Eighteen Percent of U.S. Workers Plan to Take November 19 Off for GTA VI
Eighteen percent of American workers plan to take November 19 off to play Grand Theft Auto VI, according to a BambooHR survey of more than 1,500 workers reported by MarketWatch.
The date itself is fixed. In an August 2026 update, Rockstar Games confirmed a November 19, 2026 release on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The game was pushed into November 2026 in a delay announced in November 2025, as Reuters reported at the time.
The purchase and download timeline is also published. Pre-orders were scheduled to open on June 25, 2026 at midnight local time, according to Take-Two's announcement. Take-Two has said pre-loading, which lets players download the game before it unlocks, will begin on November 12, 2026, one week ahead of launch.
Rockstar describes the game as a single-player experience that follows the story of Jason and Lucia. The company released the first trailer in December 2023 and the second in May 2025. A companion release, Grand Theft Auto VI: The Album, is scheduled for November 19 and will include 34 new tracks, according to Rockstar.
For employers, I see a narrow planning problem. A fixed release date, a pre-load window that opens a week earlier, and a single-player game that does not depend on a live player base give anyone who wants to play a clear schedule to work around. An absence on November 19 is easier to approve in advance than one that comes up on the day. Survey respondents do tend to overstate how they will behave, especially when the question is about something discretionary they are looking forward to, so the 18 percent figure is better read as a sign of intent than a headcount of who will actually stay home.
The broader context for Take-Two, the publisher, is that the date has been public for a long time. The open questions are execution: whether the game ships on schedule, and whether demand matches the excitement a survey like this one captures. Personal plans being made weeks before launch are the kind of pre-release signal analysts tend to watch closely.
