Grand Theft Auto VI releases at midnight local time on 19 November 2026, in every region, on both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. That is the wording on a Rockstar Support page last updated on 3 November. On 10 November PlayStation added that its launch rolls from country to country, starting in New Zealand.
What the pages say
Rockstar Support's page on regional pre-load and release times gives three lines. On PlayStation 5, digital pre-load began at midnight local time on 10 November. On Xbox Series X|S, digital pre-load began everywhere at 12 a.m. GMT on 10 November. The game itself releases at midnight local time on 19 November for both consoles.
PlayStation's GTA VI support page says the same for PS5: the game releases at midnight local time on 19 November, and pre-load started at midnight local time on 10 November. In its blog post of 10 November, PlayStation says it has adopted a rolling midnight launch by country. It begins at 12:00 a.m. NZDT in New Zealand and runs across the globe as each country reaches midnight on 19 November.
Xbox runs a second clock for streaming. Xbox Wire says the game is playable on day one through Xbox Cloud Gaming on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, starting at 1 a.m. ET on 19 November. That is one hour after midnight on the US East Coast. The Xbox One cloud gaming article covers how that works.
Midnight in other time zones
Midnight at the start of 19 November, converted to UTC with the standard time-zone offsets in force on that date. The conversions are ours, not Rockstar's.
| Place | Local midnight | UTC |
|---|---|---|
| New Zealand (NZDT, UTC+13) | 19 Nov, 00:00 | 18 Nov, 11:00 |
| Sydney (AEDT, UTC+11) | 19 Nov, 00:00 | 18 Nov, 13:00 |
| Tokyo (UTC+9) | 19 Nov, 00:00 | 18 Nov, 15:00 |
| Central Europe (CET, UTC+1) | 19 Nov, 00:00 | 18 Nov, 23:00 |
| United Kingdom (GMT) | 19 Nov, 00:00 | 19 Nov, 00:00 |
| US East Coast (EST, UTC-5) | 19 Nov, 00:00 | 19 Nov, 05:00 |
| US West Coast (PST, UTC-8) | 19 Nov, 00:00 | 19 Nov, 08:00 |
For players in the Americas and Europe, the first launch in New Zealand falls on the evening of 18 November. Your console follows its own region and clock, so use the unlock time page for your own conversion.
What the pages do not say
Neither Rockstar nor PlayStation publishes a country-by-country table in the pages we read. Neither says how a country with several time zones is handled, so the United States, Canada, Australia and Brazil could each mean one time or several. Rockstar's page also does not mention the day-one patch or any install step on launch night. Pre-loading is open, and the pre-load guide covers the steps. If you hit a stalled download on the night, where to check server status lists the pages to look at first.
Planning around it
- Pre-load first. Rockstar says the pre-load file needs up to 212 GB, and the game starts as soon as midnight arrives in your time zone, so do not leave the download for launch night. Details are in pre-load starts 10 November.
- Check your time zone against the table. PlayStation says the rolling start follows each country as it reaches midnight, so the table above is the order in which regions begin.
- If you plan to stream on Xbox One, the start is 1 a.m. ET, not midnight.
Update, 10 November
The PlayStation Blog post that describes the rolling midnight start went up on 10 November, the day pre-loading opened for everyone with a digital pre-order. We added it here and left the original 3 November Rockstar Support wording as the base of the article.