The Games That Could Beat GTA 6 at The Game Awards

Grand Theft Auto VI is eligible for The Game Awards 2026 and most people have already handed it every trophy after it sweeped this award two years in a row following multiple days, but this year, perhaps more than ever, GTA 6 might find itself falling short of the biggest award of the night. Eligibility, hype and sales doesn't always translate to coronation. 2026 has a field of games that have spent the whole year earning the votes GTA 6 is only now showing up to contest and arguably its biggest competitor releases just weeks before it.

The eligibility itself is a hair's breadth. The game qualifies for 2026 by about a day, launching on November 19 against a cutoff that usually falls on the third Friday of the month. The ceremony is December 10, but the nomination voting happens in early to mid-November, which means most jurors will vote before others have played it. A hundred-hour open world that arrives the day before the deadline is eligible on paper and barely playable in time in practice. It has already missed the Golden Joysticks outright, a ceremony held on November 11, eight days before anyone could buy the game.

History is not on its side either. Grand Theft Auto cleans up at the fan-voted and craft awards and then loses the big peer-voted prize. Grand Theft Auto V took the Golden Joysticks and the Spike VGX top award, then lost Game of the Year to The Last of Us at the industry-voted D.I.C.E. and GDC ceremonies. Grand Theft Auto IV was shut out of those same awards. Only Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 have ever swept all five of the major Game of the Year honors in one season and neither was a GTA, a Rockstar title nor a heavy favorite before their release.

The 2026 field is the real problem for a sweep though. Per Metacritic, the best-reviewed game of the year so far is Hades II at 94. Supergiant's follow-up has had since April to turn critical love into a devoted voting base. Crimson Desert is the dangerous wild card, a Pearl Abyss open-world epic that a Red Dead Redemption 2 veteran reckons could win Game of the Year if GTA 6 "drops the ball." He compares its scale to Red Dead itself. Resident Evil Requiem arrived in February at an 89 with a full year of goodwill behind it and Nintendo's remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the scariest timing play of all, a fresh version of a game that scored a near-perfect 99 on Metacritic, out November 5, so voters will have played it at least two weeks before GTA 6 arrives. Every one of them reaches the voters before GTA 6 does, which is the one advantage GTA 6 cannot buy.

None of this is a knock on the game. GTA 6 may well be a masterpiece and it stands a strong chance of dominating the fan-voted trophies and the craft categories the way recent Rockstar games have. It also gets a proper run at the industry awards that matter most, the D.I.C.E. Awards, the GDC Choice Awards and the BAFTAs, but those ceremonies fall in early 2027, so those are stories for another year. For 2026, the peer-voted Game of the Year looks likely to go to a game that was here for it, which GTA 6 isn't.

So go ahead and expect GTA 6 to own the sales charts, the headlines and the fan awards. Just do not pencil it in for a clean Game of the Year sweep, because the competition is brutal.