When it was announced that Grand Theft Auto VI was being released in 2025, there was a lot of scepticism in the gaming community. After all, the game’s been in development for years now, with bits of the game even having entered production back in 2014. Add this to Rockstar Games and their tendency to delay games for extra polish or quality control reasons, and well, there was all the evidence in the world to believe that release date announcement might be an optimistic guess at best.
But now, it’s official. As announced by Rockstar themselves on social media, GTA VI will in fact be delayed to 2026, with the game’s release date now being set as May 26th of that year. Here’s the post if you haven’t seen it already:
Grand Theft Auto VI is now set to release on May 26, 2026. https://t.co/YgaIn1cYc8 pic.twitter.com/cyeK7GM6Ob
— Rockstar Games (@RockstarGames) May 2, 2025
Plus, the announcement on their official website:
Grand Theft Auto VI is Now Coming May 26, 2026 (Rockstar Games)
So, yeah, the highly anticipated game is now coming a bit later than expected.
But that’s not where the story ends. No, there are a few other interesting side effects of the release date change here.
Most notably, many game release schedules are now being updated to take it into account. Cause you see, GTA is one of those series that gets a lot of public attention. It gets tons of media coverage and PR, gets talked about by millions of people on social media, and takes over the front page on sites like Reddit for days or weeks on end.
As a result of this, a lot of companies deliberately go out of their way to avoid competing with it. They’ll delay their games a few months to avoid the GTA hype storm, and give themselves a chance at being seen in a crowded marketplace.
So, with GTA VI being delayed to next year, that means a lot of release plans are likely being revised along with it. Games that were planned for April-June 2025 are being pushed back, games that were planned for its original late 2025 release window are now likely going ahead as before, and well, it’s likely the whole industry’s been thrown into turmoil because of it.
Certainly an interesting situation to be in, even if you’re not particularly interested in GTA VI yourself.
Still, what are your thoughts on the delay? Are you okay with it, or were you expecting it to be released later this year as originally intended? How will the game’s delayed release date affect the industry as a whole in 2025 and 2025?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below, on social media, or on our Discord server today!
Source:
Grand Theft Auto VI is Now Coming May 26, 2026 (Rockstar Games)