Grand Theft Auto VI is the next mainline entry in Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto series, launching November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox...
Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6)
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Grand Theft Auto is Rockstar Games' open-world crime series, and it started out as a top-down car chase game from a small Scottish studio. DMA Design, the Dundee team behind Lemmings, released the first Grand Theft Auto in 1997 for PC and PlayStation, and the series made the jump to 3D with Grand Theft Auto III in 2001. Since then, GTA has rotated between fictional versions of real American cities, with Liberty City standing in for New York, Vice City for Miami, and Los Santos for Los Angeles.
The series is also one of the best-selling in gaming. Take-Two has reported more than 200 million copies sold for Grand Theft Auto V alone, and GTA Online has kept that game on the charts for over a decade. Grand Theft Auto VI takes the series back to Vice City on November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, with Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval as its two protagonists.
Grand Theft Auto began at DMA Design, the studio founded by David Jones in Dundee, Scotland. The game started life as a project called Race'n'Chase before the crime angle took over, and BMG Interactive published it in 1997. Take-Two Interactive bought BMG Interactive in 1998 and launched Rockstar Games in New York, with brothers Sam and Dan Houser among its founders. Take-Two picked up DMA Design soon after, and the studio was renamed Rockstar North in 2002. Rockstar North has led development on every mainline entry since, with other Rockstar studios around the world helping on the bigger games.
The original Grand Theft Auto came out in 1997, followed by the Grand Theft Auto: London 1969 and London 1961 expansion packs and Grand Theft Auto 2 in 1999. All three used the top-down perspective.
I played all of the top-down ones after my friend introduced me to GTA III on PS2. Since I didn't have one yet, I settled for downloading the top-down games and having fun with them for a while.
Grand Theft Auto III arrived on PlayStation 2 in October 2001, then Grand Theft Auto: Vice City in 2002 and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004. I got a PS2 shortly after Vice City came out, so I was playing GTA III and Vice City interchangeably.
Rockstar filled the gaps between console entries with handheld games. Grand Theft Auto Advance hit the Game Boy Advance in 2004, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories came out on PSP in 2005 and 2006, and Chinatown Wars landed on the Nintendo DS in 2009. Grand Theft Auto IV launched on April 29, 2008, Grand Theft Auto V followed on September 17, 2013, and Grand Theft Auto VI is the next mainline game.
Grand Theft Auto III changed the series and the open-world genre with it. Claude, a silent protagonist betrayed during a bank robbery, works his way through the criminal underworld of Liberty City in full 3D. Vice City went back to 1986 with Tommy Vercetti, a mobster fresh out of prison, and leaned hard on its 1980s Miami Vice style and licensed soundtrack. San Andreas followed Carl "CJ" Johnson back to Grove Street in 1992 and stretched the map across three cities and the countryside between them.
These three games are known as the 3D universe, and they share a continuity that is separate from the later games. All three were remastered in 2021 as Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy, The Definitive Edition, which launched in rough shape before patches cleaned it up, and the trilogy later came to Netflix's mobile games service in December 2023.
Grand Theft Auto IV rebooted the continuity with a darker, more grounded Liberty City. Niko Bellic, an Eastern European war veteran, comes to America chasing his cousin Roman's stories of wealth and finds debt and mob trouble instead. Two expansions, The Lost and Damned with biker Johnny Klebitz and The Ballad of Gay Tony with nightclub fixer Luis Lopez, told stories that cross paths with Niko's. They were bundled together as Episodes from Liberty City.
Grand Theft Auto V moved the series to Los Santos and split the story between three playable criminals. Michael De Santa is a retired bank robber in witness protection, Franklin Clinton is a young repo man looking for a way up, and Trevor Philips is a volatile meth dealer from Michael's past. Players can switch between them freely, and the big heist missions use all three at once.
GTA V came out on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2013, then got re-released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and again for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2022. GTA Online launched alongside it in October 2013 and turned into its own long-running game, with years of heists, businesses, and updates keeping it active well into the GTA VI era.
Grand Theft Auto VI is set in Leonida, Rockstar's version of Florida, with a modern-day Vice City at its center. Lucia Caminos and Jason Duval are a criminal couple pulled into a conspiracy after a job goes wrong. The first trailer was scheduled for December 5, 2023, but it leaked online a day early, so Rockstar released it officially on December 4. The second trailer followed in May 2025. After moving from 2025 to May 2026 and then to November, GTA VI launches on November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, and Rockstar has not announced a PC version.
The series has drawn controversy since the start, but the biggest moment came in 2005. A PC mod unlocked a hidden sex minigame left in the San Andreas code, which became known as Hot Coffee. The ESRB changed the game's rating to Adults Only, retailers pulled it from shelves, and Rockstar released a new version with the content removed. Attorney Jack Thompson also spent years campaigning against the series and its violence during the 2000s.
There has never been an official Grand Theft Auto movie or TV series. The closest thing is The Gamechangers, a 2015 BBC drama about the making of the series and the legal fights around it, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Sam Houser and Bill Paxton as Jack Thompson. Rockstar did not take part in it.
Grand Theft Auto VI is the next mainline entry in Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto series, launching November 19, 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox...