and its earnings reports give a steady drip of facts:

• The team is growing fast. It went from 84 developers in February 2025 to 149 in February 2026 and 163 by the end of April. The company's own plans call for the team to roughly double by the end of 2027.
• It is being built across three countries. CD Projekt Red's Boston studio, founded in 2023, was set up to drive the project, with support from Vancouver and the studios in Poland.
• It uses Unreal Engine 5. Chief technology officer Pawel Zawodny has said the engine is better suited to open worlds than the studio's own REDengine, which powered Cyberpunk 2077.
• The creative director is Igor Sarzynski, and he has said the sequel will again use purely first-person cutscenes, which he believes creates more immersion than cutting to a third-person view.

A second city

The biggest creative reveal came from Pondsmith himself. In May 2025, the creator of the original tabletop game confirmed that the sequel will include a new city inspired by a dystopian Chicago, in addition to Night City.

That is a significant change. Cyberpunk 2077 lived and died by one dense, vertical city on the California coast. A second urban centre suggests a larger game with more travel, and possibly a very different mood: Chicago's lakefront, rail lines and brutal winters are a long way from Night City's sun-baked sprawl.

Lessons from 2077

The sequel's leaders have been frank about the first game's problems. In interviews, they have described the original's development as siloed, with teams working in isolation, and said the sequel's structure is deliberately more collaborative. That is not marketing fluff: it is the clearest public admission of what went wrong in 2020.

The team size numbers tell the same story. CD Projekt is growing the sequel slowly and publicly, while The Witcher 4 (513 developers, targeting 2028) takes priority. In practice, that means Cyberpunk 2 will not be in full production for some time.

Why it matters

Cyberpunk 2077's recovery is one of the great redemption stories in games, but it also showed how fragile a huge open-world project can be. Cyberpunk 2 is CD Projekt's chance to launch a game in this universe that works on day one.

The early signs are sensible: a new engine shared with the rest of the studio, a team structure built to avoid silos, and no promises about dates. Some fans have speculated about 2030 or later, but CD Projekt has not given any timing at all, and we would not bet on a date before The Witcher 4 is out.

What to watch

The next solid information will come from CD Projekt's earnings reports, which update team sizes several times a year. In the meantime, the best way to spend time in this world is Cyberpunk 2077 with Phantom Liberty, now on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2, followed by Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, the anime made with Studio Trigger that arrived on Netflix on October 20.