The GTA 6 wait was longer than GTA 1 to GTA 4
GTA 6 arrives 4,811 days after GTA 5, a longer wait than the first GTA to GTA 4. We lined up every GTA gap and everything that launched in between.
Jake Bannister
13th Nov 2026 18:15
Image via Rockstar Games
GTA 6 finally arrives next Thursday, November 19, which means fans will have waited 4,811 days since GTA 5 came out on September 17, 2013, and that's such a long stretch that we started wondering what else could have fitted into it.
So we lined up the release dates of every mainline Grand Theft Auto and measured the gap between each one, and the answer is a bit startling, because the wait for GTA 6 (13 years and two months) is longer than it took Rockstar to get from the very first top-down GTA in 1997 all the way to GTA 4 in 2008.
Mind the gap(s)
We've used each game's original release date, going with the month for the early PC and PlayStation games where sources only agree that far, and we've left out handheld spin-offs like Liberty City Stories and Chinatown Wars so it's a fair fight between the main entries.
| Game | Released | Gap since the last main GTA |
| Grand Theft Auto | November 1997 | n/a |
| GTA 2 | October 1999 | About 2 years |
| GTA 3 | October 2001 | 2 years |
| GTA: Vice City | October 2002 | 1 year |
| GTA: San Andreas | October 26, 2004 | 2 years |
| GTA 4 | April 29, 2008 | 3 years, 6 months |
| GTA 5 | September 17, 2013 | 5 years, 4 months (1,967 days) |
| GTA 6 | November 19, 2026 | 13 years, 2 months (4,811 days) |
For most of the series' life a new GTA turned up every year or two, and Rockstar put out GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas in the space of three years, which feels almost unthinkable now. GTA 3 arrived in October 2001 and GTA 5 in September 2013, so Rockstar released five mainline games in 11 years and 11 months, and the GTA 6 wait beats that whole run on its own by more than a year.
It's also nearly two and a half times the five years and four months between GTA 4 and GTA 5, which felt like an age back then (we were young and naive, clearly).
A whole console generation came and went
The easiest way to picture the gap is to look at everything that launched while GTA 5 held the fort, and the list is longer than a Los Santos traffic jam.
| When | What happened while we waited |
| November 2013 | PS4 and Xbox One launch, two months after GTA 5 |
| November 2014 | GTA 5 comes to PS4 and Xbox One, with PC following in April 2015 |
| March 2017 | Nintendo Switch launches |
| October 2018 | Red Dead Redemption 2 launches |
| November 2020 | PS5 and Xbox Series X|S launch |
| February 2022 | Rockstar confirms the next GTA is in development |
| March 2022 | GTA 5 lands on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, its third console generation |
| December 2023 | The first GTA 6 trailer goes live |
| May 2025 | GTA 6 slips from fall 2025 to May 26, 2026 |
| June 2025 | Nintendo Switch 2 launches |
| November 2025 | GTA 6 is delayed again, to November 19, 2026 |
| November 2026 | PS5 passes 100 million consoles shipped |
Put another way, the PS4 launched, shipped more than 117 million consoles according to Sony's own figures and got replaced by the PS5, which passed 100 million shipped this week, all before GTA 6 turned up. GTA 5, meanwhile, kept selling across all three of those generations, passing 230 million copies by the summer according to Take-Two figures reported by Game Developer, and Simulation Daily says the latest results have it at almost 235 million.
Rockstar wasn't exactly on holiday
It would be a bit unfair to paint those 13 years as Rockstar sitting with its feet up, because the studio shipped Red Dead Redemption 2 right in the middle of them, which Take-Two's latest results put at more than 89 million copies, and kept GTA Online going with years of free updates. Take-Two has argued before that GTA Online's steady stream of content is why the long gap hasn't hurt the series, as GamingBolt reported at the time, and with GTA 5 still selling like it's 2013, the numbers are hard to argue with.
Games are also far bigger than they were in 2001, and the roughly 80-hour campaign Rockstar has talked about (which is why GTA 6 works out at about $1 an hour) isn't something you knock out between one October and the next. The two delays added about a year on top of the original fall 2025 window, too, and plenty of fans will happily take a later game if it's a better one.
Still, the numbers are the numbers, and if GTA 7 takes as long as GTA 6 did, you'll want to keep a space free in your diary for early 2040.
GTA 6 is out on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S on November 19, and if you haven't sorted your download yet, our guide to the GTA 6 pre-load has everything you need. Well, after 4,811 days, what's one more week?
About The Author
Jake Bannister
Jake is GGRecon's Co-Founder and Operations Director. You'll find him covering our word game brain teasers, as well as sports games such as Football Manager and EA FC. He's also that teammate on your Rocket League team spamming "Wow!".
