Everything Rockstar Has Officially Confirmed About GTA 6

With 68 days to launch, the internet is awash in rumor, datamine and speculation about Grand Theft Auto 6. This page strips all of that out. Below is the canonical list of every detail Rockstar Games or Take-Two has officially confirmed through the Newswire, the two trailers, the 27-minute Extended Look, the official GTA VI site and media gallery, Take-Two press releases and earnings calls, and on-record interviews with Rockstar leadership. Nothing here is a leak, a datamine, or a fan reading. If Rockstar has not said it, it is not on this page.

This is a living document. The update log at the bottom records what changed and when.

The basics

• Title: Grand Theft Auto VI.
• Release date: Thursday, November 19, 2026, confirmed by Rockstar Games on the Newswire and reaffirmed by Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick on the May 21 and August 7, 2026 earnings calls.
• Launch platforms: PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S only.
• No PS4 or Xbox One version. Rockstar has not announced any last-gen release.
• No PC version has been announced. Rockstar's official GTA VI page lists the two consoles and nothing else. Every mainline GTA since GTA III reached PC roughly seven to 19 months after its console debut, so a later PC release is likely, but it is not confirmed. See the PC outlook.
• Price: $79.99 for the Standard Edition, $99.99 for the Ultimate Edition, confirmed by Rockstar on June 24, 2026.
• Pre-orders: open since June 25, 2026 on the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Store and at select retailers.
• Pre-load: digital pre-loading begins November 12, 2026, per the Take-Two press release announcing pre-orders. Rockstar gave a date, not a clock time.
• Physical edition: a download code in a box, not a disc. Only the Standard Edition is boxed. It has been pre-orderable at retailers since June 25 and ships, or is available for in-store pickup, from November 12, so physical buyers can redeem their code and pre-load alongside everyone else. The Ultimate Edition is digital-only.
• No early access. Asked on the August 7 earnings call whether any edition would offer early access, Zelnick said Rockstar could have made "any number of other pricing choices" but chose to deliver value rather than charge for it. Every edition unlocks on November 19.
• Single-player at launch. Rockstar's pre-order materials and the PlayStation Store listing describe GTA VI as a "single-player experience". No online mode has been announced for launch.

Price, editions and the pre-order bonus

Rockstar revealed the cover art and the pre-order date on June 18, 2026, then the prices and editions on June 24, the day before pre-orders opened.

• Standard Edition, $79.99. The base game. This is the only edition sold in a box, and the box contains a code.
• Ultimate Edition, $99.99. Rockstar describes it as an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons and apparel, plus bonus content woven through Jason and Lucia's story rather than a separate mode. Digital only.
• Vintage Vice City Pack with every pre-order and every digital purchase made before November 20, 2026, on either edition (physical pre-orders while stocks last): a classic '55 Vapid Stanier with the Shore Court garage near Ocean Beach, retro outfits and hairstyles for both leads, and a weapon pattern.
• Free month of GTA+ for digital pre-orders, per the Take-Two press release. Take-Two's wording is "for digital pre-orders"; Rockstar has not said whether the retail code-in-a-box qualifies.

Asked about the edition split on the August 7 earnings call, Zelnick said only that Take-Two was "happy with the mix". Three days later, in a CNBC Squawk Box interview on August 10, he went further: pre-orders are "skewing more to the premium edition", with the caveat that this "might be a reflection of the fact that the most avid consumers are the ones who are pre-ordering now". For the full breakdown see our price explainer and the Standard vs Ultimate comparison.

The setting

Rockstar's Trailer 1 Newswire post (December 4, 2023) confirmed the game is set in the state of Leonida, a fictional Florida analogue anchored by Vice City, the franchise's first return there since Vice City Stories in 2006. The Trailer 2 rollout in May 2025, Rockstar's official site and the Extended Look have since profiled the state region by region:

• Vice City, the Miami-style metropolis at the core. Rockstar's site names four locations inside it: Ocean Beach (white sand and pastel art-deco hotels), Little Cuba (bustling panaderías), the Tisha-Wocka flea market (bootleg brands) and the VC Port. Names such as "Vice Beach" and "Little Haiti" come from community maps and the 2002 game, not from any Rockstar GTA 6 description, so they are not on this list. See the Vice City districts explainer.
• Leonida Keys, a tropical archipelago inspired by the Florida Keys.
• Grassrivers, Everglades-style wetlands with alligators and mangroves.
• Port Gellhorn, Leonida's "forgotten coast": a faded vacation town of cheap motels, shut-down attractions and empty strip malls, with a new economy Rockstar says is "fueled by malt liquor, painkillers, and truck stop energy drinks".
• Ambrosia, a blue-collar heartland with a sugar refinery and biker gangs.
• Mount Kalaga National Park, northern mountains with hunting, fishing and off-road trails.

Rockstar's only official size comparison, given to The New York Times on August 27, 2026, is that the map is three times the playable area of Red Dead Redemption 2. It has published no square-mile or square-kilometre figure. The "twice GTA 5" and "Vice City is twice Los Santos" numbers in circulation come from a creator's account of a sanctioned Rockstar North preview, not from a Rockstar publication. See our map size explainer.

The protagonists

• Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval are the two playable protagonists. Lucia is a fighter recently released from prison; Jason is an ex-military drug runner.
• Lucia is the first female lead of a mainline GTA campaign. The 1997 original let you pick from a roster that included women, but no numbered GTA has been built around a female protagonist before. This is a widely reported milestone, not a Rockstar quote; Rockstar's own bio describes her background and says nothing about her being a series first.
• The Extended Look showed how switching works: a selection wheel offers Solo Jason, Solo Lucia and dual control. When the pair are together you swap instantly; when they are apart the switch takes a few seconds with a GTA 5-style transition. Whoever you are not controlling is run by the AI and actively helps in fights and robberies.
• Switching is not always available. Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson told Famitsu after the showcase that it is "limited by story progression": some missions lock you to one character, some force a swap at a key moment, and others let you switch at will.
• This is single-player character switching, not co-op.
• Both biographies were published on Rockstar's official GTA VI site alongside the Trailer 2 reveal on May 6, 2025, linked from the Newswire post.

The supporting cast (officially named)

The Trailer 2 rollout on May 6, 2025 introduced these named supporting characters with bios on Rockstar's official GTA VI site, and several appeared in the Extended Look. The descriptions below stick to Rockstar's own words:

• Cal Hampton: Jason's friend and a fellow associate of Brian Heder's, a conspiracy-minded homebody who, per his bio, "feels safest hanging at home, snooping on Coast Guard comms".
• Boobie Ike: a "local Vice City legend" who turned his street days into "a legitimate empire spanning real estate, a strip club, and a recording studio"; partnered with Dre'Quan Priest on Only Raw Records.
• Brian Heder: a "classic drug runner from the golden age of smuggling in the Keys" who still moves product through his boat yard with his third wife, Lori, and lets Jason live rent-free at one of his properties in exchange for help with local shakedowns.
• Dre'Quan Priest: Boobie Ike's partner in Only Raw Records, "always more of a hustler than a gangster", who booked acts into Boobie's strip club and has signed the Real Dimez.
• Raul Bautista: a "seasoned bank robber" always on the hunt for crew talent, whose recklessness "raises the stakes with every score".
• Real Dimez: the Vice City rap duo Bae-Luxe and Roxy, signed to Only Raw Records, whose rise plays out on the in-game social feeds.

Those are the characters with their own Rockstar bio. Rockstar's text also names Brian's wife Lori, the Real Dimez members, and rapper DWNPLY, without standalone bios. Beyond those, any "confirmed" character circulating online is not from a Rockstar source.

The trailers and the Extended Look

• Trailer 1: December 4, 2023. Pre-announced on November 8, 2023 for an early-December release; pushed out a day early after the trailer leaked.
• Trailer 2: May 6, 2025, alongside a Newswire post about the (then) release date and links to the character bios.
• "Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look": August 27, 2026. Announced on the Newswire on August 6. It premiered on Netflix at 3 p.m. ET, then went free on Rockstar's YouTube channel and the GTA VI site at 9 p.m. ET the same day. Rockstar did not call it a trailer. It runs just under 27 minutes and, in Rockstar's words, was "captured entirely from in-game footage on the PlayStation 5". Rockstar did not say whether that means a standard PS5 or a PS5 Pro; the "base PS5" line you will see elsewhere is a press inference.
• Trailer 3: not announced. Zelnick has described the Extended Look as "one of the hors d'oeuvres" with more to come before launch, but that is a direction of travel, not a date.

What the Extended Look confirmed

Everything in this section comes from the presentation itself, Rockstar's accompanying Newswire post, and Rob Nelson's on-record interviews published alongside the premiere. The full recap goes deeper.

• Combat: cover-based shooting, vaulting and sliding across car hoods, and a bullet-time mode that slows time and highlights enemy weak points. Vehicle combat includes shooting out police tyres and firing at pursuing helicopters.
• The six-star wanted level is back. Heat persists, but you can shake it in grounded ways: ditch or torch the car, swap vehicles, change clothes or put on a face covering.
• Stealing a car has two approaches: a loud physical struggle or a quiet slim jim.
• Driving: Rockstar says real race drivers helped tune the handling, and that customisation and upgrades change performance, not just looks. Circuit racing, dirt-bike and off-road events were shown.
• A life-sim returns: a physique system (working out builds muscle, poor diet adds weight, sleep deprivation shows), an on-the-fly outfit wheel, haircuts and salons, and working in-game social media feeds on your phone.
• A "criminal profile", Nelson's on-record name for GTA 6's take on Red Dead's Honor system. An on-screen angel icon appears to register small actions: petting a dog nudges it positive, and a negative tick was spotted as Lucia fled a store robbery. Rockstar has not explained the icon in detail. See our criminal profile explainer.
• The world reacts before you shoot. Openly carrying a rifle down the street draws a response; NPCs vary far more in age, body type and dress, and RDR2-style contextual prompts return: Greet or Taunt when you target someone, Defuse or Provoke when a situation turns tense, and Pet, Scold or Study for dogs.
• Getting around spans land, water and air: airboats, jet skis, a kayak, snorkelling and scuba, e-scooters, and skydiving over Vice City.
• Licensed music plays in the world, including Phil Collins in an elevator during the showcase.

The official screenshots

On August 31, 2026, Rockstar quietly added 29 screenshots to its official GTA VI media gallery, taking it from 70 to 99 images: thirteen built around Jason and Lucia as a pair, four new looks at each of them solo, and eight new location shots across Leonida. These are press renders, not video frames, and most had circulated as Extended Look press material since August 27; this was their first appearance in the public gallery. Every one is mirrored at native resolution in our GTA 6 screenshot library, alongside the earlier press kit and the Extended Look frames. Our batch breakdown walks through all 29.

What Rockstar has said since the Extended Look

Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson answered three launch questions on the record, in press interviews and a creator preview session at Rockstar North, all published around the August 27 showcase:

• Frame rate: the consoles are running GTA 6 at 30 frames per second at this stage of development. Asked about a 60 FPS performance mode, Nelson would not commit to one at launch or later. Treat a performance mode as unconfirmed, including on PS5 Pro.
• Story length: Nelson told The New York Times that his own playthrough of a February build took around 80 hours, covering the main storyline plus some optional goals that affect the narrative. That is one developer's run, not an official runtime. For scale, GTA 5's story is usually put at roughly 30 hours and Red Dead Redemption 2's at 50; that comparison is ours, not Rockstar's, and so is any full-completion estimate.
• No full first-person mode at launch. The team prioritised third-person animation and character interaction. A first-person view is still available while aiming certain weapons. GTA 5 also launched without first person and added it a year later, so this is precedent, not a promise.

Pre-load and launch logistics

What is official, from the Take-Two press release and Rockstar's own pages:

• Pre-load opens November 12 on both PS5 and Xbox Series X|S for digital pre-orders. Enable automatic downloads on your console.
• Boxed Standard Edition copies ship, or are available for in-store pickup, from November 12. Retail pre-orders have been open since June 25. The box holds a code, not a disc, so physical buyers download the full game too.
• No official install size exists. Neither the PlayStation nor the Xbox storefront lists one yet. Every gigabyte figure in circulation is an estimate or a fake, including the viral 676.7 GB screenshot, which came from a parody account.
• No official unlock time exists. Store timestamps suggest the game unlocks in regional waves, not at everyone's local midnight, but Rockstar has not published a schedule.

Our pre-load guide separates the confirmed dates from the circulating numbers and will be updated when the storefronts show a real size.

The business numbers

• Take-Two FY27 net bookings guidance: $8.0 to $8.2 billion, set on the May 21, 2026 earnings call and reiterated on August 7 in the first quarter to include pre-orders. Zelnick attributed the figure directly to the November 19 launch.
• Pre-orders are "unprecedented and astonishing", in Zelnick's words on the August 7 call. Take-Two did not disclose a unit count or dollar figure.
• GTA 6's budget is a moat. At the TD Cowen TMT Conference on May 27, 2026, Zelnick described the development cost as "an advantage and an entry barrier" competitors cannot match.
• The CEO has been shown GTA 6 gameplay. Zelnick, who does not play games himself, has said Rockstar's developers demonstrate the game to him (a Game File interview at the iicon conference in April, and a Business Insider profile in May), months before the rest of us saw the Extended Look. Asked how it looked, he pointed to the "amazing" trailer and said he would "leave it at that".

What Rockstar has NOT confirmed

For completeness, here is the list of widely asked questions Rockstar has not answered as of September 12, 2026:

• A PC version, on any timeline.
• The install size or storage requirement.
• Unlock times by region, or any launch-day clock time.
• A 60 FPS performance mode, at launch or after.
• A disc edition. Reports say one could follow after launch; Rockstar has not dated one.
• A third trailer or the next reveal's date.
• A Switch 2 version.
• A Game Pass day-one release (no Microsoft or Rockstar confirmation).
• The exact map size in square miles or kilometres, or a mission count.
• GTA Online for GTA 6: whether it exists, when it arrives, or whether progress carries over from the GTA V version.
• Achievements and trophies, modding policy, and crossplay.
• Returning characters from previous GTAs. Rockstar has not named any. Fans have matched the woman who hires Jason and Lucia as private security in the Extended Look to Valentina from GTA Online's 2025 Money Fronts update; the footage is Rockstar's, but the identification is not.

If you see one of these "confirmed", check the source carefully. It is almost certainly not Rockstar.

A note on sourcing

This page is the GTA Intel Launch Desk standard: officially-sourced material only. Every claim above traces to the Rockstar Newswire, Rockstar's official GTA VI site and media gallery, the trailers and the Extended Look, Take-Two press releases and earnings calls, or on-record statements from Rockstar and Take-Two leadership. We do not aggregate the 2022 leak, datamines, or unverified insider claims, and we do not present community theories as fact.

The live GTA 6 Launch Desk tracks confirmed facts as they land. Our longer catalogue of open questions, what Rockstar had not confirmed, was written in May, before pricing, pre-orders and the Extended Look, and still treats a PC version and a post-launch online mode as confirmed. Neither has been announced. Where the two pages differ, the September 12 list above is current.

Update log

• September 12, 2026: added price and editions, the pre-order bonus and GTA+ month, pre-order and pre-load dates, the code-in-a-box physical edition, the Extended Look section, the August 31 screenshot batch, Rob Nelson's on-record answers (30 FPS, an 80-hour playthrough, no full first-person mode, story-gated switching), the New York Times map comparison, and Take-Two's August 7 results. Rewrote the supporting-cast bios to match Rockstar's own text. Corrected the PC line (no PC version has been announced), the Leonida attribution (Trailer 1, not Trailer 2), the Vice City return date (2006, not 2002), and the Zelnick edition-split venue (CNBC, August 10). Retitled from "(May 2026 Update)".
• May 31, 2026: first published.

Sources

• Grand Theft Auto VI: Watch Trailer 1 Now (Rockstar Newswire). Leonida and Vice City confirmed.
• Grand Theft Auto VI is Now Set to Launch November 19, 2026 (Rockstar Newswire). Release date and platforms.
• Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders begin on June 25 (Rockstar Newswire). Price, editions and the Vintage Vice City Pack.
• Pre-order Grand Theft Auto VI on June 25 (Rockstar Newswire). Pre-order launch and the "single-player experience" description.
• Rockstar Games announces pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto VI (Take-Two Interactive). November 12 pre-load date, the November 20 bonus window, and the free month of GTA+ for digital pre-orders.
• Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look (Rockstar Newswire). The August 27 showcase and the "captured entirely from in-game footage on the PlayStation 5" wording.
• Grand Theft Auto VI official site (Rockstar Games). Platforms listed as PS5 and Xbox Series X|S; region and character bios.
• Grand Theft Auto VI official screenshots (Rockstar Games). The August 31 batch.
• Rockstar confirms there will be no disc version of GTA 6 at launch (VGC).
• GTA 6 preorders reach "unprecedented and astonishing" level, Take-Two CEO says (Variety). August 7 earnings call.
• Why GTA 6 doesn't have early access, according to Take-Two (GameSpot). August 7 earnings call.
• GTA 6 pre-orders skew toward $100 Ultimate Edition as Zelnick defends pricing (GTA BOOM). CNBC Squawk Box interview, August 10, 2026.
• Take-Two Interactive investor relations. FY27 guidance.
• Inside Rockstar and GTA 6 (The New York Times). Rob Nelson's 80-hour playthrough and the map comparison to Red Dead Redemption 2.
• GTA 6 takes around 80 hours to complete, Rockstar reveals (Vice). Detail on what Nelson's playthrough covered.
• Rob Nelson GTA 6 deep-dive interview (Dazed). Race drivers on the handling team, NPC variety and reactions, the physique system and social feeds.
• Rockstar explains how GTA 6 character switching will work (TweakTown). Nelson's Famitsu interview on story-gated switching.
• GTA 6 targeting 30fps on PS5, undecided on performance mode (Push Square). Frame rate.
• Will GTA 6 have first person? Rockstar reveals launch plans (Vice). First-person mode.
• GTA 6's Netflix reveal is just the start (GamesRadar+). Zelnick on more reveals to come.
• GTA 6: No delay or price, but marketing on track for summer (Variety). May 21 earnings call.
• Strauss Zelnick called GTA 6's budget a weapon, not a gamble (GTA BOOM). TD Cowen conference, May 27, 2026.
• "Amazing": Take-Two CEO teases GTA 6 after early preview (Game Rant). Game File's interview at iicon.