Will GTA 6 Win Game of the Year? What 12 Years of The Game Awards Show

GTA 6 can win Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2026: it comes out on November 19, one day before the November 20 eligibility cutoff, and a Rockstar game usually reviews at the top of its year. History is less certain. In 12 years of The Game Awards, the nominee with the highest Metacritic score has never won the top prize on its own, and games released from September to December won 2 times out of 26 nominations. Rockstar's last big game, Red Dead Redemption 2, scored 97 and lost to God of War in 2018.

Is GTA 6 eligible for The Game Awards 2026?

Yes. The Game Awards' rules say games must be "made commercially available to customers on or before Friday, November 20, 2026, at 9 p.m. PT" (The Game Awards FAQ, checked November 10, 2026). GTA 6 launches on November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, the date Take-Two repeated in its earnings release of November 9 (Take-Two, SEC filing). So it competes in 2026, not 2027.

Some older articles still say it may miss the cycle. They were written before The Game Awards published the 2026 date in October, and the cutoff has fallen on the third Friday of November for several years: November 15 in 2019, November 17 in 2023, November 21 in 2025 (GameRant).

The road to that date was long. GTA 6 was first planned for 2025, then moved to May 26, 2026 (announced on May 2, 2025) and to November 19, 2026 (announced on November 6, 2025), with Rockstar citing "the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve" (Gematsu). Pre-load opened on November 10, 2026 (Rockstar Newswire).

How is Game of the Year chosen at The Game Awards?

A jury of more than 100 media and influencer outlets picks the nominees and decides most of the result. Each outlet sends an unranked list of its top five games; the five games that appear on the most ballots become nominees, and a tie can add a sixth. The winner is decided by a blended vote: 90% jury, 10% fans (The Game Awards FAQ).

Two details matter for GTA 6. First, the fan vote is only a tenth of the result, so its popularity alone cannot carry it. Second, nominees are usually announced before the cutoff: in 2025 they came out on November 17, four days before the November 21 cutoff (Engadget). This year that means jurors would vote for nominees before GTA 6 is in shops. The rules allow publishers to give outlets "advance or pre-release access to games for critical evaluation", which is how a game released this late can be nominated at all.

Does the highest-rated game win Game of the Year?

Not on its own, so far. We compared every Game of the Year field from 2014 to 2025, 68 nominees in total, with their Metacritic scores. In none of the 12 years did the single highest-scored nominee win. The top score won four times, and each time it shared that score with another nominee: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey at 97 in 2017, The Last of Us Part II and Hades at 93 in 2020, Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarök at 94 in 2022, Baldur's Gate 3 and Tears of the Kingdom at 96 in 2023.

Scores still matter. Winners averaged 92.2 against 89.5 for the other nominees, and in a typical year the winner was just 1.5 points behind the best score. The jury seems to pick among the best-reviewed games rather than simply the best-reviewed one.

Do games released in November win Game of the Year?

Rarely. Of the 26 nominees released from September to December, 2 won. Of the 42 released from January to August, 10 won. The only winner from November is the first one, Dragon Age: Inquisition, released on November 18, 2014. Fallout 4 (November 2015), Death Stranding (November 2019) and God of War Ragnarök (November 2022) were all nominated and lost.

Late games can also be left out. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order came out before the 2019 cutoff but received no nominations that year, and Demon's Souls and Spider-Man: Miles Morales were passed over in 2020; Polygon linked this to nomination ballots being due in early November (Wikipedia summary of Polygon's report). A game released after the cutoff waits a year, as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (December 2018) did before its 2019 nomination.

GTA 6 is not a typical late release. It has been the most talked-about game in the industry for three years and won Most Anticipated Game at The Game Awards in both 2024 and 2025 (GameRant). Jurors are unlikely to overlook it. The risk is narrower: whether enough of them have played it by the time nomination ballots are due.

Has a Rockstar game won Game of the Year before?

Yes, but not at The Game Awards. GTA 5 won Game of the Year at Spike VGX on December 7, 2013, the show The Game Awards replaced (Engadget). It then lost the top prize at the DICE Awards, BAFTA and the Game Developers Choice Awards in 2014 to The Last of Us (GDC).

Red Dead Redemption 2 is the closer precedent. It scored 97 on Metacritic, had eight nominations at The Game Awards 2018 and won four of them: Best Narrative, Best Score/Music, Best Audio Design and Best Performance. Game of the Year went to God of War, which scored 94 (The Game Awards 2018; Metacritic). Both of Rockstar's last two main releases reached 97, and both lost the biggest award of their cycle to a narrative game from Sony at least once.

Which games could beat GTA 6 in 2026?

On scores, the strongest rival as of November 10 is a remake. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Switch 2, released on November 5, holds 96 on Metacritic. Among new games the best scores are around 89 to 91.

Remakes have been nominated before: Resident Evil 2 in 2019, Final Fantasy VII Remake in 2020 and Resident Evil 4 in 2023. None has won Game of the Year. The large Sony releases that beat Rockstar in 2013 and 2018 are weaker this year: Saros sits at 87 and Marvel's Wolverine at 75 (Metacritic).

What would GTA 6 need to win?

Three things, in order of the calendar.

• —Nomination. Enough of the 100+ jury outlets need to have played GTA 6 before their ballots are due. Insiders report that review copies went out in late October (GameWatcher); Rockstar has not confirmed it.
• —Reviews. If the reported November 18 embargo holds, scores appear two days before the cutoff. At Rockstar's usual 97, GTA 6 would top every new release of 2026. The table above shows that a top score is not enough on its own, but it has never hurt.
• —The jury vote. Jurors have about three weeks with the finished game before the December 10 ceremony. In 2018 they chose God of War over a higher-scored Rockstar game; the question is whether a rival in 2026 has that kind of support. With fans worth 10%, GTA 6's audience can tip a close vote but not reverse a clear one.

The history in this article does not predict a winner. It shows what has mattered before: a score at the top of the field, enough time with the game, and a jury that sometimes rewards something other than the biggest release.

How we counted

We took the Game of the Year nominees and winners for 2014–2025 from The Game Awards' results as listed on Wikipedia, 68 games in total. For each game we used the highest Metacritic score across platforms shown on its English Wikipedia page or, where the page draws from Wikidata, on Wikidata, checked on November 10, 2026. Release month is the release that made a game eligible: the first release date on Wikipedia, except Persona 5 (Western release, April 2017) and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (early access, March 2017). Scores on Metacritic can differ slightly by platform and change over time; the pattern holds with the scores we used, and we note the ties.

What to do next

Note three dates: the nominees in mid-November, the launch on November 19 and the ceremony on December 10. Melbo lists markets on gaming and pop culture alongside sports, politics and the economy; if you are new to them, start with how prediction markets work.