Both GTA 6 Trailers, Broken Down: What Rockstar Showed and What Fans Found

Some trailers announce a game. Others stop the internet for a day. Rockstar has shown Grand Theft Auto VI exactly twice, and both times the second thing happened: three Guinness World Records for the first trailer, nearly half a billion views in 24 hours for the second. Here's a proper look at what each GTA 6 trailer actually shows, what Rockstar confirmed alongside them, which songs they use, what the community dug up frame by frame — and where things stand on the question everyone keeps asking: when is trailer 3 coming?

GTA 6 Trailer 1: the reveal that broke the internet

The first trailer had an official date and time: December 5, 2023, at 9 AM Eastern. It never got there. The night before, a watermarked copy started spreading on X, and Rockstar did the only sensible thing left — it published the real trailer on the evening of December 4, 2023, almost fifteen hours early, and had the leak taken down. Even a sabotaged premiere couldn't dent what followed.

In roughly ninety seconds, set to Tom Petty's Love Is a Long Road (1989), Rockstar established three things that will define the game:

• Lucia, introduced in the Leonida Penitentiary answering a counselor's question — "Do you know why you're here?" "Bad luck, I guess" — and the first female protagonist in the mainline series.
• Leonida, Rockstar's fictional take on Florida, described that same day as home to "the neon-soaked streets of Vice City and beyond."
• A very deliberate tone: the trailer is packed with in-engine recreations of real viral Florida videos — the woman twerking on a moving car, the guy lifting weights on his porch, street takeovers, police chases livestreamed by NPCs… and yes, the alligator strolling through a convenience store's front door, instantly the reveal's defining meme.

The closing shot — Lucia and a then-unnamed Jason robbing a store together while she talks about trust — made the criminal-couple premise unmistakable. The end card said "Coming 2025" on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. That date would move, twice, but we'll get there.

The records Trailer 1 set

The numbers were so absurd that Guinness World Records officially certified three of them:

• 90,421,491 views in 24 hours on YouTube — the most-viewed video game reveal in the platform's history within a day.
• The most-viewed non-music video in 24 hours ever on YouTube, taking the crown from MrBeast (the all-time record still belonged to a music video).
• Nearly 9 million likes in 24 hours — more than any game trailer before it.

It cleared 100 million views in under a week and has long since passed 275 million. It even spawned its own sideshow: a face-tattooed Florida man nicknamed the "Florida Joker" publicly claimed a character in the trailer copied his likeness. Nothing came of it, but the memes ran for weeks.

GTA 6 Trailer 2: Jason, Lucia and the whole state of Leonida

The second trailer is a masterclass in damage control. On May 2, 2025, Rockstar announced the game was slipping from fall 2025 to May 26, 2026, and the disappointment was enormous. Four days later, on the morning of May 6, 2025 — with zero warning — Trailer 2 dropped. The conversation flipped from "another delay" to "look at this" in a matter of minutes.

Set to Hot Together by The Pointer Sisters (1986) — Spotify reported a 182,000% spike in streams that week — the trailer finally gave the pair their full names: Jason Duval and Lucia Caminos. He picks her up outside the Leonida Penitentiary ("I'm here for Lucia Caminos, she's supposed to be getting out"), and from there the video builds a modern Bonnie and Clyde story: Jason's dead-end life in the Leonida Keys, a gas-station stop complete with a parking-lot alligator, Vice City at night, a masked robbery being livestreamed by a bystander, and intimate couple moments — the dance, the motels — that make it clear the relationship is the beating heart of the game.

It also showed a different side of the map: Mount Kalaga National Park (kayaking, fishing, mountain trails), the Grassrivers wetlands, "VC-86" license plates nodding to 1986's original Vice City, and a level of lighting, skin and crowd detail that pushed Rockstar into an unusual technical statement to press: the trailer was "captured entirely on a PlayStation 5," split roughly half and half between gameplay and cutscenes.

Everything Rockstar confirmed that day

Trailer 2 didn't arrive alone. The official site relaunched with around 70 screenshots, new artwork, pages for six locations (Vice City, Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga) and a supporting cast nobody had met yet: Cal Hampton (Jason's conspiracy-minded friend), Boobie Ike (a Vice City legend with real estate, a strip club and a recording studio), Dre'Quan Priest (the ambitious boss of Only Raw Records), rap duo Real Dimez, Raul Bautista (a veteran bank robber always recruiting) and Brian Heder, a classic Keys smuggler.

The numbers? Rockstar reported over 475 million views in 24 hours across all platforms — beating the previous record holder, the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer (365 million). On YouTube alone it did around 70 million on day one, so Trailer 1's platform record still stands. One honest caveat: that cross-platform figure is self-reported by the studio, and Sony has since topped it with the Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer in March 2026. The trailer wars are very real.

What the community found, frame by frame

Few fanbases dissect a video like GTA's. The frame-by-frame threads on Reddit and YouTube have surfaced details Rockstar has never commented on:

• A DVD of Meltdown — Michael De Santa's movie from GTA V — tucked into a shelf in official artwork.
• A tattoo on Cal Hampton's knee that many fans swear is Piggsy from Manhunt.
• The community "Mapping Project," which cross-references trailer shots and screenshots to estimate a map roughly twice the size of GTA V's. Worth stressing: that's a fan projection — Rockstar has never given numbers.
• And the fandom's most beloved tradition: hunting for hidden dates in moon phases, clocks, even palm-tree counts. Confirmed hits so far: zero. Will they stop? Also zero chance.

When is GTA 6 Trailer 3 coming out?

The short answer, as of today: it hasn't been announced. The community was convinced it would land on June 25, 2026, when pre-orders opened — it didn't (what we got instead were confirmed prices: $79.99 for the Standard Edition, $99.99 for the Ultimate, plus the Vintage Vice City Pack pre-order bonus). Industry press currently points to a window between late July and mid-August 2026, likely story-focused — but that's speculation, not an announcement. The moment there's an official date, you'll read it here and on our GTA 6 hub, which we keep permanently up to date.

Quick answers about the trailers

What song is in the GTA 6 trailer?

Trailer 1 uses Love Is a Long Road by Tom Petty (1989). Trailer 2 uses Hot Together by The Pointer Sisters (1986). Both picks lean into Vice City's retro-modern identity.

Are the trailers real gameplay?

According to Rockstar, Trailer 2 was captured entirely on a standard PS5, with an even mix of gameplay and cutscenes. No external CGI.

When does GTA 6 come out?

The current official date is November 19, 2026 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, after two delays (first from fall 2025, then from May 26, 2026). No PC version has been announced. You'll find the full, always-current state of the game on our permanent GTA 6 guide.

Spotted a detail in the trailers we missed? The community forum is the place to argue about it — and if mods are your thing, we're already building the GTA 6 mods section for launch day. Plenty of the trailer's standout shots happen on the water, and we unpack what they reveal in our guide to GTA 6's water physics and weather. Much of that background activity lines up with the leaked GTA 6 world events list.