GTA VI Speedrun Category Predictions: What to Expect from Day One Runners

Speedrunning a Game That Doesn’t Exist Yet

Predicting speedrun categories for a game that has not released is, on its face, absurd. But the GTA speedrun community has evolved so consistently across the last three mainline entries that a surprising amount can be reasoned from precedent alone. This guide walks through the most likely initial categories for GTA VI, what the community will be watching for, and where the biggest day-one route debates are likely to happen.

All category predictions are labeled as speculative. All references to existing GTA games are based on publicly documented routes on speedrun.com and community wikis [1][2].

The Precedent: GTA V

GTA V remains one of the most-run AAA titles on speedrun.com. Its leaderboard structure is the most obvious template for what GTA VI’s initial categories will look like. The active GTA V categories include [1]:

• Any% (No Major Glitches / Glitchless) — roughly 6h 45m at the current world record.
• Any% (Unrestricted) — sub-5h runs using cutscene skips and memory manipulation.
• 100% — all story missions, collectibles, Strangers and Freaks, hobbies, and miscellaneous tasks. Over 9 hours.
• All Missions — all main story missions, no side content. Middle-ground category.
• Solo-character categories — runs that restrict the player to one of the three protagonists wherever the game allows.

Predicted Day-One Categories for GTA VI

Any% (Glitchless)

The most popular and accessible category will almost certainly be Any% Glitchless — complete the credits cutscene as fast as possible without using unintended glitches. Given Rockstar’s recent trend of more cinematic, less skip-friendly opening acts (see GTA V’s intro and RDR2’s prologue), early estimates from the speedrun community forum suggest a world record somewhere in the 6–8 hour range within the first six months. The dual-protagonist structure — if it forces mandatory character swaps — will introduce a new “forced transition” metric that runners will need to route around.

Any% (Unrestricted)

The unrestricted category will emerge within days of launch as the community begins documenting glitches. Based on GTA V’s history, the earliest glitches found tend to be:

• Cutscene skip exploits that advance mission state without playing the mission.
• Out-of-bounds (OoB) travel that bypasses geographic gating.
• Save-corrupt triggers that advance flags artificially.

If Rockstar’s anti-tamper work on GTA VI’s save system is stronger than GTA V’s, this category may develop more slowly than its predecessor.

100%

GTA VI’s 100% category will be the centerpiece for long-form runners. Based on the scale implied by Trailer 1, Trailer 2, and early screenshots, the 100% checklist is likely to include:

• All main story missions.
• All Strangers and Freaks analogue side quests (speculated).
• Collectibles — likely multiple sets of 50–100 items each (see the separate Collectibles Master List guide).
• Property ownership and business completion.
• Hobbies and recreation (likely inheritors of golf, tennis, yoga, and triathlons from GTA V).
• Random events.

Expected world-record length at six months post-launch: 12–16 hours. The larger map and denser activity slate implied by the trailers means a longer 100% than GTA V’s.

All Main Missions

This middle-ground category — all story missions, nothing else — is one of the most popular on GTA V’s leaderboard and will almost certainly appear for GTA VI. It strips away collectibles but retains full narrative pacing, producing runs that are accessible to new runners and watchable for fans who want to see the story played at pace.

Dual-Protagonist Categories

This is the major unknown. If GTA VI’s character swap system is similar to GTA V’s — on-demand swaps outside of missions, forced swaps during certain set pieces — the community will likely develop:

• Lucia-only% — play only Lucia wherever the game allows, force-swap only when required.
• Jason-only% — mirror category.
• Swap Count% — minimize total character swaps throughout the run.

If, however, Rockstar has built a “paired protagonist” model where Lucia and Jason are frequently on-screen together in a tag-team configuration, solo-character categories may be mechanically impossible. The community is actively debating this based on Trailer 2 footage [3].

Heist% and Story Chapter Splits

Based on the heavily heist-driven structure implied by trailers, expect “First Heist%” and “All Heists%” categories, similar to how GTA V runners use the Merryweather and Pacific Standard jobs as natural splits.

Glitch Hunting: Where the First Skips Will Appear

Speedrun history suggests the first major glitches in a Rockstar title tend to cluster around:

• Mission triggers — mission state advancing without completing objectives, usually via save/load manipulation or early-skip cutscene timing.
• Interior loading — the interior-to-exterior handoff is historically a rich source of OoB glitches in Rockstar titles.
• Vehicle clipping — high-speed collisions with terrain seams frequently produce OoB travel in GTA V and RDR2.
• Swap-based desyncs — if character swap works the way it did in GTA V, the cinematic “zoom out” during swaps is a likely vector for state manipulation.

The community has already drafted a “glitch watchlist” on GTAForums of specific moments from the trailers where routers want to test behaviors — coastal highway collision seams, interior-to-exterior mission transitions, and the water-to-land handoff visible in the swamp-boat sequences.

The Tool-Assisted Side

A Tool-Assisted Speedrun (TAS) leaderboard for GTA VI is unlikely to appear on speedrun.com directly — the platform has historically separated TAS and RTA runs — but a TAS community will emerge on TASVideos.org within the first year if the PC version is moddable enough. The primary obstacle is the game’s expected heavy reliance on online authentication and anti-cheat, which makes frame-perfect scripted input harder to deploy than on older titles [2].

Expected Community Infrastructure

Drawing from the GTA V community, expect the following to appear within the first weeks:

• A dedicated GTA VI speedrun Discord with several thousand members at launch.
• A speedrun.com leaderboard with initial categories drafted by senior GTA V runners.
• Live tournament events from community organizers — GTAMarathon has run GTA speedrun events for a decade and is likely to pivot quickly [1].
• Charity marathon slots at Summer Games Done Quick and Awesome Games Done Quick within 12–18 months, assuming a run time short enough to fit a marathon slot.

The Record-Setters to Watch

The GTA V any% scene has been dominated in recent years by a small group of runners whose optimizations are so tight that shaving seconds requires weeks of routing. These same runners — along with top RDR2 runners — are the most likely faces on the GTA VI leaderboard in its first year. Expect quick movement from the GTA V and RDR2 any% communities, slower onboarding from the GTA IV and San Andreas scenes, and a wave of new entrants attracted purely by GTA VI’s popularity.

Predictions Summary

• Day one (May 26, 2026): Any% Glitchless runs appear within 24 hours. Initial world records will be messy — 9–12 hours — because no one has routed the full game yet.
• Week one: Routes stabilize. Community consensus forms on which cutscenes are skippable. Rough Any% WR settles in the 7–9 hour range.
• Month one: First major glitches catalogued. Any% Unrestricted branches off from Glitchless.
• Month three: 100% runs appear from long-form runners. Initial record well over 20 hours before optimization.
• Year one: Leaderboards fully mature. Glitchless Any% in the 6–7 hour range, Unrestricted Any% in the 4–5 hour range, 100% in the 12–14 hour range.

Sources

1. speedrun.com leaderboards for Grand Theft Auto V, Grand Theft Auto IV, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Red Dead Redemption 2 (public as of 2026).
2. TASVideos.org community documentation for Rockstar-engine titles.
3. Community discussion threads on GTAForums regarding Trailer 2 and the dual-protagonist mechanic, 2025–2026.

All category predictions in this article are speculative and labeled as such. Only references to existing GTA and RDR speedrun categories are documented facts from the cited sources.