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

Updated November 8, 2026

There is no release date for The Winds of Winter, and when a leak said the book was finished, George R.R. Martin's publisher called it false. A market on Kalshi puts the chance that a date gets announced before 2027 at about one in eighteen. 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, and if he does everything in his head it "could be the longest book in the series."
• April. A viral post claimed the book was secretly done and dated for late 2026. Bantam, his publisher, told Entertainment Weekly that "the online chatter you are seeing regarding a supposed leak is 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. His editor confirmed it was finished 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. When a leak said it was, the publisher called that false in April.

What the price means

Market	Winds of Winter release date announced before Jan 1, 2027? (Kalshi)
Price for Yes	5 cents bid, 6 cents asked; last trade 6 cents on November 2. Call it about a one in eighteen chance
As of	November 8, 2026

What moved since November 5

Nothing traded. The last sale is still the one from Monday night, November 2, and it was not a small one: about 952 contracts printed at 6 cents, with the no side paying 94 to take the other end, about $895 of real money and the biggest fill in the tape the market still shows. Nobody has tested the price since, six days and counting. What changed is the offer. The 7-cent ask that fronted the book on Thursday now has a 6-cent offer in front of it, and that offer is a sliver: less than a single contract. The 5-cent bid is thin too, under four contracts, and the next bid of any size, about 385 contracts, sits down at 4. Behind the sliver, 23 contracts sit at 7 and 178 at 8. So the market shows 5 cents bid, 6 cents asked, the middle at five and a half, half a cent below Thursday on an order you could fill with pocket change.

Off the market, still nothing: Martin's blog has not been updated since the September 3 note on the London stage show, and neither he nor Bantam has said a word about the manuscript. One thing to keep straight while watching: the rule reads "if George R.R. Martin has announced a release date for The Winds of Winter before Jan 1, 2027," so on its face a publisher catalog tip would be an early tell, not the trigger. The middle has sat at 6 or under since Thursday, well under the 9 it held through mid-October. Call it the same bet, cheaper than it was a month ago, and still too dear. The move still worth explaining is September 30, when the price briefly ran to 20 cents.

Buyers paid up to 20 cents on September 30, though the shape of it matters: a single second of buying swept a thin book, about 400 contracts, most of them at 10 to 13 cents and only 30 at 20. It reads as a hurry, not a thesis. Still, it is worth asking what a yes bet believes. 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. The biggest spike this year came on the morning of August 6, three days before the House of the Dragon finale: in about three minutes the price went from 9 cents to prints at 30 and 46, settled in the 20s, had faded to 12 by mid-morning and was back at 11 cents that afternoon. On finale night, August 9, it traded at 13 and 14 cents, was back at 10 the next morning and at 9 within two days. 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 record as it stood on August 7 went to eight AI models that day, 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 announcing a date. That is the only thing that pays. Martin or Bantam saying the manuscript is delivered is the step right before it.
• 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 5 to 6 cents 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.