There’s been some confusion leading up to the 2026 Game Awards about whether Grand Theft Auto 6, the most anticipated game release ever, would qualify for competition at host and creator Geoff Keighley’s showcase. That’s because it comes out on November 19 and nominations for the awards ceremony are usually due around the same time. If GTA 6 didn’t make the cutoff, it would be banished to next year’s Game Awards, forcing it to contend with 2027 games nearly 12 months after the initial hype. Here’s why that won’t end up being the case.
A section on the Game Awards FAQ page lists the eligibility cutoff for the 2026 show, and it seems almost tailor-made to accommodate GTA 6:
Games must be made commercially available to customers on or before Friday, November 20, 2026, at 9 p.m. PT. In the Players’ Voice category, games must ship on or before November 30, 2026.
Since GTA 6 comes out on November 19, it clears the first hurdle. It’s worth noting that this cut-off date is much later than last year’s. For the 025 Game Awards, nominations had already been released by November 17, so that entire phase of the voting has been pushed way back.
There is still another part of the timing to consider. The critics who vote on the awards (Kotaku does not participate) also need to be able to play the games they vote on to form an opinion on them. Every outlet handles this differently. Some circulate a ballot and do it pretty democratically. Others have certain senior people who pick which games to support. No one can play everything that comes out in a given year, however, so often there is some level of deferring to the one or two people who actually reviewed or finished a game to decide if it merits nomination for a particular category or to win it altogether.
Rockstar Games has touted GTA 6 as a long game with a massive map that incentivizes multiple playthroughs, a big task for any reviewer, but especially for any outlet that wants to get multiple opinions on a game prior to casting its final votes for the Game Awards. According to industry leaker NateTheHate, codes for the game could be going out to media and creators before the end of October. That would provide the other piece of the puzzle in terms of outlets actually getting enough time with GTA 6 to make a real assessment of its quality.
By sneaking in just under the deadline, GTA 6 is also entering one of the weaker GOTY fields in recent years. While Resident Evil Requiem and Control Resonant have both received rave reviews, there aren’t necessarily clear frontrunners as there have been in some past years with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, and Baldur’s Gate 3. The people wasting their money on prediction markets currently give GTA 6 a 68-percent chance of winning before anyone’s even gone hands on with it.
Just over a month to go to find out if Rockstar’s latest can live up to the hype.