Poland's video game industry produced one of the most successful game studios in the world, and almost none of that success is something you can walk up and look at. This guide covers the real history — Warsaw computer bazaars, a 2002 studio founding, more than 120 million games sold — and is honest about what that leaves for an actual visitor to do.

From a Warsaw bazaar stall to a global studio

According to CD Projekt's own account of its history, the company's origins trace back to two high school friends, Marcin Iwiński and Michał Kiciński, who met and bonded over a shared interest in computer games in early-1990s Poland. As the company's history page recounts, in the era's newly liberalised economy, "trade activities spilled out into the streets, bazaars and open-air markets," and the pair began importing games and trading them at a specific, real location: the Warsaw computer bazaar on Grzybowska street. Iwiński is quoted on the company's own site describing the earliest version of the business plainly: "We would order a batch of discs, then retail them on the bazaar."

That informal trading operation became a formal company, CD Projekt, in 1994, initially focused on importing CD-ROM software from the United States and signing distribution agreements with publishers including Acclaim, Blizzard and Interplay, according to the same history page. It was eight years later, in 2002, that the company founded a dedicated development studio — CD Projekt Red — the entity that would go on to build The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077.

The company today

CD Projekt's own site describes its current scale in specific terms: as of the end of 2025, the company reported over 120 million copies of its games sold worldwide, and 2025 consolidated sales revenues of 867 million PLN, translating to a consolidated net profit of 594 million PLN. The company states its development teams are concentrated in Warsaw, Kraków and Wrocław within Europe, with additional teams in Vancouver and Boston in North America, and publishing operations reaching further still, into Los Angeles, Berlin, Seoul and Tokyo. Across the whole CD Projekt Red Capital Group, the company reports over 1,300 employees from 45 different countries, with an average employee age of 36.

CD Projekt Red S.A. is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange as part of the WIG20 index, comprising the exchange's 20 largest, most liquid companies — a detail worth knowing if the scale of "a game studio" doesn't immediately register as one of Poland's larger publicly traded companies, but it is.

What you can actually see, and what you can't

Be honest with yourself here: there is no publicly accessible CD Projekt visitor centre, studio tour or exhibition space in either Warsaw or Kraków that this guide could confirm. The company's offices, including its Warsaw headquarters, are working commercial premises, not tourist sites, and there is no indication on the company's own site of public tours being offered.

What genuinely exists for a visitor interested in the industry is narrower, but real:

  • Digital Dragons, run by Krakowski Park Technologiczny (Kraków Technology Park), is described on its own site as one of the largest business-to-business events for the game industry in Europe, held annually in Kraków. It is fundamentally an industry trade conference rather than a public gaming expo, aimed at studios, developers and companies rather than casual visitors — but it does run an "Indie Zone" component aimed at independent developers, and its existence is direct evidence of Kraków's institutional role in the wider Polish game industry, organised by a public technology park rather than a private company alone.
  • Bookshops and game retail, where Polish editions of Sapkowski's Witcher novels sit alongside game merchandise, and where Polish-developed games from CD Projekt and other domestic studios occupy a visible, often prominent shelf position — a small but genuine way to see the industry's cultural footprint without needing an appointment or a ticket.
  • The Warsaw Stock Exchange's own public information on CD Projekt Red S.A. as a WIG20 constituent is publicly available if you want to see the company's scale reflected in Poland's financial markets rather than its physical geography.

Setting expectations before you go looking

If you are hoping to tour a studio, meet developers, or see a dedicated exhibition on Polish game development history, this guide could not confirm that any of those currently exist in a form open to the public in Warsaw or Kraków. That may change — the industry is active and growing, and a museum, permanent exhibition or public studio event could open at any point — but treat any specific claim you encounter about a "CD Projekt museum" or similar with the same scrutiny this guide applies to unverified facts elsewhere: check it against the company's own current site before planning a visit around it.

What this guide does not cover

This guide covers CD Projekt's documented history and what a visitor can realistically expect to see of Poland's game industry today. It does not cover other Polish studios in detail, current job or internship opportunities in the industry, or ticket access and dates for Digital Dragons, which should be checked directly on the event's own site, since it runs on an annual schedule that shifts year to year.