Will The Winds of Winter Be Released in 2026? George R.R. Martin Shares Honest Update on Health Condition

There is a particular cruelty to the phrase 'winter is coming' when it has been coming for more than a decade. And yet, here we are again: readers scanning the horizon for The Winds of Winter, while George R.R. Martin — very much alive, thank you — sounds like a man trying to keep his balance on a moving walkway that never stops.​

Martin is 77 now, and he is tired of strangers treating his pulse like a publishing deadline. 'I never thought I'd live to be 77. I'm old, so I have some old-people stuff. My lower back hurts sometimes. I don't like to stand around. But I feel OK,' he told The Hollywood Reporter, before offering the sort of blunt, black-humored line that should have ended the chatter years ago: 'Maybe you should make that your headline: "George R.R. Martin Is Not Dying."'

If the state of play is put in plain English, it is this: Martin says he feels well despite age-related aches; he is still working on The Winds of Winter; and, by his own account, the book remains at roughly the same eye-watering page count he cited years ago.

The Winds of Winter and the Never-Dying Headline

The health speculation is not new, and it is not polite. Martin has been dealing with morbid online commentary for years, including people effectively writing his obituary for him while the manuscript remains unfinished. In the Hollywood Reporter interview, he makes clear he does not need fans or anyone else performing amateur actuarial work in public.

It is worth pausing on what that means for readers outside the US, where Martin's convention circuit can sound like a niche subculture with its own language. WorldCon, for instance, is the long-running World Science Fiction Convention, a traveling gathering where authors do panels and fans line up to ask questions sometimes badly.

A clip circulated from WorldCon 2025 in which a fan told Martin, 'You're not going to be around for much longer,' teeing up a question about whether Brandon Sanderson should finish the series, a moment that landed less like concern and more like heckling.​​

Martin has also been candid about how the pandemic sharpened his caution. In July 2022, he posted an update on his official Not a Blog site his primary direct channel to readers about travel and, shortly after, testing positive for COVID-19 during that period.

The Winds of Winter and the Page-Count Problem

If the health discourse feels unpleasant, the book discourse can feel... circular. Martin has said he has about 1,100 pages written for The Winds of Winter, and reports around the recent interview noted that this is the same figure he cited in 2022 and 2023, even if the contents of those pages have shifted through rewrites. Another account, from Martin's December 2022 appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, puts him at 'like 1,100, 1,200 pages' completed at the time, with hundreds more to go.

That is the maddening part for longtime readers of A Song of Ice and Fire: the number is large enough to sound like a victory, yet static enough to suggest a stall. Martin has essentially conceded that he cannot write at the speed he did in the 1990s, which is a gentle way of saying the engine that produced earlier books no longer runs on the same fuel.

Meanwhile, the franchise around him refuses to sit quietly. HBO has already spun Martin's world into Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, and Martin has confirmed there are still 'five or six' spinoff projects in development, adding, 'Yes, there are some sequels.' That is great for the television universe, less soothing for anyone who wants the central story finished on the page first.​

So will The Winds of Winter be released in 2026? Martin has not promised it, and anyone who claims otherwise is selling certainty where there is not any yet he keeps returning to the same stubborn point: he is still here, and he is still writing.