30 things to do in GTA 5 and GTA Online before GTA 6 arrives

In one breath: finish the GTA 5 story or play it again, close out the GTA Online goals that still excite you, and do three admin jobs – link your Rockstar Games account, move any PS4 progress to PS5, and clear storage space. Everything else is optional: catch up on older games, rewatch the trailers, sit down for the Extended Look on 27 August. If you only have a fortnight, take items 1, 9, 18, 20 and 29. If you have the full 90 days, work through the list in order.

One thing to keep in mind while prioritising: GTA Online is not shutting down. Take-Two has said repeatedly that it continues after launch, and its own pre-order material calls the GTA+ trial month the best way to get the most out of the “ever-evolving world of GTA Online”. Nothing here disappears on 19 November. Treat the list as a plan for the wait, not a rescue mission – and avoid the one thing that genuinely does not add up, which is buying GTA$ now in the hope it carries into a game whose rules nobody has published.

1. Finish the story. If you never rolled credits on GTA 5, this is the top priority; the main campaign takes roughly 25 to 35 hours depending on how much you wander. 2. Replay the North Yankton prologue and The Jewel Store Job – in about an hour and a half they show exactly why GTA 5’s heist structure worked so well. 3. Blitz Play, the armoured-truck ambush with all three leads, remains the best character-switching mission in the game. 4. The Paleto Score: Paleto Bay bank, body armour, minigun. Loud, silly, brilliant.

5. Save The Big Score for last and play both approaches. Subtle and Obvious are different missions in all but name, and a second run from your last save is the easiest way to see the one you skipped. 6. The Strangers and Freaks you ignored first time around: Michael’s Epsilon Program chain, Trevor’s Rampages, Franklin hunting spaceship parts for Omega. 7. One evening with no objective – drive up Mount Chiliad, watch the sun set over Vespucci, take the cable car, enter a triathlon. Los Santos still feels remarkably alive in 2026, and that is the benchmark you will be comparing Leonida against.

9. The Kortz Center Heist. The summer update of 14 July 2026 (title update 1.73) gave GTA Online a brand-new heist, and it is very likely the last big one before GTA 6. If you want to organise a proper crew night, this is the target. 10. Run the original heists back to back: The Fleeca Job, Prison Break, Humane Labs, Series A and Pacific Standard are the template everything since has borrowed from. 11. All three acts of The Doomsday Heist. 12. Cayo Perico, solo if you like. 13. The Diamond Casino Heist via all three approaches – Silent & Sneaky, The Big Con and Aggressive play like three different jobs.

14. Ride the weekly events. Rockstar refreshes GTA Online every Thursday with bonuses; at the time of writing that is the Brand Wars week running 20 to 26 August, according to coverage. Double payouts remain the quickest way to fill the last few garage slots. 15. Do not buy Shark Cards “for GTA 6”. Rockstar has said nothing about GTA$, characters or rank carrying over to GTA 6, and the series has never done it before (GTA IV to GTA V, Red Dead Redemption to RDR2). If you buy credit, buy it for things you will use now. Our transfer guide lays out everything that is and is not known.

16. Spend your GTA$ rather than hoarding it. As things stand, that balance has value in GTA Online and nowhere else. Whatever was on your wish list – Oppressor, yacht, Agency – now is the time. 17. Capture some memories: Snapmatic shots and clips of your favourite spots, your crew and that last successful heist. Sentimental, yes, but plenty of players will see their Online characters a lot less after 19 November. The game itself carries on; your evenings will most likely move to Leonida.

18. Link your Rockstar Games account. Your PSN or Xbox profile should be tied to a Rockstar account – it underpins migration, GTA+ and the pre-order bonuses. 19. Switch on two-step verification and confirm your email address so you are not stuck in a password reset on launch night. Both are walked through in our Rockstar account checklist. 20. Move PS4 progress to PS5. Since June 2026 the PS5 upgrade for GTA 5 is reportedly free, and Sony’s own product page describes moving Story Mode and GTA Online progress as a one-time migration. Whether there is a deadline is unknown, so do it now rather than in November. Step by step: transfer GTA 5 from PS4 to PS5.

21. Free up storage. Rockstar has not published a file size for GTA 6. If your internal SSD is full of GTA 5, Online, a Call of Duty and a few shooters, clear generous headroom before 12 November or budget for an SSD expansion. 22. Plan the preload. Digital pre-orders can begin preloading on 12 November 2026, and the boxed code-in-box version (no disc) goes on sale the same day at retailers such as Amazon.co.uk, Argos, GAME, Currys and Smyths – none of which we can promise stock or price for. 23. Keep an eye on GTA+. The free month that comes with digital pre-orders auto-renews at £6.99 a month; set a reminder if you do not want to keep it.

24. GTA: Vice City – The Definitive Edition. The natural starting point, because GTA 6 returns to Vice City, now part of the state of Leonida. The 2002 original is only sold as the Definitive Edition these days (on its own or within the Trilogy), and the story takes roughly 15 to 20 hours. The Vintage Vice City Pack – with a reportedly Tommy Vercetti-inspired weapon finish – makes a lot more sense if you know who Tommy is. 25. GTA: San Andreas, if you want to see where the idea of a whole state with several cities came from; roughly 30 hours.

26. GTA IV with its episodes, if you have never visited Liberty City – around 30 hours for the main story, playable via backwards compatibility on Xbox and on PC. 27. A sensible order when time is short: Vice City, then GTA 5 again, done. With more time: Vice City, San Andreas, GTA IV, GTA 5. All hour counts are rough player estimates, not official figures. Whether GTA 5 itself is still worth starting from scratch in 2026 gets its own guide – the short version is yes, and it is reportedly discounted on the PlayStation Store often enough to wait for a sale.

28. Rewatch Trailer 1 and Trailer 2, notebook in hand. Trailer 1 (December 2023) introduced Lucia and the mood of Leonida; Trailer 2 (May 2025) added Jason, Vice City by daylight and the supporting cast. Both are on Rockstar’s official YouTube channel. 29. Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look on 27 August 2026 – it premieres on Netflix at 8pm BST and lands on Rockstar’s own channels at 2am BST on 28 August. Rockstar has not described what it contains. Timings and details are in our Extended Look article.

30. Read the official GTA 6 site. Rockstar has introduced the cast there – Jason Duval, Lucia Caminos, Cal Hampton, Boobie Ike, Dre’Quan Priest, Real Dimez, Raul Bautista and Brian Heder – along with the regions of Leonida: Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga National Park. That page is the only reliable source for story and map. Anything beyond it comes from leaks or guesswork, and we treat both as unconfirmed.

To keep the list honest, here is what remains open as of 21 August 2026. There is no official word on whether GTA$, characters or rank from GTA Online carry into GTA 6. No online mode has been announced for GTA 6; Rockstar describes it as a single-player experience. There is no PC version announced. The file size has not been published. Nobody has said whether the PS4-to-PS5 migration has a cut-off date. And the PEGI 18 shown on the UK PlayStation Store is provisional – the PEGI database has no GTA 6 entry yet.

When any of that changes, this page and the guides it links to will be updated. Until then the rule is simple: play GTA 5 and GTA Online for what they are today, not as an investment in a game whose terms have not been written yet.