There are two orders, and they answer different questions. Release order tells you what Rockstar shipped and when. Story order tells you when each game happens inside its own world.
You get both below, complete, with the spin-offs and the handhelds included. You also get the thing most lists quietly skip: this series is three separate worlds, so there is no single timeline running from 1997 to 2026. Any list that hands you one is inventing it.
Every GTA game in release order
Dates below are the first commercial release of each game, on its first platform.
| # | Game | First released | Universe |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grand Theft Auto | November 28, 1997 (PC, Europe) | 2D |
| 2 | GTA: London 1969 | April 30, 1999 (PC, PlayStation) | 2D |
| 3 | GTA: London 1961 | July 1, 1999 (PC only) | 2D |
| 4 | GTA 2 | October 22, 1999 (PC, PlayStation) | 2D |
| 5 | GTA III | October 22, 2001 (PS2) | 3D |
| 6 | GTA: Vice City | October 29, 2002 (PS2) | 3D |
| 7 | GTA Advance | October 26, 2004 (Game Boy Advance) | 3D |
| 8 | GTA: San Andreas | October 26, 2004 (PS2) | 3D |
| 9 | GTA: Liberty City Stories | October 25, 2005 (PSP) | 3D |
| 10 | GTA: Vice City Stories | October 31, 2006 (PSP) | 3D |
| 11 | GTA IV | April 29, 2008 (PS3, Xbox 360) | High definition |
| 12 | GTA IV: The Lost and Damned | February 17, 2009 (Xbox 360) | High definition |
| 13 | GTA: Chinatown Wars | March 17, 2009 (Nintendo DS) | High definition |
| 14 | GTA: The Ballad of Gay Tony | October 29, 2009 (Xbox 360) | High definition |
| 15 | GTA V | September 17, 2013 (PS3, Xbox 360) | High definition |
| 16 | GTA Online | October 1, 2013 | High definition |
| 17 | GTA VI | November 19, 2026 (PS5, Xbox Series X and S) | High definition |
Seventeen releases in twenty-nine years. Eight of them are mainline entries: GTA, GTA 2, III, Vice City, San Andreas, IV, V and VI.
Two of those dates land on the same day. GTA Advance and San Andreas both arrived in North America on October 26, 2004, one on a Game Boy Advance cartridge and one on a PS2 disc. Rockstar shipped a top-down handheld prequel and the biggest PS2 game ever made in the same week.
Which platforms each game landed on
The table above lists first platforms only, because most of these games kept moving for years afterwards.
| Game | Original platforms | Later platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Grand Theft Auto | MS-DOS, Windows | PlayStation, Game Boy Color |
| GTA: London 1969 | PC, PlayStation | Standalone PS1 version, 2000 |
| GTA: London 1961 | PC | None |
| GTA 2 | Windows, PlayStation | Dreamcast, Game Boy Color |
| GTA III | PS2 | PC, Xbox, mobile, remaster |
| GTA: Vice City | PS2 | PC, Xbox, mobile, remaster |
| GTA Advance | Game Boy Advance | None |
| GTA: San Andreas | PS2 | PC, Xbox, mobile, remaster |
| GTA: Liberty City Stories | PSP | PS2, mobile |
| GTA: Vice City Stories | PSP | PS2 |
| GTA IV | PS3, Xbox 360 | PC |
| The Lost and Damned | Xbox 360 | PS3, PC |
| GTA: Chinatown Wars | Nintendo DS | PSP, iOS, Android |
| The Ballad of Gay Tony | Xbox 360 | PS3, PC |
| GTA V | PS3, Xbox 360 | PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS5, Xbox Series |
| GTA Online | PS3, Xbox 360 | PS4, Xbox One, PC, PS5, Xbox Series |
| GTA VI | PS5, Xbox Series X and S | Nothing announced |
Rockstar has not announced a PC version of GTA 6. Every recent GTA has eventually reached PC, so plenty of people assume it, and an assumption is all it is right now.
Why some of these dates differ from other sites
Two reasons, and both are worth knowing before you argue with anybody about them.
The first is regions. The early games shipped months apart in different territories. The original Grand Theft Auto reached Europe on PC on November 28, 1997 and North America on March 24, 1998, which is why you see both 1997 and 1998 given as its release year. Neither is wrong. They are different launches.
The second is that two PS2-era dates are genuinely disputed, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
- GTA III. Rockstar’s own game page and most databases give October 22, 2001. Wikipedia’s infobox says October 23, 2001. I use October 22 because that is the date on Rockstar’s side of the argument.
- Vice City. Wikipedia and several release databases give October 29, 2002 for North America. The main fan wikis give October 27, 2002. The 29th has more sources behind it, so that is what I use, and I am flagging the split rather than hiding it.
Both games also carry a piece of real history in their timing. GTA III was originally scheduled for early October 2001 and moved back roughly three weeks while Rockstar reviewed its content after the September 11 attacks.
GTA games in chronological order
Here is the part that breaks most lists.
Rockstar rebooted this series at GTA 4. It described its own catalogue on its Newswire as the worlds interpreted at different definitions, 2d, 3d and high definition, and it ruled out characters moving between them: we felt brands and radio / back ground characters would exist in both, but 3 dimensional characters would not. Then it applied that directly: so no, we don't believe any GTA3 characters could exist in the GTA4 universe.
So there is no one chronology. There are three, one per world, and events in one do not cause events in another. Vice City in 1986 does not lead to GTA 6, even though both are set in a city called Vice City. The full model, including the honest limits of it, is in the GTA timeline explained.
2D universe, in story order
| Game | Set in |
|---|---|
| GTA: London 1961 | 1961 |
| GTA: London 1969 | 1969 |
| Grand Theft Auto | 1997, by inference |
| GTA 2 | Unspecified |
Two labels there need explaining. The original GTA never states a year, and it plays as contemporary, so 1997 is a reading rather than a fact. GTA 2 is worse. Its own materials pull in different directions, from a near-future framing of a few weeks ahead to a 2013 setting quoted in other sources, and the game itself talks about a new millennium still to come. Anybody giving you a confident year for GTA 2 has picked one.
3D universe, in story order
| Game | Set in |
|---|---|
| GTA: Vice City Stories | 1984 |
| GTA: Vice City | 1986 |
| GTA: San Andreas | 1992 |
| GTA: Liberty City Stories | 1998 |
| GTA Advance | 2000 |
| GTA III | 2001 |
This is the one era where a chronological playthrough genuinely pays off. The 3D games share a world and they reference each other on purpose. Ken Rosenberg works for Tommy Vercetti in 1986 Vice City and turns up again in 1992 San Andreas. Vice City Stories runs two years before Vice City and stars Lance Vance’s brother Victor. Liberty City Stories runs three years before GTA III in the same city, with the same mob families.
One caveat on GTA Advance. It is a Game Boy Advance game developed by Digital Eclipse, set in Liberty City in 2000, a year before GTA III. Slotting it into the 3D universe is the community’s call based on that setting, not something Rockstar has ever spelled out.
High definition universe, in story order
| Game | Set in |
|---|---|
| GTA V prologue | 2004 |
| GTA IV | 2008 |
| The Lost and Damned | 2008, alongside GTA IV |
| The Ballad of Gay Tony | 2008, alongside GTA IV |
| GTA: Chinatown Wars | 2009 |
| GTA V main story | 2013 |
| GTA Online | 2013 onward |
| GTA VI | Present day |
The two GTA IV episodes are not sequels. They run at the same time as the main game, in the same Liberty City, and the three stories intersect. Play GTA IV first anyway, because the episodes are written on the assumption that you know what happened in it.
GTA Online is the strange one. It launched two weeks after GTA V and it has kept moving forward ever since, which makes it the only GTA that is set in a moving present rather than a fixed year. That matters more than it sounds. It is where Rockstar has quietly kept updating what happened to old characters, and it is the reason we can say anything at all about where Michael De Santa and Franklin Clinton are today.
The spin-offs and handhelds, in one place
Completeness is the whole point of a list like this, so here is what each of the smaller entries actually is.
GTA: London 1969 is the only GTA set outside the United States. It moves the original game to 1960s London, drives on the left, and needed a copy of the first game to run. A standalone PlayStation version followed in 2000.
GTA: London 1961 is a free PC download released in July 1999. It is the smallest and least-played thing with the GTA name on it, and it is also the earliest point on any GTA timeline.
GTA Advance is the 2004 Game Boy Advance game, built by Digital Eclipse rather than Rockstar’s own studios. It went back to a top-down view for hardware reasons, in a Liberty City that GTA III had already shown you in 3D.
GTA: Liberty City Stories and GTA: Vice City Stories are the PSP pair from Rockstar Leeds and Rockstar North, both later ported to PS2. They are prequels to games you had already played, in cities you already knew, which is a harder trick than it sounds. Vice City Stories gave Victor Vance a full game after Vice City opened with his death.
GTA: Chinatown Wars is the 2009 Nintendo DS game, and it is the best of the spin-offs by a distance. It is set in GTA IV’s Liberty City, minus Alderney, in 2009, and it uses a top-down camera in a world built from 3D geometry. It scores 93 on Metacritic, which puts it above two mainline entries.
Remasters, ports and re-releases
None of these are new games, and none of them change the order above. They are worth knowing about because they are how most people play the older games now.
| Release | Date | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| GTA IV: Episodes from Liberty City | April 13, 2010 | The two GTA IV episodes bundled, playable without the base game |
| GTA V on PS4 and Xbox One | November 18, 2014 | Second-generation version, first-person mode added |
| GTA V on PC | April 14, 2015 | Eighteen months after the console launch |
| GTA: The Trilogy, The Definitive Edition | November 11, 2021 | Remasters of III, Vice City and San Andreas |
| GTA V on PS5 and Xbox Series | March 15, 2022 | Third-generation version |
| The Trilogy on mobile via Netflix | December 14, 2023 | iOS and Android, with a Netflix subscription |
| GTA V Enhanced on PC | March 4, 2025 | The current PC version |
GTA V is the outlier in gaming history here. One game, three console generations, twelve years of continuous release, and Take-Two’s annual report for the year ended March 31, 2026 puts it past 225 million units sold in.
How many GTA games are there?
It depends on what you count, so here are the honest numbers.
- Eight mainline games, counting GTA VI, which is not out yet.
- Seventeen distinct releases, counting expansions, episodes and handheld spin-offs, as listed above.
- Sixteen you can actually play today. GTA VI arrives on November 19, 2026.
If someone tells you there are six GTA games, they are counting the numbered ones and dropping Vice City and San Andreas, which is a strange way to treat two of the best games in the series.
What order should you play them in?
Release order, with one adjustment. Start with GTA IV.
The reason is simple. The high definition games are the ones that hold up mechanically, and they are the ones connected to GTA 6. Play GTA IV, then its two episodes, then GTA V. That is a straight run through the world GTA 6 is set in, and it takes you from 2008 to 2013 in the same continuity.
Then go back for San Andreas, Vice City and GTA III if you want the era that built the template. Play those in release order rather than story order, because GTA III came first and the two prequels assume you know its city and its mob families. Skip nothing in the 3D era if you have the time. It is six games and they talk to each other.
The 2D games are history rather than entertainment now. Play the first one for twenty minutes to see where this came from, and do not feel obliged to finish it.
If you only want the shortest path to being ready for GTA 6, it is GTA V, then GTA IV. Nothing older is required, because nothing older is connected.
Where GTA 6 fits
GTA 6 is the eighth mainline game and the newest entry in the high definition universe. It launches November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, and it is set in the present day in Leonida, following Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos.
It shares a world with GTA 4, GTA 5 and GTA Online. Rockstar’s own site says as much without meaning to, in Lucia’s bio: More than anything, Lucia wants the good life her mom has dreamed of since their days in Liberty City. Liberty City is this universe’s city, built in GTA IV in 2008.
That is a statement about which world she lives in. It is not a hint that anybody from the old games appears, and Rockstar has confirmed no returning characters for GTA 6 at all.
Where to go from here
If you want to know why the reboot happened and what it rules out, read the GTA timeline explained. It is the page that makes the three tables above make sense.
If you want an argument instead of a reference, I ranked all of them from worst to best in GTA games ranked, with the criteria stated up front so you can tell me exactly where I am wrong.
And if you are here because you are trying to work out who could show up in GTA 6, the eligibility list is who should return in GTA 6. The order above is most of the answer. Wrong universe, no entry.