Grand Theft Auto 6 has been delayed again to the end of 2026
“We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize has been a long wait”, Rockstar says
Grand Theft Auto 6 has been delayed again.
“Hi everyone,” Rockstar said in a statement on X. “Grand Theft Auto VI will now release on Thursday, November 19, 2026.
“We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize has been a long wait, but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve.”
“We want to thank you again for your patience and support. While the wait is a little longer, we are incredibly excited for players to experience the sprawling state of Leonida and a return to modern day Vice City.”
In a statement accompanying its latest financial results, Take-Two chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick added: “Rockstar Games will now release Grand Theft Auto VI on November 19, 2026, and we remain both excited and confident they will deliver an unrivalled blockbuster entertainment experience.
“With the most robust pipeline in our Company’s history, we expect to achieve record levels of Net Bookings in Fiscal 2027, which will establish a new baseline for our business and set us on a path of enhanced profitability.”
This is the second major delay for one of the most eagerly anticipated releases in entertainment.
The game was previously supposed to release in Fall 2025, but earlier this year Rockstar posted a statement announcing that the game had been moved back to May 26, 2026. This latest delay essentially pushes the game back a full year further than its initially proposed release window.
In an interview with The Game Business, Zelnick said that the company believed in the May 26 date, but that it had to be pushed back to ensure it meets the standards it expects of the product.
“When we set a date, we really do believe in it,” he explained. “We said when we set the last date, if a game requires more polish to be the best possible version of itself, then we will give that game more time. And that’s exactly what happened.
“We feel really good about this release date. It’s in the same fiscal year, it happens to be a great release window, and naturally we’re really supportive of Rockstar’s approach.”
During a Q&A in an investor call following the announcement, Zelnick was asked what drove the decision to delay the game for a second time.
“The drivers were a desire to deliver as perfect an entertainment experience as we possibly can, and try to live up to consumers’ extraordinary expectations and then exceed those expectations,” he replied.
“It’s always painful when we move a date. We have done so occasionally in the past, and we’ve never regretted it in retrospect. I would like to point out that we have some competitors where more polish was required and required slipping a date, they chose not slip the date and, you know, they did so at their peril.”
Following the first delay from Fall 2025 to May 2026, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported that nobody he had spoken to at Rockstar had believed Fall 2025 was “a real window”, due to “too much work, not enough time, and what appears to be a real desire from management to avoid brutal crunch”.
