When is GTA 6 coming out? Release date, settings and characters revealed

Five months have passed since the GTA 6 trailer set the gaming world alight with its eye-popping graphics.

Since then, we’ve heard nothing, nada, bupkis. The drought of information has left fans desperately searching for clues online.

They’ve pored over stills from the trailer, shared teasing quotes from former GTA voice actors, and paid heed to dodgy leakers - all in the vein pursuit of a new nugget of info about the game. 

Well, that time may have come. Eagle-eyed Rockstar devotees have finally stumbled across a clue that may actually point to some exciting news on the horizon. A post on the GTA subreddit, home to a million Los Santos expats, claims to show website code for the GTA 6 cover artwork and new screenshots from the game.

To add fuel to the fire, the link to the new installment’s cover image is the same URL as the one used for GTA 5.

Now, normally we shrug off the stuff shared on Reddit forums and Twitter as the passionate ravings of a slightly unhinged gaming community (sorry). But, this looks like it could be the real deal. After all, it comes just over a week ahead of Rockstar owner Take-Two Interactive’s earnings, where it is widely believed we could learn more about the game.

At the time of writing, the post has more than 1,600 upvotes and 372 comments, indicating its merit. In their typical sardonic manner, the game’s fans are cautiously optimistic about the new revelations. 

“Gentlemen, it's time again. Prepare to overanalyze,” states one Reddit user.

“100 things you missed in the new GTA screenshots,” jokes another in a nod to the articles that have dissected the first trailer to death (eek - guilty as charged).

However, others are more upbeat, even going so far as to offer a possible timeline of events for the coming days. 

“Hopefully we get screenshots within a day or two, then they release the second trailer and announce the release date and open preorders by the conference next week,” writes a Reddit user.

Here’s hoping. While we wait with bated breath for more GTA 6 news, check out everything we know about the new open-world game below.

Fans riding high on the first trailer's glossy visuals may have been disappointed when the game's tentative release date was confirmed at the end of the clip. As the title flashed across the screen, the text below revealed that GTA 6 would arrive in 2025. 

The launch date was a gut punch for fans hoping to play it sooner after a gruelling 11-year wait for the new game.

Although we’ve heard nothing from Rockstar, reports have indicated that it’s full steam ahead for the developer as it readies the next chapter in its American crime saga. In February, Bloomberg reported that Rockstar had entered the final stages of development on GTA 6, with employees being ordered back to work from the office five days a week to complete it.

However, a subsequent article from gaming website Kotaku (which other reports have dismissed) claimed Rockstar changed its work-from-home policy in a last-gasp dash to prevent a costly delay. With the game reportedly “falling behind” schedule, the developer was “worried” about “missing the 2025 window and slipping into 2026”.

Kotaku reported that GTA 6 was initially eyeing an early 2025 release date. Hopefully, we’ll get some clarity during Rockstar’s earnings call on May 16.

Beyond the trailer, Rockstar’s only clue about GTA 6 came last May. 

In a press release, the company forecasted a record-breaking windfall in profit for its fiscal year 2025, which covers April 2024 to March 2025.

"We expect to enter this new era by launching several ground-breaking titles that we believe will set new standards in our industry and enable us to achieve over $8 billion (£6.5bn) in net bookings," the gaming company said.

Rockstar's website said the game would launch on current-gen consoles in 2025, including the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.

There's no word on a PC release but we wouldn't be surprised to see it launch several months later in the vein of GTA 5.

Unfortunately for PS4 owners, the game won't be released on last-gen hardware. This is all the more reason to add a PS5 or Xbox Series X or S to your Xmas wishlist. Or, you could wait for the PS5 Slim, which is arriving in the UK soon.

We'd already heard rumblings that GTA 6 would be set in Vice City, a fictional take on Miami, Florida, and the trailer confirmed that.

Loosely based on the cities of Miami and Miami Beach and set in the fictional state of Leonidas, it looks gorgeous. Given Rockstar’s penchant for creating massive, detailed open worlds — it is no surprise the game will feature Everglades-style swamp areas. 

In the trailer, we see an airboat careening through a swamp. There are two quick scenes of this area. One is set on a beautiful sun-dappled morning, the other during the day, with dozens of flamingos on-screen at once. 

There are also a couple of scenes of alligators intruding into shops and people's homes. The list of oddball characters includes dirt bike gangs, a convict covered in face tats, a hammer-wielding Karen, and a woman twerking on a moving car.

As older fans will recall, Vice City was the setting for 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Early reports suggested the game world may be larger than that of GTA 5, while the previous Vice City was a relatively small collection of islands.

As is widely reported, we're getting the series’ first female protagonist. One of GTA 6’s main characters is a woman named Lucia. We see her in prison and out of it, committing an armed robbery with her male partner (who was previously identified in leaks as Jason).

Like a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, the duo are likely to venture on a crime-fuelled odyssey across the state of Leonidas, taking in its deranged sights and sounds, and clashing with its underworld milieu.

As Tupac and Jay-Z famously sang: "All I need in this life of sin is me and my girlfriend.”

Co-founder of Rockstar Games, Dan Houser, told the Guardian in 2013 why a woman wasn’t playable in GTA V — and how the team could make it happen.

“We didn’t really think about it this time [of GTA V]. That’s not to say that we couldn’t or we wouldn’t,” he said. “This character set is just what came to us: it wasn’t, ‘We’ve got X and Y so we need Z’, we weren’t trying to do it off a checklist — I don’t think that will ever give you something that’s believable or engaging.

“In the future, could we do a game with a lead female character? Of course. We just haven’t found the right game for it yet, but it’s one of the things that we always think about. It didn’t feel natural for this game but definitely for the right game in the future – with the right themes, it could be fantastic.”

Other rumours have hinted at the possibility of a playable female character who is the clever one in the group and is great at using technology and hacking. Sounds great to us.

In February last year, Rockstar confirmed that a new entry in the GTA franchise was in the works.

“With every new project we embark on, our goal is always to significantly move beyond what we have previously delivered – and we are pleased to confirm that active development for the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series is well underway," the company said.

Rockstar may be cagey about announcing more news following several high-profile leaks.

In September 2022, a UK-based hacker broke into the company’s servers and published almost 100 videos of an early in-development version of the game. A candidate for the most substantial pre-release video game leak ever, it showed the game in a state never intended to be seen by the public.

GTA 6 may have been leaked again before the imminent release of its first trailer.

A TikTok account called @i_see_in_4k shared two short videos of the game on Saturday, December 2.

Both clips showed what appeared to be the game's map. There was also a camera panning to show a section of the city with skyscrapers in the distance and a highway to the side.

Soon after the footage appeared on TikTok, a trusted gaming news site GTABase reported that "it appears the 'leaked' footage has come from the son of a Rockstar Games employee".

Rockstar has not confirmed the authenticity of the leaked footage, nor has it spoken on who was behind it.

Then, in the most infamous leak yet, the game's trailer was leaked on social media hours before its auspicious release date. The grainy, low-quality clip was watermarked with massive text that read "Buy BTC" about the cryptocurrency bitcoin.

Rockstar reacted by swiftly uploading the trailer to YouTube, while the account behind the leak was banned from X (formerly Twitter).