The Witcher began with a titular 1986 short story that Sapkowski entered into a competition held by Fantastyka magazine, marking his debut as an author.

In 1985, Andrzej Sapkowski was a 38-year-old traveling fur salesman with an economics degree and a love of fantasy literature.

He decided to enter a short story competition, limited to 30-pages, held by Polish science fiction and fantasy magazine Fantastyka.

[14] Sapkowski submitted "The Witcher" (1986), which was conceived as a retelling of a Polish fairy tale where a princess turned into a monster as punishment for the incest of her parents.

[13] Sapkowski felt that his work was the best in the competition, but the jurors relegated it to third because fantasy was considered to be for children at the time in Poland.

[13] However, reaction from readers was overwhelmingly positive and Sapkowski wrote more stories, about one or two a year, in response to their demand.

[13] He based "A Question of Price" (and later "Sword of Destiny") on the universally known fairy tale in which a monster or sorcerer saves somebody's life and then demands payment.

[16] It includes 1988's "The Road with No Return" ("Droga, z której się nie wraca"), which is set before The Witcher stories and features Geralt's mother-to-be.

Maladie and Other Stories (not to be confused with the above Polish book of the same name) is a 2014 English e-book sampler with translations of "The Witcher", "The Edge of the World", and the first chapters of Blood of Elves and Baptism of Fire.

[21] Szpony i kły (Claws and Fangs), a similar collection of eleven short stories by authors chosen through a 2016 competition by the Polish magazine Nowa Fantastyka, was published in 2017 by SuperNowa.

[18] The stories are set on an unnamed Continent,[26] which was settled several thousand years earlier by elves from overseas.

Human colonists arrived about five hundred years before the events in the stories, igniting a series of wars.

Other races on the Continent are halflings and dryads; werewolves and vampires appeared after a magical event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres.

During the centuries preceding the stories, most of the Continent's southern regions have been taken over by the Nilfgaard Empire; the north belongs to the fragmented Northern Kingdoms.

The Northern Kingdoms (where most of the saga occurs) consists of Aedirn, Cidaris, Cintra, Hengfors League, Kaedwen, Kerack, Kovir and Poviss, Lyria and Rivia, Redania, Temeria and Verden and several minor duchies and principalities such as Bremervoord or Ellander.

The book series mentions overseas countries with whom the Northern Kingdoms trade, including Zangvebar, Ofir, Hannu and Barsa.

[41] Polish video game designer Adrian Chmielarz claimed to have invented the translation of wiedźmin into English as witcher around 1996–1997.

[41] CD Projekt used "witcher" for the title of its 2007 English release of the video game,[42] and Danusia Stok used it in her translation of Ostatnie życzenie that was published the same year.

[44][45] Michael Kandel however used "spellmaker" in his 2010 translation of the "Wiedźmin" short story for A Book of Polish Monsters anthology.

[49] Entries in The Witcher series have earned Sapkowski the Janusz A. Zajdel Award three times; "The Lesser Evil" (1990), "Sword of Destiny" (1992), and Blood of Elves (1994).

[58] Most of the stories are based on original plots not written by Sapkowski, with different writers and artists working on different issues.

[59] In October 2015, a one-shot webcomic titled Matters of Conscience was released by CD Projekt Red to expand on the events following their second video game.

[60][61] Sapkowski had no involvement with the video games, giving the studio license to create a completely new story using his characters.

[1] CD Projekt Red developed a card game named "Gwent" that was included in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as an in-game activity.

Fool's Theory will mainly develop the remake with full creative supervision from The Witcher series staff and CD Projekt Red.

[67] The Witcher was adapted into a 2002 TV series and a shorter 2001 film version, both titled The Hexer (Wiedźmin) and directed by Marek Brodzki.

In several interviews, Sapkowski has criticized these screen adaptations: "I can answer only with a single word, an obscene, albeit a short one.

[69] In May 2017, they announced that they would be producing a The Witcher TV series in cooperation with Netflix and Sean Daniel Company, with Tomasz Bagiński as one of the directors and Sapkowski as a creative consultant.

[73][74][75][76] On October 10, 2018, it was announced that Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra had been cast as main female characters, Ciri and Yennefer.

Another animated film, The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep with Doug Cockle voicing Geralt of Rivia, directed by Kang Hei Chul, was released by Netflix on February 11, 2025.