There is no official start date from Rockstar, but the earliest credible reports point to 2014. That year, Rockstar North began pre-production on a follow-up to GTA V, according to a 2022 Bloomberg report by Jason Schreier. The team was small at first, working on concepts and technology while most staff focused on Red Dead Redemption 2, which released October 26, 2018.
Full production kicked off in earnest after RDR2 shipped. Schreier’s reporting says the entire studio moved onto GTA 6 around late 2018, with a target of a 2023 or 2024 release at that time. That schedule slipped, leading to the May 2022 announcement that the game was in “active development” and the eventual November 19, 2026 launch date.
So the practical answer: pre-production from 2014, main development from about 2018, and roughly eight years of total work before release. That matches Rockstar’s pattern. GTA V took about five years from full production to launch, and GTA VI is a larger, cross-generational project that also absorbed pandemic-era delays and internal restructuring reported in 2022.