Guide

Should I play GTA 5 before GTA 6?

By George In The Meta · 24 Oct 2026

Short answer: yes, I think you should, if you've never played a GTA. Playing GTA 5 and then GTA 6 just warms you back up. That's why I ended up playing it again for a bit myself. If you've played every GTA up to this point, probably not.

Do you need to play GTA 5 to understand GTA 6?

No, you don't need GTA 5 to understand GTA 6. GTA games aren't story progression. It's not like playing Uncharted or God of War, where you need the context from the one before. They happen to have sequential numbers, but they all stand alone.

Is GTA 6 too much to go into blind?

If you've never played any GTA, going straight into GTA 6 blind might be a bit overpowering. But I guess that would be the same for GTA 5, because of how monstrously large these games are now. GTA 5 at least gets you used to how a GTA plays before the new one lands.

Is there time to finish GTA 5 before GTA 6 comes out?

There's just about time to finish GTA 5's story before GTA 6. GTA 6 comes out on 19 November 2026, less than four weeks from when I wrote this. HowLongToBeat puts GTA 5's main story at about 32 hours, so that's roughly an hour and a quarter a day. It's not that long until GTA 6, though, so you could probably just wait. It depends if you want to check GTA out before then.

Should I play GTA 5 story mode or Online first?

Story mode first, for me, though it depends what you're into. Story mode is a really good way to learn what you can do. If you go straight into Online, you're going to be lost a lot of the time, looking for what to do. Story mode gives you a story and some immersion, and it also gives you pointers to the things you can be doing in the world, if you've somehow never played a GTA before.

What did I do in GTA 5 after the story? I ran my own FiveM server

FiveM lets you run your own GTA 5 multiplayer server with your own rules. I ran one with no roleplay. I didn't want to do hardcore roleplay, and I thought the hardcore roleplay servers were doing it wrong anyway. On those you could be a burger flipper, a driver or a lawyer, and you didn't actually do anything. You just got X amount of money per hour, depending on which job you picked.

What I rebuilt was tasks. If you were a bus driver, you had to drive bus routes: I pinned everything on the map that was a bus stop and made each one a spot you had to go to. If you were a tow truck driver, you had to go and tow an actual car. Most of them were get-thing-go-place, because that's the limit of the game, not the mod. But even at the base level, every job had stuff you actually had to do, rather than just pretend.

I added pressure as well. There were more reasons you needed money, like bills, and things to spend what you'd earned on to make your character better. And every 7 days, everyone turned into a zombie, so you had to prepare yourself to survive however long that went on for.

Dying cost you too. You could only die so many times a day before it started costing you money, and every time you died, your death timer got longer. On the roleplay servers, someone has a gun and you're meant to go "tee-hee-hee, they have guns, I wouldn't run at them". But you totally would, because it's GTA. On mine you didn't, because you don't want 5 minutes on the death screen when you've already died 3 times today.

So while it wasn't roleplay, it was more true to what roleplay is actually meant to be, and more hardcore.

GTA 5 before GTA 6, in numbers