GTA 6 launch trailer

Rockstar released the Grand Theft Auto VI Launch Trailer on October 15, 2026. It runs about 90 seconds, Rockstar says it "was captured entirely in-game from a PlayStation 5," and it is scored by "Flower in a Hurricane," a new song from the game's score composers Justice featuring Tame Impala, SZA and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. GTA 6 launches November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. A shorter cut of the trailer aired on television on October 20.

When and where it went live#

It went up on Rockstar's YouTube channel at 6:00 a.m. Pacific (9:00 a.m. Eastern), with a launch trailer page and a Newswire post, and arrived "without any teasing," as Kotaku put it. gHacks reported 1 million YouTube views in about half an hour; the upload showed nearly 52 million when we checked on October 20, 2026.

The story setup#

Rockstar's description opens with "Vice City, USA." and sets up the plot: "Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them. But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a criminal conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida." The couple are "forced to rely on each other more than ever if they want to make it out alive."

Jason gets backstory too. Per Kotaku, he says: "I got in trouble in the army. Didn't leave on the best of terms. They don't give loans or anything to people like me."

What it shows#

• The Keys. The footage opens on The Keys, an area Eurogamer notes had been largely unexplored in earlier trailers and gameplay.
• Heists and chases. Eurogamer picked out heist clips, including a helicopter getaway that appears to go wrong, and a police chase. Dexerto spotted helicopters flying part of a bank vault into a building, expanding on missions shown in An Extended Look.
• Jason and Lucia. The pair share an intimate shower scene. At one point Lucia asks whether they are going to be OK, and the trailer ends with them jumping off a roof into a hotel pool, as gHacks describes.
• Unconfirmed clues. Eurogamer spotted what appears to be an ankle tag on Lucia and a reverse-charge call to Jason, and read them as possible hints at parole or a call from jail. The trailer does not confirm either, and Rockstar has not explained them.

It is also the first GTA 6 trailer to end with a narrator reading out the name, the November 19 date and the M rating, a sign-off Kotaku notes has closed GTA launch trailers since Grand Theft Auto 3. More on the rating in our ESRB story.

The music#

Trailers 1 and 2 used licensed songs, Tom Petty's "Love Is a Long Road" and the Pointer Sisters' "Hot Together," as gHacks points out. This one uses original music from Justice, whom Rockstar's YouTube description calls "composers of the original score," and the single is also on Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album. More in our Flower in a Hurricane story.

PS5 branding, no Xbox#

Pure Xbox pointed out that the trailer starts with a card saying GTA 6 "plays best on PS5," and gHacks noted PlayStation branding at the start and end. Xbox gets no branding, though the game launches on Series X|S the same day, and Rockstar's trailer page carries a "Plays Best On PS5" badge. Pure Xbox's read is that most of the footage comes from a base PS5, not a PS5 Pro.

Reaction#

Some fans called the trailer's soft, smudged-lens look a graphics "downgrade." Kotaku's Lewis Parker argued it is a deliberate image-processing effect, not a step down. Eurogamer called it likely the final trailer before release; Rockstar has not said whether more videos are coming.

Every official video so far is listed in our GTA 6 trailers guide.