Love is a long road – but people won’t love Rockstar Games for delaying GTA 6.
The GTA 6 release date has been revealed, but it’s not what most people expected it to be. The sixth installment in the long-running Grand Theft Auto series will now be released on May 26, 2026, almost a year after it was initially scheduled.
Rockstar Games confirmed this slightly unexpected news via a post on its Newswire and all social media platforms. “Grand Theft Auto VI is now set to release on May 26, 2026,” it said boldly, before pivoting to a sincere apology about the delay that concluded with, “We hope you understand that we need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve.”
The news about the Grand Theft Auto 6 delay comes just a few days after 2K Games advanced the release of Borderlands 4. The fourth entry in the popular looter-shooter series was initially scheduled to launch on September 23, 2025, but will now be released 11 days earlier on September 12, 2025.
Naturally, this started a series of speculations, with many believing that the shift in Borderlands 4’s release date was to avoid GTA 6's launch, which, back then, seemed most likely to be October this year.
Interestingly enough, the CEO of Gearbox Studio, Randy Pitchford, immediately jumped ship and cleared all speculations by stating that Borderlands 4's early launch is the result of confidence in the game and not due to “any other product’s actual or theoretical launch date.
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GTA 6 delay is surprising, not shocking
It’s a no-brainer that many fans would find this GTA 6 delay quite surprising. However, this shouldn’t come off as shocking given the studio's past and the amount of subtle hints it has continuously dropped throughout the year.
In an interview with IGN earlier this year, the CEO of Take-Two Interactive, Strauss Zelnic,k revealed that there “is always the risk of slippage” when asked how confident the studio was about hitting its 2025 release window.
Likewise, a former Rockstar developer, Obbe Vermeij, had previously suggested that the studio would not release GTA 6 until it's 100% confident about it, as “there is no competition.”
It’s worth adding that Rockstar has been awfully quiet about providing any update on GTA 6 for the better half of 2025. Aside from a stunning reveal trailer that debuted last December, there have been little to no updates on pretty much anything about GTA 6.
While an early Summer window might not be the popular time to drop the most anticipated video game of all time, history suggests that Rockstar isn’t opposed to launching its game in this period. Titles like Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red Dead Redemption 1 were released on April 29, 2008, and May 18, 2010, respectively, and Grand Theft Auto 6 will follow suit.
On the bright side, a new GTA 6 trailer is likely on the horizon.
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