Rockstar has never announced a specific date for when Grand Theft Auto 6 entered production. The company typically begins serious work on its next major title shortly after finishing the previous one. GTA Online continued to receive major updates through the 2010s, which suggests full-scale development on GTA 6 may have started later than some fans assume.
Public evidence points to at least 2014 as a likely starting point. In 2014, Rockstar registered trademarks and filed patents related to a project codenamed “Project Americas.” That name appeared in court documents from a 2018 lawsuit. The documents described a map set in Vice City and South America, which aligns closely with the game’s final setting in Leonida. However, those filings do not confirm when coding began.
Press reports from 2022 and 2023, including from Bloomberg and Kotaku, claimed that Rockstar had been in “early development” for several years before announcing the game in December 2023. Those reports are consistent with a 2014 or 2015 start, but they are not official statements. The game’s full release on November 19, 2026, means a production cycle of roughly 10 to 12 years under that estimate. Rockstar itself has only said the game was “in development” before the first trailer dropped.