The Winds of Winter Release Date: Still Nothing, and the Odds Agree

Updated September 16, 2026

There is no release date for The Winds of Winter, and George R.R. Martin's publisher says the book is not finished. A market on Kalshi puts the chance that a date gets announced before 2027 at about one in eleven. Fifteen years after the last book, that is what belief in Westeros costs. It is probably still too much.

Where the book stands

Everything below comes from Martin or his publisher this year. Each line links to what was said.

• January. Martin told The Hollywood Reporter he could finish "pretty soon" if he could get his other projects off his back, and that sometimes he is "not in the mood for that." The manuscript, he said, is about 1,100 pages, the longest in the series.
• April. A viral post claimed the book was secretly done and dated for late 2026. Bantam, his publisher, told Entertainment Weekly the chatter was false.
• How far along it is. Martin's last progress estimate was "about three-quarters of the way done", in October 2022. The page count he gave in January is the same one he gave then.
• August. On his blog he wrote that 2026 had been "stressful, to say the least," with lost friends and a battle with depression. The post does not mention the book.

The last book shows how a date actually gets set. When Bantam set the date for A Dance with Dragons on March 3, 2011, the book was four months from shelves and Martin was still writing. He finished it on April 27, eight weeks after the announcement. That is as early as a publisher will name a date: weeks before delivery, with the manuscript all but done. Winds is a quarter unwritten by its author's own count, and that count is four years old. For a date to be announced this year, the book would need to be nearly finished today. The publisher said in April it is not.

What the price means

Market	Winds of Winter release date announced before Jan 1, 2027? (Kalshi)
Price for Yes	9 cents, about a one in eleven chance
As of	September 16, 2026

Someone is buying at that price, so it is worth asking what they believe. The only real case for yes is a smokescreen: Bantam sitting on a finished draft for a reveal timed to HBO, with the April denial as cover. Against that, Martin has set targets before and missed every one, and the April denial was aimed at exactly this rumor. That leaves the price looking less like a forecast and more like what hope costs.

The show is not a signal either. When the House of the Dragon finale aired on August 9, the price roughly doubled in the days around it and was back where it started within a day. That is about what you would expect. The show adapts Fire & Blood, a different book Martin published in 2018, so nothing on screen says anything about the state of the manuscript. Attention moves a thin market for exactly as long as the attention lasts.

A second opinion

As a check, the same facts went to eight AI models on August 7, blind to the price, each asked for a probability. They came back between 1.5% and 2.5%. That is not a forecast to bet on. It is a sign that the facts above, read cold, point to a much lower number than the market's. How the models are scored is here.

What to watch for

Three things would change this picture, in order of how much:

• Martin or Bantam saying the manuscript is delivered. That is the whole game.
• A Winds entry in a Bantam seasonal catalog with a month attached. Publishers tip dates there before any blog post.
• An HBO-timed reveal. The one path that shortens the normal lead time. It is also the rumor the publisher already denied.

Until one of those shows up, the answer to "when is The Winds of Winter coming out" is the same as it was fifteen years ago. Nobody knows, and at under a dime, the market is mostly saying the same thing.

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Market price from Kalshi as of the date above. Prices change constantly. Nothing here is a prediction of fact or financial advice.