In a brief statement shared on its blog and social media, Rockstar Games announced that the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI game will not be released until the second half of 2026, rather than in May.
The company states that it requires an additional few months to refine the game further, and it would like to thank everyone for their patience so far. We can now expect the game on November 19. 2026. The game was initially slated for late 2025 and then for May 26, 2026, before this delay. If you need to bide your time, don’t forget about the indie Grand Theft Toronto.
Sadly, this news didn’t come with any new game information, screenshots or trailers. But hopefully, with the game now a year away and mostly finished beyond some polishing, the company will start to share more about the world and the stories within it.
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… pic.twitter.com/yLX9KIiDzX
— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) November 6, 2025
While this is annoying, fans of Rockstar have been expecting this. GTA V was originally slated for the spring of 2013 and was delayed to the fall. Red Dead Redemption 2 was delayed three times, and its final delay was also for “polish.” That said, both GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 launched to massive success and critical acclaim after those delays, so that seems to have been the right choice.
The other option would be to rush the game out, which could result in something like the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, which was extremely buggy and took a long time post-launch to reach a stable point. The devs even re-optimized the skill trees and controls many months after the release. While Cyberpunk is now regarded as a top-level game, it wasn’t at launch because it wasn’t delayed enough.
All in all, GTA VI will continue to be on the horizon and gamers will get it when it comes out, but the larger challenge is that now other publishers and dev studios will need to re-adjust their release schedules to avoid being near the black hole of gaming that GTA VI will surely bring.
Source: Rockstar Games
