GTA 6 Release Date: Timeline, Delays & What Could Change

Where the date above comes from

The date at the top of this page is not our guess and it is not a store listing. It is the date Rockstar Games published itself, on its own Newswire, on 6 November 2025 — timed alongside Take-Two Interactive’s quarterly earnings release that same day. Rockstar’s post ran a short apology for the extra wait and said the additional months would let the team finish the game to the standard players expect.

Everything Take-Two has said publicly since has pointed at the same day. That matters more than any single announcement, because a publisher’s revenue guidance is a harder promise than a blog post.

The full timeline

February 2022 — Rockstar confirms publicly that work on the next Grand Theft Auto is “well underway.” No name, no platforms, no window.

4 December 2023 — Trailer 1 arrives on the official Rockstar Games YouTube channel, a day ahead of the premiere Rockstar had scheduled, after the video began circulating online. The accompanying Newswire post names the setting as the state of Leonida, names Vice City, and gives a window of 2025 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. You can read our shot-by-shot look at Trailer 1.

2 May 2025 — Rockstar announces the first delay. The 2025 window is dropped in favour of a spring 2026 date: 26 May 2026. The post apologises for the game arriving later than expected and thanks players for their patience.

6 May 2025 — Trailer 2 lands four days later, opening on the words “Vice City, USA.” and closing on that spring 2026 date card. Rockstar states in the video description that the footage was captured entirely in-game on a PlayStation 5 and is an even split of gameplay and cutscenes. Our Trailer 2 breakdown goes through it.

6 November 2025 — The second delay. Rockstar moves the game from that spring date to the date shown above, again framing it as time needed for polish rather than as a problem with the game.

24–25 June 2026 — Rockstar announces pre-orders and opens them at midnight local time on 25 June, across the PlayStation Store, the Microsoft Store, the Rockstar Games Store and retail. Two editions, a pre-order bonus pack, no collector’s edition. The details are on our price, editions and pre-order guide.

27 August 2026 — Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look premieres on Netflix at 3 p.m. ET and reaches the official Rockstar YouTube channel and the game’s own site later the same evening. Roughly 26 minutes, captured in-game on PlayStation 5. It is the single largest official look at the game so far, and Rockstar has not labelled it a third trailer.

What Take-Two has said about confidence

Take-Two’s public position has been consistent rather than dramatic. Around its fiscal first-quarter results in August 2026 the company reiterated its full-year net bookings outlook of roughly $8.0–8.2 billion, an outlook built on the launch happening in that fiscal year. CEO Strauss Zelnick described pre-orders in strongly positive terms and defended the standard edition’s price.

Our read: a reiterated guidance number is the most meaningful confidence signal available, because missing it has consequences a Newswire post does not. It is not a guarantee — guidance gets revised — but it is a company putting a number behind the date.

Platforms on launch day

PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. That is the complete official list, stated since the first Newswire post in 2023 and repeated in the pre-order announcement. There is no announced release for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch 2, or cloud-only platforms. We keep the full picture, including Rockstar’s history of PC ports arriving later, on the platforms page and in will GTA 6 be on PC.

What could still change

Three things are genuinely open, and one thing probably is not.

Open: the unlock time. No region-by-region unlock schedule has been published. Pre-loading has not been described either.

Open: PC. A later PC release would not change the console date, but it is the announcement most likely to arrive between now and launch.

Open: more footage. Rockstar has not said whether anything follows the extended look. Watch the trailers page — we add official videos there as they appear.

Probably closed: the date itself. Money has changed hands, guidance has been reiterated, and a long gameplay showcase has shipped. Any of that can be unwound, but publishers rarely unwind all three at once.

How we handle the date on this site

One place stores it, and every countdown, page and structured-data block reads from that one place. If Rockstar moves it, we change one line and the whole site follows — no stale dates buried in an old article. If you spot a page on this site that disagrees with the countdown above, that is a bug, and we would like to hear about it.

While you wait, the interactive map and the location index are the parts of this site that get updated most often.