Which GTA Online heists now pay more — and when does the bonus reset?
The Kortz Center Heist is the headline of this update. The change that will affect more players sits further down the patch: eleven existing Heists and missions now pay substantially more the first time you complete each of them each week, and the whole thing resets every Thursday.
Rockstar has published the list. It has not published the numbers, and it has not explained that the mechanic collides head-on with an older bonus of almost the same name — one that its own support pages still describe. Here is the full list, the reset day, and the difference between the two.
Which GTA Online heists pay more now?
Eleven activities are on Rockstar's list. Each one pays a much higher amount the first time you complete it in a given week, the bonus applies to each activity separately, and the rotation resets every Thursday.
The eleven break down into three generations, which is worth understanding because it tells you what Rockstar is actually trying to fix:
- The five original 2015 Heists — The Fleeca Job, The Prison Break, The Humane Labs Raid, Series A Funding and The Pacific Standard Job. These are the ones nobody has run in years.
- The two big set-piece Heists — The Doomsday Heist (2017) and The Diamond Casino Heist (2019).
- The four recent mission finales — The Cluckin' Bell Farm Raid, The Data Leaks, KnoWay Out and Oscar Guzman Flies Again. This is why Rockstar's own wording is "heists and missions", not "heists": several of these are not Heists in the planning-board sense at all.
After that first weekly completion, the payout drops back to its normal amount. Run The Fleeca Job twice on a Friday and only the first run carries the bonus; run it once on Friday and once on the following Thursday and both do.
This is NOT the first-time completion bonus you already know about
The two mechanics share a name and mean opposite things, so it is worth being exact.
GTA Online has had a "first-time completion bonus" for years: a one-off payment, made the first time you ever finish a given Heist finale, as a permanent once-per-account reward. It never resets. Rockstar's own support article on tracking special Heist completion bonuses still describes exactly that, and so does every wiki and forum answer that ranks for the phrase today.
The new mechanic is a recurring weekly bonus on the first completion of each activity, every week, forever. Same words, different rule. If you search for "GTA Online first time heist bonus" this afternoon you will land on pages — including an official Rockstar one — that answer the old question and quietly give you the wrong model of how your money now works.
How much more do they pay?
Rockstar has not said. The word it used is "much higher". There is no multiplier, no percentage and no GTA$ figure anywhere in its materials, and the full patch notes are not out — the reference databases that normally publish them still have the page open, waiting.
We are not going to invent one. What the absence means in practice: every payout table you find in a "best heist" guide right now was written under the old economy and has not been updated. The figures in them are not wrong because the guides are bad; they are wrong because the rules changed this morning and nobody has re-run the maths yet.
Cayo Perico is not on the list
The Cayo Perico Heist — the most farmed money-maker in the game since December 2020, and the one every "best heist to do in 2026" guide still recommends — does not appear anywhere in Rockstar's list of eleven.
Be precise about what that means, because the distinction matters. Rockstar has not announced a Cayo Perico nerf. It has not said "we are excluding Cayo Perico". It simply did not list it. The Heist works exactly as it did yesterday; what has changed is everything around it.
That is still a significant shift. Cayo Perico has been the default answer to "what should I grind?" for five and a half years, largely because Rockstar kept nerfing its payout and it still won on time-to-money. If eleven other activities now carry a substantial weekly bonus and Cayo does not, then the honest answer to "which Heist should I run this week?" has changed for the first time since 2020 — and it is no longer a single Heist. It is a rotation.
The full list
| Activity | Generation | Weekly first-completion bonus |
|---|---|---|
| The Fleeca Job | Original Heists (2015) | Yes |
| The Prison Break | Original Heists (2015) | Yes |
| The Humane Labs Raid | Original Heists (2015) | Yes |
| Series A Funding | Original Heists (2015) | Yes |
| The Pacific Standard Job | Original Heists (2015) | Yes |
| The Doomsday Heist | Set-piece Heist (2017) | Yes |
| The Diamond Casino Heist | Set-piece Heist (2019) | Yes |
| The Cluckin' Bell Farm Raid | Mission finale | Yes |
| The Data Leaks | Mission finale | Yes |
| KnoWay Out | Mission finale | Yes |
| Oscar Guzman Flies Again | Mission finale | Yes |
| The Cayo Perico Heist | Set-piece Heist (2020) | Not on Rockstar's list |
What this actually changes about how you play the week
The old GTA Online money loop was: find the single most efficient activity, and repeat it until you are bored or rich. That is why the game's economy has been "Cayo Perico, over and over" for years, and it is why Rockstar has spent five years nerfing it.
The new loop is structurally different. Because the bonus applies to each activity separately and resets weekly, the highest-value week is no longer one activity repeated. It is eleven different activities, once each. Rockstar has built an incentive to go back through content it spent a decade making and that most of the player base abandoned — which is transparently the point.
Two practical consequences, both of which follow from what Rockstar has confirmed rather than from any number we are guessing at:
- Variety is now worth money. Grinding one Heist eleven times this week earns the bonus once. Running eleven different ones earns it eleven times.
- Thursday is the reset. That is the same day GTA Online's weekly event refresh has always landed, so the two now stack: the new week's discounts and bonuses arrive at the same moment your eleven first-completions become available again.
And the Kortz Center Heist itself? Rockstar won't say
The Heist that this whole update is named after is the one activity whose payout Rockstar has published nothing about. No GTA$ figure, no RP figure, before or after launch — while claiming it "offers the highest potential rewards of all Heists released so far".
It is also the most expensive Heist to set up in the game's history: a Mansion (from GTA$11,500,000) plus the Art Studio (GTA$4,700,000) is around GTA$16,200,000 before you steal a single frame. We have taken that apart in detail, including the discounts that stack and the numbers other outlets are quietly inventing, in our full breakdown of the Kortz Center Heist. If you want the building itself — the real Los Angeles museum it copies, and the mission that leaves a helicopter in its fountain — that is a separate story.
Everything else in the update
Two more things shipped alongside the payout changes.
Six new vehicles, all at once, with no drip-feed: the Grotti Veleno GT (GTA$3,090,000, HSW-eligible, free for GTA+ members from 14 July and on general sale from 21 July), the Benefactor LRC GT (GTA$2,650,000), the Grotti Cartuccia GT (GTA$2,395,000), the Ocelot E-Stride (GTA$1,425,000), the Albany Merula (GTA$1,394,000) and the Benefactor Läufer (GTA$645,000). Rockstar says the Veleno GT is "expected to be among the fastest in its class" — that is a marketing line, not a test, and no independent top-speed data has been published. Missile lock-on jammers are also coming to more vehicles, and more previously removed cars are returning to the in-game stores; Rockstar has published neither list.
The Mission Creator got the strangest update of the year. Creators can now place warp points to move players between areas and fake elevators and building entrances, dress players in disguises that stop NPCs recognising them, build CCTV stealth and camera-hacking sequences, and use up to five cutscenes instead of three, with specific tasks assigned to players during them. Props can slide, move and rotate. And the new cast of actors includes zombies with dedicated behaviour, Santa, elves, Krampus, the Yeti, Sasquatch and aliens — plus a UFO prop, in July.
What to watch
Three things will settle over the next week, and we will update this page as they do:
- The size of the bonus. Once players run the same Heist on either side of a Thursday, the multiplier becomes measurable rather than guessable. That is the number everyone actually wants.
- Whether Cayo Perico stays off the list. Rockstar has not commented on the omission, and the weekly event schedule is the obvious place for it to change quietly.
- The Kortz Center payout. The full patch notes are still not published.
If you are wondering how much life GTA Online has left in it, that question is worth separating from this update: Rockstar has said nothing about winding the game down, and the announcement does not mention GTA 6 at all. Our guide to what GTA 6's online mode is expected to be covers what is and is not known there.
