When Do GTA 6 Reviews Come Out? Review Embargo & Metacritic

Rockstar hasn't announced the GTA 6 review embargo date. That's the date to watch if you want to know whether GTA 6 lives up to 13 years of waiting before you hit play.

What we do have: fresh insider reports, plus two very clear precedents from Rockstar's last two big games. Every claim below is labeled.

Quick answers

When does the GTA 6 review embargo lift?

Not announced. Rockstar and Take-Two haven't published an embargo date, and no official review event has been announced.

What's out there are reports from October 14, 2026:

• ⚠️ Insider Gaming reported that GTA 6 reviews will go live before the November 19 release. It says it knows the preliminary embargo date but chose not to publish it, because the timing could change. It doesn't name its sources.
• ⚠️ Per Notebookcheck, an earlier Insider Gaming piece on the timing was deleted, and insider NateTheHate then clarified that review copies are due to go out by the end of October, more than three weeks before launch.

Neither has been confirmed by Rockstar. We'll treat them as rumors until a date is official.

When do reviewers get GTA 6?

⚠️ Reportedly by the end of October 2026, on PS5 or Xbox. That's a long lead for a game this big. Three-plus weeks gives critics time to get through what Rockstar North's Rob Nelson called an ~80-hour playthrough (how long to beat GTA 6).

It also creates leak risk, which Notebookcheck flagged in its headline. Leaked footage has already surfaced in October (Push Square, Oct 8), and Rockstar hasn't commented. We don't share leaks.

Review copies aren't a back door for you, either. Anyone "reselling" a review code is scamming you: can you play GTA 6 early?

Precedent: GTA 5 and RDR2 review timing

This is history, not a prediction. But Rockstar's pattern is clear.

• GTA 5: GamingBolt and Gematsu both ran their review roundups on September 16, 2013, the day the media embargo lifted.
• RDR2: MP1st reported the embargo time, 4:01 a.m. Pacific on October 25, citing Metacritic's official account.

⚠️ Our estimate: if Rockstar sticks to form, GTA 6 reviews would land a day or a few days before November 19. The reported early review copies could make a longer gap possible. Treat both as guesses.