GTA 6 release date: Rockstar has it set for 19 November 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, after two delays off an original 2025 window. Take-Two puts the Standard Edition at 79.99 dollars and pre-orders opened on 25 June. This page is the announcement trail as of 11 August 2026.
The first official word came attached to other news. On 4 February 2022 Rockstar published a Newswire post about the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series versions of Grand Theft Auto V, and near the end of it wrote that active development for the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series is well underway. No name, no platforms, no window. The company said it would share more when it was ready and pointed readers back at the Newswire.
Roughly ninety clips of pre-release footage were posted to GTAForums, a fan site with no connection to Rockstar. This was more than a year before the game had a name or a date, and the videos showed work-in-progress builds with debug text on screen. Rockstar confirmed a network intrusion. The footage was never fully scrubbed off the internet, which is why the 2022 build is still the version some people picture when they think about this game.
Rockstar posted that in early December it would release the first trailer for the next Grand Theft Auto. The post was signed by Sam Houser, the studio president, which is unusual enough at Rockstar to be a signal in itself. On 1 December the company set the premiere for Tuesday 5 December.
What the trailer established: the state of Leonida, a modern-day Vice City, two protagonists named Jason and Lucia, and a release window of 2025.
The trailer went up on 4 December, roughly sixteen hours ahead of the scheduled premiere, after a copy appeared on X. Rockstar posted it itself with a note saying the trailer had leaked and asking people to watch the real thing on YouTube, then had the leaked upload taken down. Rockstar had announced the premiere date itself three days earlier and did not keep it.
YouTube's own blog recorded 93 million views in the first 24 hours and stated that this was a new record for the 24-hour debut of a non-music video. YouTube also counted more than 250 million views of videos related to Grand Theft Auto VI across the platform over the same two days. Both figures are YouTube's, sourced to its data for 4 and 5 December 2023, and neither has been revised since.
Rockstar published a short letter. Grand Theft Auto VI would now release on 26 May 2026. The text apologised and said the interest around a new Grand Theft Auto had been humbling for the team. It asked for patience while the studio finished the work. Take-Two shares fell around 8 per cent in early trading, which is the market putting a number on a slip of roughly eight months.
Four days after the delay letter, Rockstar released the second trailer and published the story summary that still sits on the game's site. Jason and Lucia know the deck is stacked against them. An easy score goes wrong and drops them inside a criminal conspiracy running across the state of Leonida. That paragraph has not changed since. It appears word for word on the pre-order page fifteen months later.
Rockstar dismissed a group of staff over 30 and 31 October 2025. The IWGB, the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain, puts the number of its own members dismissed at 31; press reporting at the time put the total at 34. Rockstar said the dismissals were for gross misconduct, and later specified that those concerned had distributed and discussed confidential information, including features of unannounced titles, in a public forum. The IWGB says the discussions took place in a private Discord used for union organising and that nothing about any game was made public. Rockstar has said any claim the dismissals were linked to union membership or activity is false and misleading. Both accounts are on the record and both are contested.
Rockstar published a second letter setting the date at Thursday 19 November 2026, saying the extra months would let the team finish the game with the level of polish players expect. Take-Two put the same news out with its quarterly results the same day, which is a decision about timing: a delay disclosed inside an earnings release reaches investors and players in one movement.
On the fourth quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call, Take-Two chairman and chief executive Strauss Zelnick reconfirmed 19 November and gave the sold-in figure for Grand Theft Auto V as nearly 230 million units. Red Dead Redemption 2 was given as more than 85 million. Full-year net bookings came in at 6.7 billion dollars, about 750 million above the guidance the company had issued twelve months earlier.
A UK employment tribunal rejected Rockstar's attempt to strike the blacklisting claims out of the case brought by the dismissed workers. Blacklisting, in the union's definition, is the compiling of information about workers involved in union activity in order to discriminate against them. The ruling means every allegation the IWGB has made can be tested at a full hearing. The union announced the same day that the final hearing had been listed for 10 September to 15 October 2026.
Rockstar posted that pre-orders would open on 25 June, and told people to add the game to a wishlist on the PlayStation Store or the Microsoft Store to be alerted.
The follow-up post the day before opening carried most of the detail worth having. Pre-orders would start at midnight local time. There would be a Standard Edition and an Ultimate Edition. Every purchase made before 20 November gets the Vintage Vice City Pack. Digital pre-orders can begin pre-loading on 12 November, and the physical version, which contains a download code in the box, reaches shops on the same day. The post also states plainly that Grand Theft Auto VI is a single player experience, which is the clearest thing Rockstar has published about the absence of an online mode at launch.
Pre-orders opened globally at midnight local time. Take-Two's own results release gives the Standard Edition price as 79.99 dollars. The Ultimate Edition has been widely reported at 99.99 dollars. That figure does not appear on any of the Rockstar Newswire posts read for this page, so it carries the weight of reporting only. The deluxe tier and the collector's edition that circulated in earlier coverage do not exist. There are two editions.
Arion Kurtaj, found by a UK court to have carried out the Rockstar hack as part of the Lapsus$ group, was sentenced in 2023 to an indefinite hospital order after a psychiatric assessment; the jury had been asked whether he committed the hacks, with the question of criminal intent removed from its remit. The Rockstar intrusion was carried out while he was under police protection in a Travelodge, using a television, an Amazon Fire TV Stick and a phone. BBC correspondent Joe Tidy, who covered the original case, reported in mid-July 2026 that Kurtaj had been moved to an ordinary prison and was awaiting a retrial listed for November. That listing comes from Tidy and has not been checked against a court record for this page.
Rockstar announced that Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look would premiere on Netflix on Thursday 27 August at 15:00 ET, and go up on the Rockstar Games YouTube channel and the game's own site at 21:00 ET the same day. Netflix therefore holds a six-hour window. Brandon Riegg, Netflix's VP of nonfiction series, called the anticipation around the game unprecedented and framed the deal as ambitious storytelling from another medium reaching a large audience. Rockstar's post does not say the video contains gameplay. A great deal of the coverage assumes it does.
Take-Two reported first quarter fiscal 2027 results for the quarter ended 30 June 2026. Net bookings were 1.39 billion dollars, down 3 per cent year on year, with 84 per cent of that coming from recurrent consumer spending. The company reiterated its fiscal 2027 net bookings outlook of 8.0 to 8.2 billion dollars. Zelnick's quote in the release names the 19 November launch directly. The product table in the same release lists Grand Theft Auto VI on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S for 19 November 2026, which is the plainest confirmation on the record as this page was written.
Worth stating, because the gaps get filled in by guesswork. There is no announced PC version and no announced PC date. There is no announced online component. No third trailer has been announced, and Rockstar has not described the Extended Look as one. Pre-order numbers were called unprecedented on an earnings call with no figure attached. On each of these, the accurate summary is that the company has not said.
Scheduled by Rockstar for Thursday 27 August 2026: the Extended Look premieres on Netflix at 15:00 ET, then on the Rockstar Games YouTube channel and rockstargames.com/VI at 21:00 ET.
The final hearing in the dismissed workers' case against Rockstar is listed to begin on 10 September 2026, according to the IWGB, which announced the dates in June. It is scheduled to run for five weeks. The hearing is set to test the blacklisting allegations the tribunal declined to strike out, and Rockstar's account that the dismissals followed disclosure of confidential information.
The hearing is listed to end on 15 October 2026, five weeks before the game is scheduled to release.
Rockstar has said digital pre-orders can begin pre-loading on 12 November 2026, seven days ahead of launch, and that the physical edition arrives in shops the same day carrying a download code in the box. Both dates come off the 24 June Newswire post. Neither has happened yet.
Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled to release on Thursday 19 November 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, at 79.99 dollars for the Standard Edition. Rockstar has held that date since 6 November 2025 and Take-Two reiterated it on 7 August 2026. It has moved twice before. No outcome is predicted on this page; it records what was announced and when.
The Vintage Vice City Pack goes to every pre-order and every purchase made before 20 November 2026, so this date is the edge of that offer as Rockstar published it. Compiled on 11 August 2026. Primary sources: Rockstar's own Newswire posts of 2 May 2025, 6 May 2025, 6 November 2025, 18 and 24 June 2026 and 6 August 2026; Take-Two's fiscal Q1 2027 results release; Netflix's Tudum announcement; the IWGB's published statements; and YouTube's official blog. Secondary reporting: PC Gamer, Variety, The Washington Post, CNN, Bloomberg and Game Developer. Anything dated after 11 August 2026 here is a schedule, and schedules move. Several events on this page carry no picture. Wikimedia Commons has nothing freely licensed for Rockstar's Broadway office or for the game itself, and game art is not free to use, so those events are left blank. The photographs that are here are Commons files of real places: Miami Beach, NoHo in Manhattan, Holyrood Road in Edinburgh, Southwark Crown Court, the Netflix campus at Los Gatos and the Nasdaq MarketSite.