30 Things to Do Before GTA 6: Your GTA 5 and GTA Online Bucket List

Short version: beat the GTA 5 story (or play it through a second time), finish whatever GTA Online goals still matter to you, and take care of three chores, which are linking your Rockstar Games account, moving PS4 progress to PS5, and freeing up drive space. The rest is bonus material: older GTA games, a trailer rewatch, the Extended Look on August 27. Only have two weeks? Do items 1, 9, 18, 20, and 29. Have the full 90 days? Go top to bottom.

A note on priorities before you start. GTA Online is staying online. Take-Two has said so more than once, and its pre-order announcement pitches the free GTA+ month as the best way to enjoy the “ever-evolving world of GTA Online.” Nothing on this list vanishes on November 19. Think of it as a way to make the wait count, with a bias toward things that feel better before GTA 6 than after, like seeing the GTA 5 finale again before Jason and Lucia take the wheel. The one thing that does not make sense is buying GTA$ today hoping it will be worth something in a game with no published rules.

1. Beat the story. If you never saw the credits roll, this is job one. Figure roughly 25 to 35 hours for the main campaign, more if you explore. 2. Replay the North Yankton prologue and The Jewel Store Job. In about 90 minutes they explain why GTA 5’s heist formula became the template for the whole series. 3. Blitz Play, the armored-truck ambush with Michael, Franklin, and Trevor all in play, is still the best character-switch mission Rockstar has made. 4. The Paleto Score, which is a small-town bank, full body armor, and a minigun. It is loud and ridiculous, and it rules.

5. End on The Big Score, and make a point of playing both setups. Subtle and Obvious are basically separate missions, so reload your final save and run the one you skipped. 6. Catch the Strangers and Freaks you blew past: Michael’s Epsilon Program, Trevor’s Rampages, Franklin collecting spaceship parts for Omega. 7. One session with no mission marker. Drive up Mount Chiliad, catch the sunset at Vespucci Beach, ride the cable car, run a triathlon. Los Santos still feels incredibly alive in 2026, and that is the bar Leonida has to clear.

9. The Kortz Center Heist. The July 14, 2026 summer update (title update 1.73) added a new full heist to GTA Online, and it is almost certainly the last major one before GTA 6. If you want one big crew night on the calendar, this is it. 10. Run the classic heists start to finish: The Fleeca Job, Prison Break, Humane Labs, Series A, and Pacific Standard are the foundation everything since was built on. 11. The Doomsday Heist, all three acts. 12. Cayo Perico, solo works fine. 13. The Diamond Casino Heist through all three approaches, since Silent & Sneaky, The Big Con, and Aggressive play like three different jobs.

14. Use the weekly bonuses. Rockstar updates GTA Online every Thursday; coverage of the current week lists the Brand Wars event running August 20 through 26. Double-payout weeks are the fastest route to filling those last garage slots. 15. Do not buy Shark Cards for GTA 6. Rockstar has said nothing about GTA$, characters, or rank moving into GTA 6, and the franchise has never done a carry-over before (GTA IV to GTA V, Red Dead Redemption to RDR2). Buy credit for what you will actually spend now. Our transfer guide covers everything known and unknown on that front.

16. Spend the GTA$ you have instead of sitting on it. Right now that balance is worth something in GTA Online and nowhere else. Oppressor, yacht, Agency, whatever you kept putting off, this is the window. 17. Save some memories. Grab Snapmatic photos and clips of your favorite spots, your crew, and that last heist that finally went clean. It sounds sappy, but most players will log into their Online characters a lot less after November 19. The game keeps going; your playtime is probably moving to Leonida.

18. Link your Rockstar Games account. Your PSN or Xbox profile should already be connected to a Rockstar account, since migration, GTA+, and the pre-order bonus all run through it. 19. Turn on two-step verification and verify your email so you are not stuck in a password reset at midnight on launch night. Both steps are in our Rockstar account checklist. 20. Move your PS4 progress to PS5. As of June 2026 the PS5 upgrade for GTA 5 is reportedly free, and Sony’s product page describes moving Story Mode and GTA Online progress as a one-time migration. No deadline has been announced, which is exactly why you should not wait until November. Walkthrough: transfer GTA 5 from PS4 to PS5.

21. Clear drive space. Rockstar has not published a file size for GTA 6. If your internal SSD is packed with GTA 5, Online, a Call of Duty, and a couple of shooters, open up generous headroom before November 12 or plan on an SSD expansion. 22. Schedule the preload. Digital pre-orders can start preloading November 12, 2026, and the boxed code-in-box version (no disc) goes on sale the same day at retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, Walmart, and Target, with no guarantees on stock or price from us. 23. Watch the GTA+ renewal. The free month bundled with digital pre-orders auto-renews at $7.99 a month, so set a reminder if you do not want to keep it.

24. GTA: Vice City – The Definitive Edition. The obvious pick, because GTA 6 goes back to Vice City, now part of the state of Leonida. The 2002 original is only available as the Definitive Edition (standalone or in the Trilogy), and the story runs roughly 15 to 20 hours. The Vintage Vice City Pack, with its reportedly Tommy Vercetti-inspired weapon finish, hits differently when you actually know Tommy. 25. GTA: San Andreas, if you want to see where the idea of a full state with multiple cities started; figure about 30 hours.

26. GTA IV plus its episodes if you have never been to Liberty City, around 30 hours for the main story, playable through backward compatibility on Xbox and on PC. 27. The order when time is tight: Vice City, then GTA 5 again, done. With more time: Vice City, San Andreas, GTA IV, GTA 5. Every hour count here is a rough player estimate, not an official number. Whether GTA 5 is still worth starting fresh in 2026 gets its own guide. The short answer is yes: it lists at $39.99 on the PlayStation Store, is included with PS Plus Extra, and reportedly goes on sale often.

28. Rewatch Trailer 1 and Trailer 2 with a notepad. Trailer 1 (December 2023) introduced Lucia and the feel of Leonida; Trailer 2 (May 2025) brought in Jason, daytime Vice City, and the supporting cast. Both live on Rockstar’s official YouTube channel. 29. Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look on August 27, 2026. It premieres on Netflix at 3 p.m. ET / 12 p.m. PT and hits Rockstar’s own channels at 9 p.m. ET / 6 p.m. PT. Rockstar has not said what it contains. Full details are in our Extended Look article.

30. Read the official GTA 6 site. Rockstar has introduced the cast there, meaning Jason Duval, Lucia Caminos, Cal Hampton, Boobie Ike, Dre’Quan Priest, Real Dimez, Raul Bautista, and Brian Heder, plus the regions of Leonida: Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia, and Mount Kalaga National Park. That is the only reliable source for story and map details. Everything beyond it is leak material or speculation, and we file both under unconfirmed.

To keep this honest, here is the open list as of August 21, 2026. There is no official statement on whether GTA$, characters, or rank from GTA Online carry into GTA 6. No online mode has been announced for GTA 6; Rockstar calls it a single-player experience. No PC version has been announced. The file size is not public. Nobody has said whether the PS4-to-PS5 migration has a cutoff. And the ESRB rating still shows as pending on the US PlayStation and Xbox stores.

If any of that changes, this page and the linked guides get updated. Until then, the rule is simple: play GTA 5 and GTA Online for what they are today, not as a down payment on a game whose terms have not been published.