GTA 6 remains on course for its autumn 2025 release date even as the entire gaming industry roils around it.
According to its makers, the crime saga won’t be hampered by striking video game actors. Oh, and pay no heed to the long list of former GTA developers, leakers and fan sites spreading rumours of a possible delay.
That’s not to mention the widespread layoffs currently ripping through the industry, leaving a trail of cancelled games in their wake. Even Rockstar’s owner Take-Two Interactive slashed five per cent of its workforce earlier this year.
Yet, despite all of those obstacles, among them Rockstar’s track record of pushing back its biggest releases, we’re still hearing that GTA 6 will arrive on time. It’s safe to say anyone who has picked up a game in the past decade will have a hard time believing that.
Adding to the mounting concerns, Rockstar’s otherwise slick promo machine has fallen noticeably silent. So far, all we have to go on is a stunning trailer that fans have dissected like vultures over a carcass, obsessively analysing every detail – from the graphical fidelity of hair to the possibility of turtles in the sea.
But, hey ho, let’s keep our chins up, eh? Here’s everything we know about GTA 6, the seventh major instalment in the record-breaking action series.
When is GTA 6 coming out?
Fans riding high on the first trailer's glossy visuals may have been disappointed when the game's tentative release date was confirmed at the end of the clip. As the title flashed across the screen, the text below revealed that GTA 6 would arrive in 2025.
Now, publisher Take-Two Interactive has revised that release date window further by promising to launch the game in autumn 2025. That means that, at the time of writing, there are at least 409 days to go until GTA 6. Better buy a new business on GTA Online to pass the time then.
“We are highly confident that Rockstar Games will deliver an unparalleled entertainment experience, and our expectations for the commercial impact of the title continue to increase,” said Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick on the company’s earnings call in May.
He further explained the situation in an interview with CBNC, where he said Take-Two is “confident” in the new release window.
“We narrowed the timing because we are highly confident in the timing,” says Mr Zelnick. He also noted how today’s games are all at risk of “slippage”, where issues in development mean a title gets delayed, and talked about how you might even begin to judge when a game is actually ready for release. And how GTA 6 is a little bit different.
“There are elements you can measure, such as the number of bugs in a title. Every one of us will make sure we have as few bugs as possible before we launch. However, in the case of an extraordinary title, of which there are extraordinary expectations, it's not really about bugs,” Mr Zelnick said.
“It's about creating an experience no-one has seen before. And Rockstar games seeks perfection in what they do. Perfection is indeed hard to measure, it's more subjective than objective.”
He didn’t drop any hints about the actual game content, though, saying we should all just watch the trailer again – a video that has had upwards of 190 million views.
Let’s hope this search for perfection doesn’t end up with a GTA 6 2026 release date, when even the “fall 2025” release window is a gut punch for fans hoping to play it sooner after a gruelling 11-year wait for the new game.
Will GTA 6 be delayed?
Perhaps gamers can take solace in the fact that Take-Two is sticking to the 2025 timeline, following worrying reports that GTA 6 could be delayed to 2026.
We already knew that it was full steam ahead for the game’s developer Rockstar as it readies the next chapter in its American crime saga. In February, Bloomberg reported that the firm had entered the final stages of development on GTA 6, with employees being ordered back to work from the office five days a week to complete it.
However, a subsequent article from gaming website Kotaku (that other reports have dismissed) claimed Rockstar changed its work-from-home policy in a last-gasp dash to prevent a costly delay. With the game reportedly “falling behind” schedule, the developer was “worried” about “missing the 2025 window and slipping into 2026”.
What platforms will GTA 6 be on?
Rockstar's website said the game would launch on current-gen consoles in 2025, including the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Will GTA 6 be on PC?
There's no word on a PC release but we wouldn't be surprised to see it launch several months later in the vein of GTA 5.
Will GTA 6 be on PS4?
Unfortunately for PS4 owners, the game won't be released on last-gen hardware. This is all the more reason to add a PS5 or Xbox Series X or S to your Christmas wish list. Or, you could wait for the PS5 Slim, which is arriving in the UK soon.
Will GTA 6 be on Game Pass?
Just don’t go expecting GTA 6 to launch on Xbox Game Pass. While Take Two is no stranger to subscription services (see GTA+, which saw a double-digit yearly increase in the latest quarter), it doesn’t seem keen on going all-in on the Netflix-for-gaming model being pushed by Microsoft.
"I think that offering a frontline title with a premium price in a subscription service, day and date, will push consumers to that subscription service for at least a period of time," Mr Zelnick told GamesIndustry.biz.
Still, he added Microsoft’s strategy doesn't change how Take-Two views the subscription opportunity. "No, it won't affect our decisions," Mr Zelnick says. "Because our decisions are rational."
GTA 6’s setting
We'd already heard rumblings that GTA 6 would be set in Vice City, a fictional take on Miami, Florida, and the trailer confirmed that.
Loosely based on the cities of Miami and Miami Beach, and set in the fictional state of Leonidas, it looks gorgeous. Given Rockstar’s penchant for creating massive, detailed open worlds, it is no surprise the game will feature Everglades-style swamp areas.
In the trailer, we see an airboat careening through a swamp. There are two quick scenes of this area. One is set on a beautiful sun-dappled morning, the other during the day, with dozens of flamingos on-screen at once.
There are also a couple of scenes of alligators intruding into shops and people's homes. The list of oddball characters includes dirt bike gangs, a convict covered in face tats, a hammer-wielding Karen, and a woman twerking on a moving car.
As older fans will recall, Vice City was the setting for 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Early reports suggested the game world may be larger than that of GTA 5, while the previous Vice City was a relatively small collection of islands.
What is GTA 6’s rumoured story?
As is widely reported, we're getting the series’ first female protagonist. One of GTA 6’s main characters is a woman named Lucia. We see her in prison and out of it, committing an armed robbery with her male partner (who was previously identified in leaks as Jason).
Like a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, the duo is likely to venture on a crime-fuelled odyssey across the state of Leonidas, taking in its deranged sights and sounds, and clashing with its underworld milieu.
As Tupac and Jay-Z famously sang: "All I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend.”
Co-founder of Rockstar Games, Dan Houser, told the Guardian in 2013 why a woman wasn’t playable in GTA V – and how the team could make it happen.
“We didn’t really think about it this time [of GTA V]. That’s not to say that we couldn’t or we wouldn’t,” he said. “This character set is just what came to us: it wasn’t, ‘We’ve got X and Y so we need Z’, we weren’t trying to do it off a checklist – I don’t think that will ever give you something that’s believable or engaging.
“In the future, could we do a game with a lead female character? Of course. We just haven’t found the right game for it yet, but it’s one of the things that we always think about. It didn’t feel natural for this game but definitely for the right game in the future – with the right themes, it could be fantastic.”
Other rumours have hinted at the possibility of a playable female character who is the clever one in the group and is great at using technology and hacking. Sounds great to us.
What has Rockstar said about GTA 6?
Apart from the trailer, Rockstar’s other big clue about GTA 6’s release date came last May.
In a press release, the company forecasted a record-breaking windfall in profit for its fiscal year 2025, which covers April 2024 to March 2025.
"We expect to enter this new era by launching several ground-breaking titles that we believe will set new standards in our industry and enable us to achieve over $8 billion (£6.5bn) in net bookings," the gaming company said.
In February last year, Rockstar confirmed that a new entry in the GTA franchise was in the works.
“With every new project we embark on, our goal is always to significantly move beyond what we have previously delivered – and we are pleased to confirm that active development for the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series is well underway," the company said.
GTA 6 leaks
Rockstar may be cagey about announcing more news following several high-profile leaks.
In September 2022, a UK-based hacker broke into the company’s servers and published almost 100 videos of an early in-development version of the game. A candidate for the most substantial pre-release video game leak ever, it showed the game in a state never intended to be seen by the public.
Months later, a TikTok account called @i_see_in_4k shared two short videos of the game on Saturday, December 2.
Both clips showed what appeared to be the game's map. There was also a camera panning to show a section of the city with skyscrapers in the distance and a highway to the side.
@i_see_in_4k GT/A6 confirmed leaked map #gta6 #GTAVI #gtaleak #rockstargames #gtav #leakgta #gta6leak #gta6leaked
♬ original sound - 🇲🇦طَــٰـٰهَ-TAHA👑
Soon after the footage appeared on TikTok, gaming news site GTABase reported that "it appears the 'leaked' footage has come from the son of a Rockstar Games employee".
Rockstar has not confirmed the authenticity of the leaked footage, nor has it spoken on who was behind it.
Then, in the most infamous leak yet, the game's trailer was leaked on social media hours before its auspicious release date. The grainy, low-quality clip was watermarked with massive text that read "Buy BTC" about the cryptocurrency bitcoin.
Rockstar reacted by swiftly uploading the trailer to YouTube, while the account behind the leak was banned from X.
