GTA 6 unlocks at midnight local time on PS5, which puts New Zealand 18 hours ahead of the US
PlayStation Store listings in 63 countries show GTA 6 going live at 12:00am local time on November 19, in 15 windows over 19 hours. New Zealand opens first, at 11:00 UTC on November 18. The whole United States shares a single window at midnight Eastern, so the West Coast plays from 9:00pm the night before. Rockstar has confirmed none of it, and nobody has published Xbox times.
GTA 6 goes live on PlayStation 5 at midnight local time, according to the PlayStation Store’s own listings, rather than at one global moment. The fan site GTAVice pulled the release timestamps from the store in 63 countries and regions on September 7, 2026. They fall into 15 launch windows over 19 hours, starting in New Zealand at 11:00 UTC on November 18 and ending in Mexico and Central America at 06:00 UTC on November 19.
That answers the question our release time by timezone page has had open since July, with one caveat that matters: Rockstar has not said any of this. These are store timestamps, and Sony or Rockstar can change a store timestamp at any point before launch.
The 15 windows
Every row is 12:00am on November 19 in local time. The UTC column is when that is.
| # | UTC | Local | Countries and regions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nov 18, 11:00 | NZDT | New Zealand |
| 2 | Nov 18, 13:00 | AEDT | Australia |
| 3 | Nov 18, 15:00 | JST / KST | Japan, South Korea |
| 4 | Nov 18, 16:00 | UTC+8 | Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan |
| 5 | Nov 18, 17:00 | UTC+7 | Indonesia, Thailand |
| 6 | Nov 18, 18:30 | IST | India |
| 7 | Nov 18, 20:00 | GST | United Arab Emirates |
| 8 | Nov 18, 21:00 | UTC+3 | Saudi Arabia, Turkey |
| 9 | Nov 18, 22:00 | UTC+2 | Bulgaria, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Israel, Romania, South Africa, Ukraine |
| 10 | Nov 18, 23:00 | CET | Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland |
| 11 | Nov 19, 00:00 | GMT | Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, United Kingdom |
| 12 | Nov 19, 03:00 | UTC−3 | Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay |
| 13 | Nov 19, 04:00 | UTC−4 | Bolivia |
| 14 | Nov 19, 05:00 | EST | Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, United States |
| 15 | Nov 19, 06:00 | UTC−6 | Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua |
What the table says that the headlines do not
The United States is one window, not four
The US listing unlocks at 12:00am Eastern for the whole country, not at midnight in each US timezone. Converted, that is 11:00pm Central, 10:00pm Mountain and 9:00pm Pacific on Wednesday, November 18. Canada sits in the same window.
It also explains a number that has been floating around since the summer. Screenshots of store listings showing a 05:00 UTC release were read at the time as a possible single global unlock. 05:00 UTC is midnight Eastern. Those screenshots were almost certainly the US store’s window, not the world’s.
Europe splits three ways
Most of the continent unlocks at midnight CET, 23:00 UTC. Finland, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus go an hour earlier, and the UK, Ireland, Portugal and Iceland an hour later. A player in Germany starts an hour before a player in London.
Australia is listed on Sydney time
The Australian listing reads 12:00am AEDT. If the store applies that to the whole country, which is how the listing reads, Brisbane gets the game at 11:00pm and Perth at 9:00pm on November 18. That is our conversion of the listing, not a separate timestamp.
What is not in the data
- Xbox. The pull covers PlayStation only. No one has published Microsoft Store timestamps, and it is not safe to assume they match.
- Six storefronts. Bahrain, China, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman and Qatar showed no timestamp.
- Rockstar. No confirmation, no Newswire post, no countdown. Across past launches that arrived in the final weeks.
- An early boxed copy. The Standard Edition box holds a download code, not a disc, so there is nothing to put in the console ahead of the unlock.
The New Zealand trick, and its catch
Coverage this week is full of ways to play 18 hours early by borrowing New Zealand’s window. What it actually takes:
- On PS5, a second PlayStation account created with New Zealand as its region, because PlayStation does not let you change the country of an existing account. The game then has to be bought again from the New Zealand store, in New Zealand dollars, with a payment method that store accepts. The copy you already pre-ordered stays on your own account.
- On Xbox, changing the console region under Settings, System, Language and location has unlocked other games early, Call of Duty among them. Whether it works for GTA 6 is unknown, PCMag’s Jordan Minor expects Rockstar to find a way to stop it, and with no Xbox timestamps published the window you would be jumping to is itself unconfirmed.
For most people 18 hours is not worth a second copy. The step that actually decides whether you play at your unlock is the preload on November 12, which Rockstar has confirmed.
The full conversion, including what to do if Rockstar publishes a different hour, is on GTA 6 release time by timezone.
Sources
Source: www.gtavice.net
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