Will George RR Martin Release The Winds of Winter In 2027? Author Urged To 'Shelve' TWOW Forever

George R.R. Martin is being urged to put The Winds of Winter back in the drawer after a Forbes columnist argued the long delayed novel is unlikely to arrive before late 2027. Writing for Forbes on 24 February 2026, Erik Kain made the case that Martin should stop trying to untangle A Song of Ice and Fire's sprawling plot and focus instead on smaller, finishable stories set in Westeros.​

For context, Kain notes that readers are nearing fifteen years since A Dance With Dragons, the fifth book in the series, was published, and that the wait for The Winds of Winter has stretched on without a release. He also reminds readers that Game of Thrones launched on HBO in April 2011, only months before A Dance With Dragons hit shelves, a neat piece of timing that now looks almost cruel in hindsight.​

The key points are simple, even if the fandom's feelings are not. Kain thinks late 2027 is a plausible guess for The Winds of Winter, but he admits he is not confident. He argues that shelving the book might actually be the kinder, more productive move.​

George R.R. Martin And The Long Maths Of The Winds of Winter

Kain anchors his argument in the strange arithmetic of ageing alongside a story that refuses to move. He revisits a 2022 post in which he tried to predict a publication date for The Winds of Winter using timelines and rough pacing, landing on a late 2027 estimate. In that same reflection, he compares his age to Ned Stark's, noting that in the books Ned is 34, and that by June he expects to be 11 years older than that.​

There is a deliberately personal edge to the piece, as Kain connects the delay to the way waiting reshapes a reader's life. He goes further, suggesting that if The Winds of Winter arrives in 2027, then A Dream of Spring could land around 2042, which he frames as another fifteen year gap. That projection is not presented as a promise, more as a weary thought experiment about what it means to be invested in a series that might outlast its audience's patience.​

He also folds in the uncomfortable truth that television did not neatly 'save' the story. Kain describes Game of Thrones as ending badly, with a rushed final season that left very few people satisfied, and he suggests that fallout cannot have been easy for Martin.​

George R.R. Martin, Dunk And Egg, And A Smaller Way Back

Kain's proposed alternative is pointedly practical. He argues that Martin should write more Dunk and Egg stories, the novellas focused on a hedge knight and his young squire, because they are less complicated than the main saga and have fewer moving parts. In Kain's telling, the appeal is not only speed, it is clarity, fewer characters, fewer points of view, fewer knots to pick apart.​

He links that idea to the screen side of the franchise as well. Kain writes that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has wrapped its first season to strong critical and fan response, and he imagines that more finished novellas would give HBO more completed work to adapt. He even speculates that stepping away from The Winds of Winter might help revive Martin's enthusiasm for Westeros, the sort of creative reset that sometimes only happens when you stop forcing the hardest thing on your desk.​

It is worth stressing what this is, and what it is not. Kain is offering an argument, not reporting a confirmed publication schedule, and his late 2027 date is explicitly a personal estimate rather than an announced plan. Until Martin or his publishers put an actual date on the record, everything should be taken with a grain of salt, however familiar the longing feels.