GTA 6 Unlock Times Revealed: PS5 Staggered, Xbox 'New Zealand Trick' Still Works

Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 6 will unlock at different times around the globe on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, according to details published by Eurogamer. The digital launch will not be simultaneous worldwide, and the difference can be as much as 19 hours depending on your account’s region.

On PS5, GTA 6’s digital version is tied to the PlayStation Store region where the pre-order was made. GTAVice.net extracted the full list of 15 regional launch times, showing the first unlock at 11am UTC on 18th November and the last at 6am UTC on 19th November. This means New Zealand players get in first, with access at midnight NZDT on 19th November (which is still 18th November in many other territories). Mexico and several Central American countries are last in line, unlocking at midnight CST on 20th November.

Players hoping to jump the queue by physically being in another country won’t have any luck if their PlayStation account region is elsewhere. For example, a Canadian player with a UK-registered PSN account will unlock the game according to the UK’s schedule. The regional split has previously caught players off guard, especially after Rockstar and retailers clarified that physical code-in-box copies are also region-locked in some countries.

Some territories, including Bahrain, China, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman and Qatar, lack visible release times on their PlayStation Store pages. In other cases—like The Philippines, Russia, Serbia and Vietnam—the store pages redirect to other countries’ stores, making the unlock time less clear.

For Xbox owners, the situation is different. The Xbox platform allows users to change their region via the console settings. As Eurogamer reports, this means that by switching their console’s region to New Zealand, players can access GTA 6 as soon as it launches there—an old tactic familiar to fans of annual Call of Duty releases. Unlike PlayStation, Xbox does not lock digital purchases to a specific regional store, so the workaround still applies for GTA 6.

This staggered approach means that social media and streams will see a wave of early access gameplay from New Zealand-based or region-swapping players, nearly a day before the latest unlocks. For PlayStation players, the only way to play early is to have pre-ordered from a region that unlocks first, regardless of their physical location.