GTA 6 Reviews — Embargo Date & Review Scores Status

Status on 26 October 2026: no outlet has published a review of Grand Theft Auto VI, because nobody outside Rockstar is allowed to. Rockstar has not announced a review embargo, has not said when critics receive codes, and the Metacritic and OpenCritic pages carry no score. Anything presented as an early verdict is a guess or a fake.

What is confirmed sits around the review window rather than inside it. The game launches on 19 November 2026 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and digital preload opens on 12 November. Reviews of a game this size almost always land before launch, which leaves a window of about three weeks from today.

Rockstar's own history is the only useful guide. Reviews of Grand Theft Auto V appeared on 16 September 2013, one day before release. Red Dead Redemption 2 followed the same pattern in 2018, with reviews on 25 October for a 26 October launch. Both scored 97 on Metacritic. That is precedent, not a promise: a bigger game and a preload a week before launch could move the window either way.

The rumours you will see this week fall into two groups. Insider posts claim review codes will go out soon, and some fans expect Rockstar to talk about it on Thursday 29 October, because the studio has posted something about GTA 6 every Thursday since the Extended Look in August. Rockstar has not announced anything for that date. Treat both as unconfirmed until Newswire or a reviewing outlet says so.

Fake scores spread fastest in the days before an embargo. A screenshot of a Metacritic page with a number on it, a “leaked review” on a forum or a score attributed to a magazine that has not published is not a review. The real thing appears on the outlet's own site, under a named writer, at the same moment as dozens of others.

What reviews will and will not settle: they will tell you how the story, the switching between Lucia and Jason, and the open world hold up. They will not change the price, the editions or the platforms, and they arrive too late to affect the Vintage Vice City Pack, which only requires buying before 20 November. If you are waiting for scores before pre-ordering, you lose nothing by waiting.

When the embargo date is announced, this page gets it at the top with the source. When reviews go live, it gets the aggregate scores and links to the main outlets. Until then, the release-date guide covers the calendar and the file-size guide covers what to prepare on your console.