GTA 6 PC Release Date Speculation: Is It Coming Out In 2026?

It was a long road but we finally have the first official trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6. No more speculation or rumors, we have seen what Vice City will look like and the players are excited to say the least. In the first trailer, we got official confirmation that GTA 6 will launch in 2025. Unfortunately, we do not have an exact release date just yet.

Worse still, it's only been confirmed for "PlayStation 5 computer entertainment systems and Xbox Series X|S games and entertainment systems in 2025."

There's no word on when the game might launch on PC. Of course, it will launch on PC eventually, but the ultimate question is, how long will PC players have to wait until it is available on their preferred platform?

When Will GTA 6 Most Likely Release On PC

Whilst we do appreciate that Grand Theft Auto 5 launched over 10 years ago, if GTA 6 is anything like the release of GTA 5, players could be waiting up to two years for the PC launch of GTA 6.

It's possible that the PC port of GTA 6 could release as early as 2026, or even as late as 2027.

It took two years after the launch of GTA 5 for Rockstar Games to bring the game to PC, and get the game on PC, so the timeline would make sense. More recently, Red Dead Redemption 2 was released for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in October 2018, and just over a year later, it was released for Windows and Stadia in November 2019 with Steam following in December 2019.

So to recap:

• Best estimate: 2026
• Worst-case scenario: 2027 and beyond

Latest GTA 6 PC News

Just below we will keep you updated on the latest intel and rumors surrounding GTA 6 on PC:

Why Is the PC Release of GTA 6 Taking So Long

Look this is a complicated answer, so we've tried to break it into sections for you:

It's Damn Hard

Have you ever made a videogame? It's not as simple as having a game be ready day and date on all platforms at the same time. What's more, Rockstar has never operated that way. As we touched on, over 10 years ago they were still separating their console and PC launches, and they've continued to do so ever since. So why would they change now?

Avoiding Crunch

It's also entirely possible that Rockstar wants more time to polish the game without resorting to the sort of crunch culture that they've been criticized for in the past.

Back in 2018 whilst working for Kotaku, industry reporter Jason Schreier wrote an illuminating report titled "Inside Rockstar Games' Culture Of Crunch" and we're sure we don't need to explain how that looked. Fast forward to 2022 and Schreier wrote another story for Bloomberg titled "Rockstar Games Cleaned Up Its Frat-Boy Culture — and Grand Theft Auto, Too".

So perhaps this delayed launch for the PC port of GTA 6 is simply a result of the company cleaning up its act, and putting employees before release dates.

PC Roleplay Communities

It shouldn't be overlooked that Rockstar Games recently announced the acquisition of cfx.re, the development team behind the biggest Rockstar roleplay and creator communities, FiveM and RedM.

Whilst the PC port of GTA 6 will of course be just that, a port of the standard game. We do wonder if Rockstar might be planning to work with the guys from cfx.re to create some official roleplay servers that help elevate the game even further on PC. That certainly sounds like a good excuse to spend more time on the PC version of the game, rather than rushing it out at the same time as console players.