The road to GTA 6: every mainline Grand Theft Auto in order, and what each one left behind

Grand Theft Auto VI arrives on November 19, 2026, twenty-five years after the game that invented its template. Five mainline entries sit between GTA III and Leonida, and each one handed something specific down the line. The Classics page has a page for every one of them; this is the short version.

Grand Theft Auto III (2001): the open world

The game that took GTA into three dimensions and, along the way, invented the modern open world. A silent protagonist, a betrayal, and a Liberty City you could simply drive into and ignore the plot. Everything since has been a refinement of what III did first, including the wanted stars: III had six of them, and GTA 6 goes back to that number.

Vice City (2002): the city as a character

Built on III's engine in under a year and set in 1986, Vice City proved that place and period could carry a game: neon, pastel, Ray Liotta as Tommy Vercetti taking the city one business at a time. It is the blueprint for empire-building, and it is the city GTA 6 returns to, rebuilt from scratch in the present day. That one-year turnaround resurfaced this week in coverage of Rockstar's Bloomberg interviews, as the precedent for reusing GTA 6's technology rather than rebuilding it.

San Andreas (2004): scale and systems

Three cities, RPG stats, gang warfare and a jetpack. The most ambitious PlayStation 2 game ever made, still the platform's best seller, and the first GTA built as a whole state with several cities rather than one. Leonida picks that idea back up.

Grand Theft Auto IV (2008): realism and physics

Niko Bellic, Euphoria physics and a hard turn toward a grounded tone. A Metacritic 98, two standalone episodes, and the technical groundwork for everything after. It was also the last six-star game until now: IV replaced the military with NOOSE and the FIB at the top of the meter.

Grand Theft Auto V (2013): three leads and a living world

Los Santos and Blaine County, three protagonists you could switch between, and an online mode that kept the game at the top of the charts for over a decade. GTA V dropped the wanted meter to five stars; GTA 6 restores the sixth. Thirteen years separate its launch from GTA 6's, the longest gap in the series, and Rockstar has said the next game after GTA 6 will not take as long.

What GTA 6 takes from all of them

A six-star meter from III, a Vice City from 2002, state scale from San Andreas, the grounded physics line from IV, and two switchable protagonists from V's three. The map page shows where it all lands.

Read about each game on the Classics page