Many are predicting that Grand Theft Auto 6 will experience to a straightforward win for Sport of the 12 months in 2026, however some are surprisingly putting their bets elsewhere. Followers have been ready for Rockstar’s subsequent entry within the GTA collection for greater than a decade, and the developer has pushed the discharge date for GTA 6 a number of occasions at this level. Provided that it’s slated to come back out in simply eight months on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Collection consoles, concrete details about the sport has been uncomfortably skinny other than a spare few official trailers. In the meantime, in its relative absence, different contenders have risen to the forefront as potential winners for GOTY at this 12 months’s Sport Awards.
Bets suppose Grand Theft Auto VI may very well be crushed for GOTY 2026
Grand Theft Auto VI has a 46% likelihood to win Sport of the 12 months on the 2026 Sport Awards, in accordance with a market on Kalshi (as of March 30). Whereas the much-anticipated sport is properly forward within the standings, it shockingly doesn’t have half of the full bets. In actual fact, a number of weeks in the past on March 17, GTA 6 solely held 39.2% of the unfold, exhibiting how risky its place has been.
A number of notable opponents for GTA 6 embrace Capcom’s Resident Evil Requiem at 14%, Pearl Abyss’s Crimson Desert at 10%, and Housemarque’s Saros additionally at 10%. Out of the three, Resident Evil Requiem is the least shocking with its excessive Metacritic rating of 89 (PSLS’s Shaan Joshi give it a 9 out of 10) and an overwhelmingly optimistic rating of 96% from person evaluations on Steam. Releasing on February 27, the horror motion title broke information for the franchise with it promoting 5 million copies in simply 5 days, and in mid-March, Capcom revealed that it had exceeded 6 million items in gross sales.
By comparability, Crimson Desert has had a slow-burn method. Early evaluations and impressions for the open-world fantasy sport weren’t as excessive as Resident Evil Requiem’s, however Pearl Abyss has shortly launched patches which have mounted many points with the controls and person interface. Many have pointed to its lovely, scenic, huge landscapes with quite a few factors for exploration on land and within the sky. (As somebody who has already clocked 100 hours within the sport, I’ve been hooked.) Regardless of its flaws in storytelling, it’s shortly turning into a darkish horse for GOTY 2026.
In what’s successfully a non secular successor to 2021’s Returnal, the third-person motion title Saros is a PS5 unique that mixes roguelike components with bullethell gameplay. First revealed in a February 2025 State of Play, Saros follows Arjun Devraj as he makes an attempt to seek for solutions about an off-world colony on Carcosa. The sport expects the character to die after which return to life many occasions over, turning into stronger with every runthrough. It’s nonetheless early to say whether or not Saros, which is slated to launch in April 30, is worthy of a GOTY nomination, however in comparison with a few of the different video games within the guess, it would as properly be forward of schedule.
A lot of the different choices within the guess have an outdoor shot of successful over GTA 6: Management Resonant (4%), Fable (4%), Half-Life 3 (4%), Marvel’s Wolverine (3%), Slay the Spire 2 (3%), The Duskbloods (2%), and Phantom Blade Zero (2%). The remaining acquired lower than 1% of the unfold, together with Pragmata, Cairn, Marathon, and Onimusha Manner of the Sword.
Once more, it’s nonetheless very early to speak about many of those video games, however Management Resonant ought to be within the dialog on condition that the unique 2019 title acquired a number of GOTY awards. The identical goes for Marvel’s Wolverine, which is ready to launch on September 15, given Insomniac Video games’ action-adventure prowess with its Spiderman franchise. We might anticipate their shares to rise, so to talk, as we see extra gameplay footage of each video games and get nearer to their launch date.
GTA 6 might take itself out of the working for GOTY 2026
With the variety of delays that Grand Theft Auto 6 has already skilled, it will not be shocking if Rockstar have been to push it again once more and out of the window for the 2026 Sport Awards altogether. Certain, it will be disappointing, however it wouldn’t be out of step at this level.
As a recap, the developer introduced in Might 2025 that GTA 6 can be pushed again a 12 months to Might 26, 2026, citing that it wanted “additional time to ship on the stage of high quality you anticipate and deserve.” Then in November 2025, six months after the second trailer, Rockstar revealed one other delay for the sport to its present launch date of November 19, citing that it will want “additional months” for sharpening. Whether or not this may occur yet another time is anybody’s guess, although we wouldn’t fault anybody for bracing themselves for one more delay (and a $80 worth level).
What’s been worrying is the dearth of communication or updates in regards to the sport’s progress. In comparison with the leadup for Purple Useless Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto V, each of which took about two years between their first trailers and their official launch, the look ahead to GTA 6 has been longer at three years (yep, Trailer 1 was revealed all the best way again in December 2023). We have now but to see any in-depth trailers for the title, one thing that Rockstar tends to disclose within the months earlier than considered one of their video games come out. If we don’t see any of a majority of these trailers for GTA 6 by the tip of June, followers ought to put together themselves for it to be probably pushed to 2027.
