Three months have passed since Rockstar released the second trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI. Since then, no additional information has come to light, and the silence is all the more aggravating for fans. It appears all over the Internet that people are asking the same questions: when will the third trailer come out? And when will pre-orders finally open? Rockstar, as usual, has said nothing. They are keeping all this under wraps until it is time, leaving us to guess by historical reasoning.
The way Rockstar precedes earlier games gives us a pattern to consider. For GTA V, the third trailer landed on May 1, 2013. Then the game was launched on September 17, roughly four and a half months later. In the case of RDR 2, the third trailer showed up on May 3, 2018, while the game was revealed to the world on October 26, almost six months after that. The two went pretty much in line with one another. The third trailer has always started the final spurt of marketing before the release.
Pre-ordering has similar exceptions. GTA V pre-orders started on 5 November 2012, almost a year ahead of the release, although the game was eventually pushed from a spring release in 2013 to September. Red Dead Redemption 2 pre-orders started in late June 2018, roughly four months before the game was out. The gaps have not always been the same, but Rockstar typically leaves a small margin between pre-order and release.
If this same pattern applies to GTA VI, then we could make a conjecture. Rockstar has already set its May 2026 date as the release date. Therefore, this means the third trailer and pre-orders will probably arrive sometime between November 2025 and January 2026. That should leave Rockstar around five to six months for hype building for the eventual release of the game.
Expectations are in place for some teases, even if the trailer does not drop before the end of this year. Teasers have always been tiny in nature: screenshots, artworks, and promotional posters, which keep the hype train rolling. Accordingly, I think we will see something, even if it is not a full-blown trailer, before the year wraps up.
Of course, there is still the possibility of a delay. GTA V itself slipped from spring to fall 2013, and Rockstar only confirmed that release date in January that year. Recently, a comment from a former Rockstar developer, Obi Vimage did referred to GTA VI and the speculation of it slipping into 2027. He suggested that Rockstar set May 2026 pretty confidently and cautiously. If anything changes, it will most likely be decided only five months before its release, so any delay talks will remain speculation till December 2025.
This waiting game is also part of Rockstar’s tradition. Keeping the mystery alive for us, who have followed Rockstar games since the PS2, has added so much hype due to the silence. The longer they maintain that silence, the bigger the reaction will be to the next trailer. That certainly will not be a small moment; it will probably mark the turning point in the marketing of GTA VI.
As it stands, GTA VI is on track for May 2026; the next trailer would lay out the framework, and pre-orders would soon follow. What remains, for now, is to watch actively and wait, based on the historical perspective of Rockstar. The ongoing silence can be annoying, but a great billboard for the preparation of something big.
GTA VI is, in reality, closer than it seems now. It is the locust time for Rockstar when everything will just blossom in front of them. So now, they are just clear with one judgment-the day they have decided to break the silence is yet to be decided. You may also be interested in: Atlus Preparing Next Chapter With Metaphor ReFantazio And Classic Game Revivals
