In a bit of a good news/bad news situation, Rockstar Games has confirmed that its original release plan for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI, stated as some time in 2025, won’t happen — but has confirmed a release date of May 26, 2026.
While not among our core titles on GTPlanet, being a driving-adjacent game at best, the GTA series is one that’s hard to ignore. Indeed it’s one for which we’ve had specific discussion forums for as long as we’ve had game-specific sub-forums — being the first created, 17 years ago in May 2008.
There is, of course, much more to GTA than cars — sometimes controversially so — but the series is named for a car-specific crime and much of the action takes place behind the wheel of various fictional, but reality-inspired vehicles often bearing satirical names. “Acquiring” vehicles, modding them, and racing them has always been a core of the series, which was originally intended to be a car racing title under the name Race’n’Chase back in 1995.
However, it’s been a long, long old time since we’ve seen a new GTA title: GTA V arrived back in September 2013 on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It took players back to the fictional state of San Andreas, which was also the setting for the eponymous Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas of 2004, the last of the three PS2/Xbox-era “3D” titles that began with the Liberty City-set GTA3 and its sequel, GTA: Vice City. Since then it’s been updates, remasters, and GTA Online.
With 2008’s GTA IV taking players back to Liberty City, it was always expected that the sixth numbered title would visit the last remaining location from that era. Thus it was little surprise that leaked development footage in September 2022 showed some familiar locations from this caricature of Miami.
The release date trailer subsequently posted in December 2023, announcing the “2025” window, rapidly because one of the most-viewed videos around — hitting 93m YouTube views in 24hr and becoming the most-watched non-music video in that period. It recently passed 250m views, to break a record for any game trailer, but Rockstar had been pretty quiet about the title across the entire intervening period.
Breaking its silence today to announce the delay is probably not how a lot of fans saw it going, but with four months of 2025 already in the rear-view mirror — like so many VCPD cop cars — it’s not likely to be too much of a shock either.
It’s likely to have a knock-on effect too. GTA is one of those once-in-a-generation titles (or once in three generations, as it’s beginning to look like) that nobody wants to go up against, and publishers will have been working release dates for other titles around its expected launch. With the calendar now freed up to May 2026, we may see other games brought forward to fill the vacuum.
Either way, we’ll be counting down the 12 months and 24 days with as much anticipation as everyone else!
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