Rockstar’s highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI will finally launch on May 26, 2026, Rockstar Games said in a Friday morning announcement.
That means the game will miss the “2025” release window that the developer announced alongside the game’s first trailer in late 2023. That delay is needed, Rockstar said, so the company can use “this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve.”
“We are very sorry that this is later than you expected,” Rockstar wrote in its announcement. “The interest and excitement surrounding a new Grand Theft Auto has been truly humbling for our entire team. We want to thank you for your support and your patience as we work to finish the game.”
A long wait gets longer
While disappointing for franchise fans, today’s official announcement of a delay hasn’t exactly been unexpected. Insider sources have been reporting that the 2025 release target looked unlikely for well over a year now.
“Nobody I’ve talked to at Rockstar has believed Fall 2025 was a real window for a very long time now,” Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier wrote on Bluesky this morning. “Too much work, not enough time, and what appears to be a real desire from management to avoid brutal crunch. GTA VI slipping to 2026 has seemed inevitable for months if not longer.”
The new planned launch date of Grand Theft Auto VI now falls a full 4,634 days after the September 17, 2013, launch of Grand Theft Auto V on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. By contrast, there was just a 1,967-day gap between the release of Grand Theft Auto V and the prior release Grand Theft Auto IV, which also launched on the PS3 and Xbox 360 on April 29, 2008.