Bartosz Sztybor

Bartosz Sztybor is a Polish comics writer, screenwriter, producer, and franchise executive who has become one of the central narrative architects of the Cyberpunk universe. Born in 1984 in Warsaw, he now serves as VP Franchise at CD Projekt Red, the title in his own social media bio, where he helps steer storytelling across games, comics, and animation. He is the showrunner of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, the 2026 Netflix anime follow-up to the 2022 series that introduced millions of viewers to Night City.

His profile rose sharply after Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams won the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic, a rare honor for a tie-in graphic novel. He is also a Ringo Award winner. Fans of The Witcher know him for a run of Dark Horse graphic novels, including The Witcher: Fading Memories, and his catalogue is unusually deep for a writer still in his early forties.

In 2026 he is the public face of Edgerunners 2, doing a heavy round of press and convention appearances, including a featured turn at Anime Expo, while balancing his executive duties at CD Projekt Red. He writes with a critic's eye and a fan's memory, and that combination has made him one of the most trusted voices in game-to-screen storytelling. [edit]

Long before Night City, Bartosz Sztybor was a kid in Warsaw with a very different career plan. Born in 1984 in the Polish capital, he has said that as a child he wanted to be a gangsta rapper, a detail that says a lot about the pop-culture diet that shaped him. He grew up in what he has described as the most dangerous district of the city, an environment that later gave his writing its edge and its comfort with gritty, street-level stories.

He did not come up through art school or a screenwriting program. Instead he entered the industry as a critic. Through the 2000s and into the 2010s he wrote about film and comics for a long list of Polish outlets, including Ozon, Wprost, Esensja, Chichot, Machina, and Cinema, plus various comics periodicals and zines. That work forced him to think analytically about why stories work, how structure creates tension, and what makes a character stick. He has credited that critical grounding as the foundation of his later scripting, and the habit of close reading never left him.

His first real signal as a writer came in the short comics form competition at the Międzynarodowy Festiwal Komiksu (MFK), which he won multiple times. Those wins mattered because they proved he could execute a complete story in a few pages, a skill that translates directly to the tight pacing of animation and graphic novels. By the time he moved from reviewing comics to writing them, he already had years of close reading behind him. The transition from critic to creator was gradual, but it was deliberate, and it set up the franchise work that would define his career. [edit]

Sztybor's breakthrough as a comics writer came through licensed properties, and he made the most of them. For Dark Horse Comics he wrote a substantial body of Witcher graphic novels, including The Witcher: Fading Memories, which became his most popular series on Goodreads. Goodreads now lists 166 books under his name with more than 32,000 ratings, a sign of how widely his work has circulated.

The bigger turning point was Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams, which won the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic. That win brought international attention and positioned him as a go-to writer for game-world comics. He also lists a Ringo Award among his wins, and his MFK short comics victories remain part of his early record.

On screen he served as a writer and producer on the 2022 Netflix anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and he is the showrunner of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, which released in 2026. In interviews around the second season he explained that the writers had one rule: don't look like Season One. He also noted that the season deliberately flips David Martinez's fate and that it opens old wounds by mentioning David, adding that there is a much bigger picture. He described the goal as a hopeful, cinematic Night City and walked press through the secret backstory of the new character Roman. His IMDb credits include Mr. Car and the Knights Templar (2023) and The Food Chain Complexity in Afforested Grounds (2015).

At CD Projekt Red his titles have evolved from Comic Book & Animation Narrative Director to Franchise Creative Director and, most recently, VP Franchise, the description in his own social media bio. That role puts him at the center of how the Cyberpunk franchise tells stories across media. [edit]

In interviews Sztybor comes across as a craft-focused franchise steward rather than a celebrity personality. He talks about structure, character fate, and the discipline of not repeating what worked before. His public voice is thoughtful and precise, with a critic's habit of explaining why a choice was made rather than just what it is. On social media he is active as @sztybor_writes on both X and Instagram, where he shares updates about his writing and projects. His presence is that of a working writer who happens to be at the center of a major franchise, not a hype-driven showman. [edit]

iFANN has not yet collected fame data for Bartosz Sztybor, so no ranking placement is available for him at this time. He is not on the September 2026 iFAMOUS Rankings flagship list. His visibility comes from the Cyberpunk and Witcher fandoms rather than from mainstream celebrity coverage.

The audience around his work is the Edgerunners fandom, often called edgerunners, and it is a passionate, franchise-loyal group. They engage directly with promotional material, as when CD Projekt Red shared a message from Sztybor and Saya Elder addressed to all edgerunners out there. Fans dissect his interviews for clues about character fates, and his comments about Season 2 opening old wounds and leaving one mystery forever unanswered have fueled extensive theory-crafting. Coverage of the season's ending and its defiance of fan expectations kept that conversation running for weeks. There is no separate fandom name for Sztybor himself, and the fanbase has no formal organization around him personally. Instead, the community organizes around the shows and games he helps shape, and he engages back through interviews, convention appearances, and social media posts that speak directly to that audience. [edit]

Fans of Edgerunners still retell his warning not to get too attached to the new characters in Season 2, a line that landed differently after the first season's ending. And in a 2026 interview he confirmed that one mystery in the Cyberpunk universe will forever remain unexplained, a statement that has kept fan theories alive. He shares his birthday on January 15, which makes him a Capricorn. His IMDb page carries an early credit, The Food Chain Complexity in Afforested Grounds (2015), that sits oddly beside his animation work and delights completists. He appeared at Anime Expo as a featured talent, and he often does joint promotional interviews with Saya Elder. [edit]

Sztybor keeps his family life private, and the available interviews focus almost entirely on craft and career. He has not publicly confirmed a spouse, partner, or children, and no household details, relatives, or family stories have surfaced in the press. What is documented is his origin: he was born in 1984 in Warsaw and grew up in the district he describes as the most dangerous in the city, a background that shaped his comfort with darker, street-level material. Beyond that, he has not shared details about his home or his upbringing in any interview. [edit]

Sztybor works closely with CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger on the Cyberpunk animated series, and with Dark Horse Comics on the Witcher and Cyberpunk graphic novels. He has done joint promotional interviews with Saya Elder, and his editorial collaborators include the writers and artists behind the Edgerunners franchise. [edit]

No public romantic relationships are documented for Bartosz Sztybor in credible sources. No partner names, marriages, or dating history appear in any outlet, and he has not addressed the subject in interviews or on social media. As of 2026, his relationship status is unknown, and any claim otherwise would be speculation. [edit]

Bartosz Sztybor's income comes from several streams: his executive compensation at CD Projekt Red as VP Franchise, royalties from his Dark Horse graphic novels, and writing and producing fees from Netflix animation. His Hugo and Ringo award wins have raised his profile but have not been widely covered by celebrity net worth trackers, so public estimates are scarce. The iFANN Editorial Team's analysis of his career earnings, publishing royalties, and executive role points to a current figure of roughly $1 Million as of 2026. That estimate reflects a mid-career creative executive with a growing catalogue rather than a celebrity-level fortune. His long-term earnings potential is tied to the success of the Cyberpunk franchise and to future publishing deals, and his output of 166 catalogued books suggests a steady royalty stream over time. [edit]