Rockstar Games has released the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6, the next game in its generation-defining, open-world crime series, after it leaked early online.
The previous GTA game, Grand Theft Auto V, has sold more than 190m copies since its release in 2013. Combined with its online iteration GTA Online, it is the single-most profitable entertainment product of all time, having generated more than $7.7bn (£6.3bn) for publisher Take-Two.
The GTA 6 trailer teases a 2025 release date, and will return players to Rockstar’s fictional Miami setting, Vice City, which was last seen in 2006’s GTA: Vice City Stories, and the surrounding state of Leonida.
The trailer opens with one of the game’s dual protagonists, Lucia, in a prison uniform, seemingly at a parole interview, and closes with her and a partner holding up a store. In between we see TikTok-esque footage of mostly illegal Floridian antics involving alligators, fast cars, flamingos, strip clubs and rooftop parties. Alternating between sun-kissed beaches and neon signage, it paints a picture of the city’s hard-partying sleaze.
Lucia is the first female protagonist in an open-world GTA game. The original top-down game, released in 1997, featured four female avatars but none of them had voices or personalities.
A press release from Rockstar Games called GTA 6 “the biggest, most immersive evolution of the Grand Theft Auto series yet”. “Grand Theft Auto VI continues our efforts to push the limits of what’s possible in highly immersive, story-driven open-world experiences,” said the studio’s founder Sam Houser.
Appropriately soundtracked by the Tom Petty song Love is a Long Road, the trailer kicks off what will be more than a year of hype-building for the game. The trailer was meant to launch on 5 December, but Rockstar released it 13 hours ahead of schedule after it was leaked on X (formerly known as Twitter), covered in a giant watermark urging people to buy Bitcoin.
Previously, Rockstar suffered a hack that caused about 90 minutes of in-progress footage of the game to leak into the world, and unverified clips have also appeared on TikTok via someone who claimed to be the son of a Rockstar employee.