Winds of Winter Hits 20-Year Wait as Martin Goes Silent

As of 2026, George R.R. Martin has not published The Winds of Winter — the sixth instalment of his A Song of Ice and Fire series — for more than twenty years, crossing what IBTimes UK↗ has called "a grim 20-year milestone" amid what the outlet describes as "total radio silence" from the author. Multiple publications including Polygon↗ and The Week↗ have marked the occasion with detailed timelines of Martin's stalled progress, and Martin's publisher Bantam was forced to publicly debunk a circulating rumour that the book would arrive in 2026.

According to Wikipedia's article on The Winds of Winter↗, as of January 2026 Martin reported he is still working on the manuscript, with roughly 1,100 pages complete. The novel has been in active development since 2011 — itself a revision of the timeline Martin once envisaged. Since 2010, Martin made numerous predictions of imminent publication, none of which resulted in a released book, as documented by Polygon's exhaustive timeline↗. The Week's timeline↗ records that as far back as April 2018, Martin confirmed in a blog post the book would not appear before the end of that year, telling readers they would "have to keep waiting."

The central figure is Martin himself, whose publisher Bantam sits on the other side of the now-public waiting game. The novel, described by Wikipedia↗ as "one of the most anticipated books in modern history," is the planned sixth and penultimate entry in the A Song of Ice and Fire sequence, preceding the concluding volume A Dream of Spring. Martin has previously described The Winds of Winter as "the curse of my life" and acknowledged he has been "struggling" with the manuscript, according to the same Wikipedia article. The delay also had knock-on consequences for the HBO television adaptation, which ran out of source material after its fifth season and continued with its own narrative — one that, per Wikipedia↗, received a "mixed critical reception, particularly the final season."

The structural difficulty Martin faces is well documented. Wikipedia notes↗ that the two preceding novels, A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, were themselves released in split volumes because of their length, and that A Dance with Dragons left multiple character storylines in cliffhangers — threads Martin has said he intends to resolve "very early" in The Winds of Winter, opening with two large battles. The sheer scale of what remains to be written helps explain why optimistic timelines have repeatedly failed. Meanwhile, with no new Martin prose on the horizon, the publisher Penguin Random House has continued to release supplementary and illustrated editions of existing series titles. The illustrated edition of A Game of Thrones↗ — described by Penguin Random House as featuring eight full-colour illustrations and more than seventy black-and-white illustrations — remains available alongside other illustrated volumes covering later books in the series. For a critical assessment of that edition, see our review.

The most immediate signal to monitor is any statement from Martin himself, whose public communications on the subject have grown increasingly sparse. IBTimes UK↗ has reported on debate within fan and publishing communities about the book's future, while a separate IBTimes UK piece↗ revisited a decades-old writing confession from Martin that observers say illuminates the delay. Bantam's active effort to correct misinformation about a 2026 release date indicates the publisher is at least monitoring the rumour environment — but no confirmed publication window has been announced by any party.