Grand Theft Auto VI: what is known, what is not

Grand Theft Auto VI is due on Thursday 19 November 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, 41 days from this writing. It was first promised for 2025, then for 26 May 2026; November is its third date. Rockstar Games makes and publishes it, and Rockstar is a label of Take-Two Interactive, whose press releases and quarterly results are the most formal public record of the game there is. This page sets out what those releases and the two console stores say today: the date and the hour, what each edition costs and adds, which age labels the stores show, and what none of them has said.

Everything below was read on 9 October 2026, from Take-Two's own releases and from the PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store listings. The script in code/gta6-listing-audit.py re-reads the same pages, prints the same tables and flags any figure that has changed since:

python gta6-listing-audit.py

The date, and the hour

Take-Two's pre-order release of 24 June says it plainly: "Launching November 19, 2026". Its results release of 7 August repeats the date in the table of coming games that every quarterly report carries: "PS5, Xbox Series X|S November 19, 2026". The two stores agree on the day, and they add something Take-Two has not published, an hour. The hour depends on where the game is bought.

Every storefront's timestamp is the first minute of the 19th on its own market's clock, so the release follows midnight around the world instead of arriving everywhere at once. That is the opposite of Transport Fever 3, whose console listings pointed to one worldwide hour. Pre-orders opened the same way. Take-Two's release said they would begin "at midnight local time" on 25 June, and Microsoft's records show the pre-order windows opening at 04:00 UTC in the US, 23:00 UTC on the 24th in the UK, 22:00 in Germany and 15:00 in Japan: midnight in New York, London, Berlin and Tokyo.

What the US timestamp does not settle is the rest of the country. Midnight in New York is 9 pm on Wednesday the 18th in Los Angeles, and nothing we read says whether a player there starts then or at local midnight.

Dates move, and this one has moved twice. Forty-one days out, 19 November is the publisher's stated plan, written into its financial reports, and still not a fact about a Thursday.

How it got here

Take-Two's quarterly results list the company's announced games in a table, one row each. Read in order, the Grand Theft Auto VI row is the history of the date.

Every lineup row names the same two platforms, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, as the announcement did. The May 2024 report called its change "a narrowing of Rockstar Games' previously established window of Calendar 2025 to Fall of Calendar 2025". The first delay came almost a year later, in a release of 2 May 2025: the game, "which was expected to launch in Fall of 2025, is now planned for release on May 26, 2026". Strauss Zelnick, Take-Two's chairman and chief executive, said: "We support fully Rockstar Games taking additional time to realize their creative vision for Grand Theft Auto VI". Four days later Trailer 2 went out with the May date on it.

The second delay was a headline of the results of 6 November 2025, "Grand Theft Auto VI now launching November 19, 2026", with Zelnick's line that "Rockstar Games will now release Grand Theft Auto VI on November 19, 2026, and we remain both excited and confident they will deliver an unrivalled blockbuster entertainment experience." That move added 177 days, and it was announced 201 days before the date it replaced. Phantom Blade Zero, the upcoming game on this site before this one, moved once, by 50 days.

The date also sits inside Take-Two's forecasts. Its fiscal year 2026, which ended on 31 March 2026, brought Net Bookings of $6.72 billion, a measure Take-Two defines as "the net amount of products and services sold digitally or sold-in physically during the period". For fiscal 2027, the year to March 2027, it forecasts $8.0 to $8.2 billion, between 19% and 22% more, and on 7 August Zelnick tied that outlook to "excitement around the November 19th launch of Grand Theft Auto VI". The first delay moved the launch out of fiscal 2026, the 2 May release noting that May 26 fell "during the Company's Fiscal Year 2027"; the second kept it inside that year.

What the game is, in the publisher's words

Take-Two's pre-order release says the game "features a single-player experience", and both store listings put it in one sentence: "Grand Theft Auto VI is a single-player experience." The story summary, the same on both stores, begins "Vice City, USA." and introduces two leads: "Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them. But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida". The December 2023 announcement placed the game in "the state of Leonida, home to the neon-soaked streets of Vice City and beyond" and quoted Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games: "Grand Theft Auto VI continues our efforts to push the limits of what's possible in highly immersive, story-driven open-world experiences." These are the publisher's claims about a game that is not out yet, and nothing on this page describes play.

The store pages add practical labels. The PlayStation Store's notices read "1 players", "Offline play only", "PS5 Pro Enhanced", "Remote Play supported", "In-game purchases optional" and "Vibration function and trigger effect supported (DualSense wireless controller)", while the legal text under every edition notes that "Certain game features, content, services, or functions may require internet connection". Microsoft's page says "Single player" and "Optimized for Xbox Series X|S". Its language table marks English (United States) as the only spoken language, with subtitles and menus in thirteen: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish for Spain and for Mexico, Portuguese for Brazil, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The PlayStation Store lists no languages yet.

Who makes it

Both stores name Rockstar Games as publisher, and Microsoft's catalogue names it as developer too. Take-Two's releases call Rockstar "a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc." and, in May 2025, "Take-Two's wholly-owned label". The same releases track the size of the series in their closing paragraph about Rockstar:

These are rounded floors, each prefixed "over", so the gaps between them are not exact sales. The 2023 announcement added that Grand Theft Auto V, "The most recent iteration in the series", had "sold over 190 million units to date".

datasets/games.csv records Grand Theft Auto VI with Rockstar Games as developer, Rockstar Games as publisher, noted as a Take-Two Interactive label, a first release of 2026-11-19 (the date as announced), the platforms PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, the genre action-adventure (Microsoft's category for it) and the era upcoming: the thirty-second row.

What it costs, and what each edition adds

Take-Two's own release gives the US prices, $79.99 and $99.99, and both stores match them to the cent. On Microsoft's store the Ultimate Edition costs exactly the game plus the Upgrade in all four markets, 20 in dollars, pounds or euros and ¥2,480 in Japan, so in the US it is a quarter more than the standard edition. The PlayStation Store lists the same Upgrade but shows its price as "Unavailable". Every listing is a pre-order, and none carries a discount.

What the money buys, by the store listings:

• Grand Theft Auto VI. The game, the Vintage Vice City Pack, a month of GTA+ and, in the PlayStation Store's words, a "7-Day Pre-load".
• Ultimate Edition. The same, plus the Ultimate Edition Upgrade, "an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, apparel, and action threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia's story". The listing names eleven items, among them a '95 Grotti Cheetah sports car, a pair of revolvers, engraved pistols for both leads, outfits, hairstyles and tattoos, a buggy with its own garage, a gang compound to raid and a classic-car commission, and five places under the heading "Special Destinations Only Open for Business with the Ultimate Edition": a custom-car shop, a salon, a streetwear store, a tattoo parlour offering "over 50 signature tattoos" and an off-road mod shop. The items arrive "across their story, with new items uncovered behind each chapter".

The Vintage Vice City Pack is, in Take-Two's words, "a collection of items that flash back to when the neon burned brightest". Microsoft's listing for it names a '55 Vapid Stanier sedan with a garage by Ocean Beach, outfits and hairstyles for Jason and Lucia, and a weapon pattern "inspired by Tommy Vercetti's iconic palm tree button-up". Take-Two says "All Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders and purchases before November 20, 2026, will include" it, so a purchase on launch day still gets it. Both stores put the cut-off at 19 November 2026, 23:59:59, and neither names the time zone.

The month of GTA+ is the part that keeps running. The PlayStation Store's pre-order offer reads "1-month GTA+ subscription with pre-order. Auto-renews.", and its terms say: "After the month, memberships auto-renew monthly at the regular monthly price until canceled." The month must be redeemed by 31 March 2027 on PlayStation, and "within 180 days after placing your pre-order" on Xbox, where "Subscription redemption is not available to child accounts with restrictions on age-restricted content." Neither listing states the monthly price. Take-Two's release offers the month for digital pre-orders as "the best way to get the most out of the ever-evolving world of GTA Online", redeemable at once for "Grand Theft Auto V and other classic Rockstar titles as part of the GTA+ Games Library". It does not say what GTA+ will add to Grand Theft Auto VI itself.

Digital pre-orders can begin "pre-loading on November 12, 2026", a week before launch. The physical version also becomes available on 12 November, "containing a download code inside the box", Take-Two says, "to support pre-loading". The release lists the PlayStation Store, the Microsoft Store, the Rockstar Games Store and "global retailers and storefronts" as places to buy; this page read the first two.

Ratings: what the stores display

On 24 June Take-Two's release said "Grand Theft Auto VI is not yet rated." Today both stores show ratings in the US and the UK, and Microsoft's shows two markets still waiting.

The two US stores agree descriptor for descriptor. The two UK stores show the same age with different lists: only the PlayStation Store adds nudity and calls the violence extreme. We took these labels from the stores and did not read the boards' own databases for this page, so the table records what a buyer sees at the point of sale, not a board certificate. Every age label published so far puts the game at 17 or 18.

What is not known

• The hour west of New York. The US timestamps are midnight Eastern; whether a player in Los Angeles starts at 9 pm on the 18th is not stated anywhere we read.
• A PC version. None of the Take-Two releases we read names one, and every lineup row lists PS5 and Xbox Series X|S only.
• The price of GTA+ after the free month. The PlayStation terms say "the regular monthly price" without a figure, and the Microsoft text gives none.
• The time zone of the bonus cut-off. Both stores give 19 November 2026, 23:59:59, without one.
• What GTA+ adds to this game. Take-Two's release ties the free month to GTA Online and to older games.
• Ratings in Germany and Japan. Microsoft's store shows both as pending.
• The Upgrade on PlayStation. It is listed, with no price.
• Reviews. Nothing we read says when reviews may be published.

Before the 19th

Ordering early buys a week of pre-load. Both stores' terms attach the Vintage Vice City Pack and the month of GTA+ to any purchase made by the end of 19 November, launch day included, so neither is a reason to order now. The GTA+ month renews at a price neither store prints, so the day it starts is worth writing down. The Ultimate Edition is the standard game plus $20 of extras that include five in-game businesses closed to everyone else, and on Xbox the same extras are on sale by themselves at the same price today. A boxed copy, Take-Two says, holds a download code. And the date is the part to hold loosely: it has moved twice, the last time 201 days before the date it replaced, and the stores do not yet say what time it arrives west of New York.

Why this page has no pictures

This site reproduces only images a publisher or developer issues for press or editorial use, under terms we can read. Take-Two's copies of these releases say "This press release features multimedia" and send readers to Business Wire for it; we did not obtain those files or their terms, and we did not read Rockstar's own website for this page. With no press kit whose terms we could check, the page carries no images.