Grand theft auto 6 was projected game of the year for 2025… until it was postponed until May 2026. It has since become the presumptive Game of the Year for 2026. Next his last delayin theory, this is a game worth winning at next year's Game Awards. But in practice, the new release date complicates things.
GTA 6 is now scheduled to be released on Thursday, November 19, 2026. At the Game Awards, which is held every year in early December, the deadline to enter the competition is at the end of November. This date is usually set to be a Friday in the third week of November to ensure that the jury has had the opportunity to play the appropriate games by the time nominations and voting are made. Last year, for example, the deadline to qualify was Friday, November 22nd.
You can see where I'm going with this. The likely cut-off date for 2026, if The Game Awards goes as usual, will be Friday, November 20th. The day after that GTA 6 released.
So, Grand theft auto 6 will be eligible for the 2026 award, but he's fine. And that could be a major headache for the show's organizers and its voting jury.
Nominations for the Game Awards are announced in mid-November – this year's nominees will be announced on Monday, November 17th. It follows that the nomination process occurs at the beginning of the month, and voting on the winners occurs after the nominations are announced, around the same time that the selection period ends.
All this is done to ensure that everything is ready for the awards ceremony in early December. This is also planned on the condition that the jury members will have access to early review copies of games released during the first three weeks of November by the time they submit their voting ballots at the beginning of the month.
This is usually true. Usually by mid-November the annual game release calendar comes to an end; Most of the big games that you'd expect to compete for Game of the Year will be out by the first week of November. Excluding December emissions such as Indiana Jones and the Big Circle in 2024 and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond this year, the last major release of the year is usually Call of Duty, which comes out in early to mid-November, a known quantity that rarely poses serious competition outside of the multiplayer and action categories.
Grand theft auto 6 it's completely different. This will be by far the biggest release of the year, certainly in terms of size and possibly the actual size of the game. And with a late-November release date and Rockstar's frequently stalled development process, it's not at all certain that early copies will be available by the time the jury votes on their nominations at the beginning of the month. If the judges haven't played the game outside of the controlled environment of pre-events – which Rockstar rarely does anyway – they'll rightly be reluctant to include it on their ballots.
This leaves The Game Awards organizers with a conundrum. For the biggest game of the year (or even decade) to not compete for game of the year or not be represented at all at the award, despite being eligible, would be absurd. But this is a real possibility. Organizers will hope against hope that Rockstar will release review copies in time. For its part, Rockstar is probably too big to care about Game of the Year – at least enough to adjust its timing around it.
An alternative to The Game Awards would be to move the usual schedule back a week or two to give the jury time to think things through. GTA 6 Right. If the 2026 Game Awards are announced later than usual in December (this year's awards will take place on December 11), we'll understand why.
Or maybe the Game Awards will get lucky and GTA 6 will be delayed until 2027… who knows.
