Grand Theft Auto VI officially has a release date, but it’s not the one players had expected. It’ll arrive on current-gen consoles on May 26, 2026, as Rockstar and Take-Two confirmed that GTA VI was delayed outside its initial Fall 2025 release window.
Despite Rockstar having a history of delaying its biggest games at least once or twice before they finally release, Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick’s stalwart reassurances that Grand Theft Auto VI would release in Fall 2025 had plenty of fans believing that this time would be different. And while it very well could have been, a comment from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier indicates that Rockstar knew this delay would happen for some time now.
In a post on BlueSky, Schreier indicates that, per conversations he’s had with Rockstar employees, there has been no real chance of Grand Theft Auto VI releasing in Fall 2025 “for a very long time now.”
The uplifting part to this is that Rockstar developers knew the delay was coming not just because it would have been too much work to get it done by Fall 2025, but because there’s actually what Schreier describes as “a real desire” from Rockstar to not put the development team through an awful period of crunch.
“Nobody I’ve talked to at Rockstar has believed Fall 2025 was a real window for a very long time now,” Schreier wrote. “Too much work, not enough time, and what appears to be a real desire from management to avoid brutal crunch. GTA VI slipping to 2026 has seemed inevitable for months if not longer.“
Avoiding putting the development team through an awful crunch phase and ensuring they have the time to make GTA VI as good as possible, without burning themselves out, is a solid reason for delaying. If Rockstar has turned that corner on crunch, it can hopefully be a strong example for other studios to follow.
