GTA 6 Release Date

Grand Theft Auto VI is set to launch on Thursday, November 19, 2026. Rockstar Games confirmed this date on November 6, 2025, via the Rockstar Newswire and its official @RockstarGames account. It is the third and current target in the game's public schedule, and no later delay has been announced.

The launch is same-day across both confirmed platform families - PlayStation 5 (including PS5 Pro) and Xbox Series X|S - with no timed console exclusivity. Pre-orders opened June 25, 2026, with pricing and editions revealed at the same time.

Everything on the current date is CONFIRMED by official Rockstar material. The only live source of doubt is unofficial reporting on the game's development status, covered in the "Will it slip again?" section below.

GTA VI's public schedule has moved three times in total - one original window and two delays. The load-bearing distinction is between announcement dates (when Rockstar spoke) and target dates (when the game was said to ship).

• December 5, 2023 - Trailer 1 releases; the reveal card reads "Coming 2025" with platforms PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. No month or quarter is attached.
• May 2, 2025 - First delay. Rockstar announces via Newswire that the game is now coming May 26, 2026.
• May 6, 2025 - Trailer 2 drops, revealing the protagonists' full names (Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos) and expanding the Leonida / Vice City reveal. The trailer landed four days after the delay - a deliberate pairing of bad news with a major content beat.
• November 6, 2025 - Second delay. Rockstar announces the current date of November 19, 2026, with a public apology.
• June 25, 2026 - Pre-orders open; price and editions revealed.
• November 19, 2026 - Current scheduled launch.

A note on the recurring "May 26" figure: the first *announcement* fell in early May 2025, and the first *target* date it set was May 26, 2026 - two different Mays a year apart, not the same event. (Some aggregators date the second delay to November 7, 2025; that is a timezone rounding of the November 6 US-time announcement.)

Announced May 2, 2025 via Rockstar Newswire under the headline "Grand Theft Auto VI is Now Coming May 26, 2026." This was the first of the two apologies and is often overshadowed by the November one, but its wording is on the record:

"Grand Theft Auto VI is now set to release on May 26, 2026. We are very sorry that this is later than you expected. The interest and excitement surrounding a new Grand Theft Auto has been truly humbling for our entire team. We want to thank you for your support and your patience as we work to finish the game. With every game we have released, the goal has always been to try and exceed your expectations, and Grand Theft Auto VI is no exception. We hope you understand that we need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve. We look forward to sharing more information with you soon."

*- Rockstar Games, Rockstar Newswire, May 2, 2025*

The tone is apologetic but forward-looking. Four days later Rockstar released Trailer 2, which carried the full character and location reveal - widely read as a move to blunt the disappointment of the delay with a major marketing beat (the sequencing read is press interpretation, tier reported).

Announced November 6, 2025 via Rockstar Newswire and the official @RockstarGames account under the headline "Grand Theft Auto VI is Now Set to Launch November 19, 2026." This is the delay the press labelled "Rockstar apologises," and its load-bearing line is the most-quoted sentence in the game's release history:

"Hi everyone, Grand Theft Auto VI will now release on Thursday, November 19, 2026. We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize has been a long wait, but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve. We look forward to sharing more details with you soon, and thank you for your patience and support."

*- Rockstar Games, @RockstarGames / Rockstar Newswire, November 6, 2025*

The move added roughly six months on top of the first delay's twelve, nearly three years after Trailer 1.

Concurrent controversy (reported): the November announcement landed amid news that dozens of UK-based Rockstar staff said they had been dismissed over alleged union-organising activity. Press coverage frequently mentioned the two events together, but Rockstar did not tie the delay to the labour dispute, and any causal link is press framing, not an official statement.

Some outlets ran "GTA 6 Third Delay Officially Confirmed"-style headlines in 2026. On inspection, these are not a third public delay. The argument is arithmetic, not an announcement.

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said the game is "about 18 months behind the original date," which back-calculates from November 2026 to an internal target around spring 2025 - earlier than the public "2025" window ever implied. Analysts counting that silently-missed internal date alongside the two public delays arrive at "three." But Rockstar has never announced a third delay, and the same articles making the arithmetic case conclude that the game "very much remains locked in" for November 19.

Bottom line: there have been exactly two publicly announced delays. The "third delay" framing is analyst and headline speculation (tier reported/rumor), not a Rockstar statement.

This is the single most-searched question about the date, and the answer is entirely unofficial.

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier - widely regarded as the most reliable Rockstar and Take-Two reporter - said that "the last I heard, it was still not content complete." Content complete is the development milestone at which all missions, levels, and features are locked in; only after it comes the bug-fixing, optimisation, and polish phase. Schreier characterised developers as "still finalizing levels, and missions, and seeing what is going to make it into the game" - i.e. not yet in polish-only.

Crucially, Schreier hedged. He said it is "hard to say" whether the November date holds, that he "wouldn't be shocked if GTA VI does come out this fall," and that he is nonetheless more optimistic about November 2026 than about any prior date. He drew an analogy to Red Dead Redemption 2, which followed a similar late-finishing pattern before shipping on time.

A downstream "new delay" rumour that built on his words was later reported as misconstrued - Schreier was describing development *status*, not predicting a confirmed delay.

Status: UNOFFICIAL. Rockstar has issued no statement about content-completeness, and as of this update (July 10, 2026) the November 19, 2026 date remains official and unchanged. Fears of a slip into 2027 circulate but are unconfirmed.

Confirmed launch platforms: PlayStation 5 (including PS5 Pro) and Xbox Series X|S. Every official Rockstar page - the Trailer 1 card, the VI site, the pre-order pages, the press release, and the screenshots - lists only these, with a same-day launch and no timed exclusivity.

Confirmed unsupported: last-gen PlayStation 4 and Xbox One - GTA VI is a current-gen-only title.

PC - not officially confirmed for launch. As of mid-2026 Rockstar has named no PC release date, no PC storefront, and published no PC system requirements; pre-orders are console-only. Rockstar's historical pattern points to a later PC release - GTA V arrived on PC roughly 18 months after console, and Red Dead Redemption 2 followed a similar gap - which leads analysts to a likely late-2027-to-2028 PC window. That projection is reported/analyst speculation, not an announcement. The safe line: PC is not officially confirmed for the November 19, 2026 launch.

For pricing, the Ultimate Edition, and pre-order bonuses like the Vintage Vice City Pack, see the editions and pre-orders page.