The GTA 6 Timeline: Every Official Milestone From 2022 to Launch Day

Grand Theft Auto VI has been public for longer than most games take to make. Rockstar confirmed it in February 2022, and it launches on November 19, 2026. That is almost five years in which the studio said very little, and the internet filled the silence with rumours, fake leaks and a real one.

This page lists the official milestones in order, the things Rockstar or Take-Two actually announced, with a short note on why each one mattered. Leaks and rumours only appear where they changed the story. At the end is what is still scheduled before launch, and a few patterns that are easier to see when everything is on one page.

2022: confirmed, then leaked

February 4, 2022. Rockstar confirms that development of the next Grand Theft Auto is well underway. It comes as a single line in a post about other releases: no title, no setting, no date. It was still the first official acknowledgement, more than eight years after GTA 5 came out in September 2013.

September 18, 2022. Around 90 clips from an early development build appear online after a network intrusion. They show two protagonists, a man and a woman, in a Vice City setting. The next day Rockstar confirms the breach and says development continues. A British teenager connected to the Lapsus$ hacking group was later found responsible by a UK court.

Why it matters: the leak is the reason so much GTA 6 coverage since then has mixed confirmed facts with old footage. Clips from a 2022 build say something about what Rockstar was experimenting with at the time. They are not evidence of what ships in 2026, and a lot of confident claims online still rest on them.

2023: the first trailer

November 8, 2023. Rockstar announces that the first trailer will arrive in early December, timed to the company's 25th anniversary.

December 4, 2023. Trailer 1 leaks a few hours early, and Rockstar publishes it that evening instead of the planned date. It confirms the title, Vice City and the State of Leonida, the lead Lucia, and a 2025 release window. It passes 90 million YouTube views in its first 24 hours, the most-watched video game reveal on YouTube to that point. It also introduces the idea of in-game viral clips, including the one captioned for Rudi.

Why it matters: this is the point where GTA 6 stops being a rumour and becomes a product with a date. The 2025 window it gave turned out not to hold, twice.

2025: two delays and a second trailer

May 2, 2025. Rockstar delays the game from fall 2025 to May 26, 2026, saying it needs more time to deliver the quality players expect.

May 6, 2025. Trailer 2 arrives four days later, together with the official website. It is the big information drop: full names and biographies for Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos, the supporting cast, all six regions of Leonida and a large set of official screenshots. Rockstar reports 475 million views across all platforms in 24 hours and calls it the biggest video launch of all time. That figure counts every platform, while Trailer 1's record was YouTube only, so the two numbers are not directly comparable.

November 6, 2025. A second delay, announced on the same day as Take-Two's quarterly results, moves the release to November 19, 2026. Rockstar again cites the extra time needed to finish the game to its standard.

Why it matters: nearly everything this site says about the cast and the map traces back to May 6, 2025. The two delays also set up a year in which Rockstar had to rebuild confidence that the new date would hold.

2026: pre-orders and the Extended Look

May 2026. At Take-Two's results in May, chief executive Strauss Zelnick restates November 19 as the launch day and says marketing will start in the summer.

June 18, 2026. The cover art is revealed and the pre-order date is announced.

June 25, 2026. Pre-orders open on the PlayStation Store, the Microsoft Store and at retailers. The Standard Edition costs $79.99 and the Ultimate Edition $99.99. Any pre-order placed before November 20 includes the Vintage Vice City Pack, whichever edition you buy.

Early August 2026. Rockstar announces a partnership with Netflix to premiere a new look at the game. A screenshot claiming the Netflix listing showed three episodes and more than 66 minutes spreads widely and turns out to be fake.

August 13, 2026. Sensor Tower data puts around 89% of pre-orders on the $99.99 Ultimate Edition, far above the 10 to 20% that premium editions usually take. The analyst behind the figure expects it to fall as mainstream buyers arrive.

August 27, 2026. Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look premieres on Netflix and reaches YouTube six hours later: roughly 26 to 27 minutes of footage captured in-game on PS5. It is the first long look at gameplay. It confirms the return of a six-star wanted level and shows car theft, robberies, character switching and a long list of side activities. Our full breakdown of the Extended Look separates what the video showed from what the press previews added.

Still to come

November 12, 2026. Preloading opens a week before launch. Physical copies contain a download code rather than a disc, so everyone downloads the game either way.

November 19, 2026. Launch on PS5, PS5 Pro and Xbox Series X|S.

November 20, 2026. The Vintage Vice City Pack is tied to pre-orders placed before this date.

Not scheduled: a PC version, which Rockstar has not dated; the online successor to GTA Online, which will follow separately after launch with no date yet; and any official statement on frame rates.

What the timeline tells you

The gaps are the story. Trailer 1 to Trailer 2 took 17 months. Trailer 2 to the Extended Look took almost 16. Rockstar does not do a steady drip of news. It goes quiet for more than a year and then releases a lot at once. Anyone who says a big reveal is coming next week is usually wrong, because Rockstar has almost never announced anything on the schedule fans predict.

The delays follow the business calendar. The second delay was announced on the day of Take-Two's quarterly results, and the first came less than two weeks before them. Launch-date changes for a game this size are investor news as much as player news, which is why they arrive in that rhythm. If you want to know whether a date is holding, Take-Two's results calls are a better guide than insider accounts.

Leaks never set the pace. The 2022 breach was one of the biggest leaks the industry has seen, and it did not bring the game forward or change Rockstar's plans in any way anyone can see. Trailer 1 leaked by a few hours, and the only effect was an early upload. That is a useful thing to remember with less than eight weeks to go, when every week will bring a new “leak” about the map, the ending or GTA Online.

Finally, the distance from GTA 5 is enormous. September 2013 to November 2026 is more than 13 years between numbered games. Nothing about this launch is normal, including the pre-order numbers, and it is worth reading every prediction about its sales and its reception with that in mind.