GTA 6: Release date, Trailer and everything we know so far

A Florida-inspired setting, the series’ first female lead character – and an increasingly clear date when players will actually get their hands on Grand Theft Auto VI

Andrew Griffin
Friday 17 May 2024 07:19 EDT
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After years of rumours, endless hype and vast sales, the latest Grand Theft Autogame is finally on its way.

GTA 6– officially known as Grand Theft Auto VI – is set to be a vast juggernaut of a game, financially: the previous game in the series has sold hundreds of millions of copies. It is also set to be a huge game for players, likely one of the highlights of the current generation of consoles and pushing their performance to the very limits.

Here is everything we know about that game, as it heads towards a release date late next year.

Most of what we know firmly about the game has come from the trailer released by developers Rockstar Games, and offered a detail look at the style and possible gameplay. You can see that above.

Setting

The game is set in Vice City, the Miami-inspired location of the 2002 game. Unlike that previous title, however, GTA 6 will be set today, rather than in the 1986, Miami Vice stylings of Vice City.

Vice City itself is also expected to be set within a much broader state, known as Leonida and based on Florida. That will presumably allow players to explore a much bigger map and different kinds of locations – in keeping with the less urban landscapes that have been available in recent games in the Grand Theft Auto franchise.

Characters

The central character in GTA 6 appears to be Lucia, the first female lead character in the series. Little is known about her, but the trailer showed her wearing prison clothes and seeming to have some interest in illegal activities.

She appears to be joined by another – as yet unnamed – man, who is presumably her boyfriend and may be another playable character.

It is not clear whether those characters make up the full suite of playable ones in GTA 6 – the previous game allowed players to take control of three different characters. Rockstar may choose to highlight other characters in follow-up games.

Gameplay

The trailer didn’t actually show any gameplay, and little has been said about it since. But there’s nothing to suggest that GTA 6 won’t be in keeping with the previous titles in the series.

It looks like it will allow you to run, drive, fly, shoot and talk your way through a vast open world made up of other online players as well as a single player campaign. It will no doubt offer plenty of other mini-games, as well as more strategic challenges such as buying houses and accruing in-game vehicles and other objects.

Release date

Rockstar has been gradually narrowing down the game’s release date. Rumours have also helped narrow it down – and sometimes put it in doubt.

In December 2023, when it released the first trailer, it also said that the game would come out in 2025.

In the time since, multiple reports have suggested that Rockstar had initially been looking to release the game early in the year, but that the game was less ready than required, and that it might come later than that. Some even suggested that developers were preparing a fallback of pushing the game’s release into 2026.

Now, parent company Take-Two Interactive has said that the game will be arriving in “fall 2025”. That means that it could arrive any time before November that year.

Platforms

Those release dates apply only to the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 – the game won’t be coming to prior platforms, such as the Xbox One or PlayStation 4. Rockstar also hasn’t mentioned a PC release, even though that remains a popular way of playing GTA 5.

Some developers have suggested that Rockstar is getting the console version out of the way and that the PC game will follow. But that may take a long time, according to a developer who previously worked at Rockstar.

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