When it was shown for the first time at E3 2014, it was widely thought that the new protagonist of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (at that time simply known as The Legend of Zelda Wii U) was a woman.
Speculation was further fuelled when Linkle, a female version of Link starring in Hyrule Warriors Legends for Nintendo 3DS, was announced for the game by Omega Force. Nintendo, however, has already had plenty of opportunity to deny these rumours, confirming that the new protagonist of the next entry in the Zelda series will once again be Link (in this regard series producer Eiji Aonuma explained why Link couldn't ever be a girl).
However, during a recent interview with Gamekult, Shigeru Miyamoto made a very interesting announcement that, although confirming the fact that the new Link will be male, it suggests that something may change in the future and that one day we might get a game with a female lead character.
Miyamoto has revealed that the team has discussed the idea of being able to choose the gender of Link, but in the end they preferred to remain faithful to tradition:
"We talked with the team about making a game centered about Sheik, so I cannot say it is impossible to see something of the sort in the future, but in the classic episodes of the series, Link is the hero and that will not change. For the rest, you have to be patient and see what happens!"
"...if we have princess Zelda as the main character who fights, then what is Link going to do? Taking into account that, and also the idea of the balance of the Triforce, we thought it best to come back to this [original] make up."