The developer's long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI, initially set to arrive on the 26th of May the coming year, has been delayed again – now to the end of 2026. This marks nearly two years since the game was announced, and over a dozen years since Grand Theft Auto V first hit the market.
“Grand Theft Auto VI will now release on Thursday, November 19, 2026,” reads the company's announcement on X. “We are sorry for imposing additional time to what we recognize has been a protracted anticipation, but these additional months will enable us to complete the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and rightly merit.”
The eagerly awaited title stars a intimately linked duo of criminals named Lucia and Jason in Rockstar’s sun-drenched version of Miami, Vice City, and the wider Florida-like state of Leonida. Development has been in progress at the Edinburgh studio in Scotland, with assistance from the developer's additional teams in NY and worldwide, since 2018. Its original release window was late 2025.
It has been anticipated that GTA VI would reinvigorate an struggling games industry, which has seen a decline after a pandemic-driven surge. Based on publishing giant Take-Two’s most recent earnings statements, its forerunner GTA V has earned $8.6bn since its 2013 release. The studio's last game, the highly praised Red Dead Redemption 2, was released in 2018 and reached $725 million in sales over its first weekend.
Players, in the meantime, have had a very long time to anticipate the developer's newest release: even by the standards of the video games industry, where six-year development periods for blockbuster games are not unusual, the more than 12-year wait for Grand Theft Auto VI has been considerable.
