Grand Theft Auto VI hasn't shipped a single copy yet, but it's already treated like the closest thing to a lock for Game of the Year at The Game Awards. And traders on Polymarket may be right.
On Polymarket's The Game Awards market, GTA VI is at the top, far ahead of the rest. Resident Evil Requiem trails in a distant second, in the low double digits, while Phantom Blade Zero and Marvel's Wolverine sit even further back, both under 10%. That's a wide gap for a game that, as of this writing, exists only in trailers.
The Game Awards: Game Of The Year on Polymarket
GTA VI's Eligibility Comes Down To A One-Day Window
The Game Awards doesn't publish a fixed eligibility cutoff each year, but the pattern from recent shows points to the third Friday of November. Last year, that landed on November 21. If the same rule holds for 2026, this year's cutoff would fall around November 20, only one day after GTA VI is set to launch.
- November 19: GTA VI releases on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, per Rockstar and Take-Two's most recent confirmation.
- Around November 20: where we expect this year's cutoff to land, based on the pattern from past years.
- December 10: The Game Awards ceremony airs live from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
If the timing holds, Rockstar's game squeaks in with almost no room to spare, leaving reviewers only weeks to play, score, and vote on a game its size.
The Hype Machine Has Already Broken Records
GTA VI hasn't needed a release to dominate headlines.
Its first trailer pulled 93 million YouTube views in 24 hours back in December 2023, the most-watched game reveal ever posted to the platform.
The second trailer, dropped without warning in May 2025, topped that: 475 million views across platforms in a single day, more than any movie trailer on record, including Deadpool & Wolverine's 365 million.
Then, in late August, Rockstar gave Netflix an exclusive first look at 26 minutes of gameplay, the first time a major game reveal premiered on a streaming service before YouTube. None of that guarantees quality, but it shows the cultural weight the game carries into a ceremony it might barely qualify for.
Resident Evil Requiem Has the Résumé, Just Not the Buzz
If GTA VI stumbles, Resident Evil Requiem is the clearest alternative.
Capcom's ninth mainline entry launched in February to a 90 on OpenCritic and an 88 on Metacritic, and its 9.3 user score ties last year's winner, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. It has sold more than seven million copies worldwide, among the fastest-selling entries in the franchise's 30-year history.
That's a strong résumé. What it hasn't done is dominate the year's conversation the way a Game of the Year winner usually does.
The Rest Of The Field Hasn't Even Launched
Here's the strangest part of this year's race: most of the games that could challenge GTA VI aren't out yet.
- Marvel's Wolverine (Insomniac): launches September 15.
- Control Resonant (Remedy): launches September 24.
- Phantom Blade Zero (S-GAME): launches October 29, after a delay from its original September date.
Any of them could turn into a real contender once reviews land. Right now, the market is pricing in games almost nobody outside of developer preview events has played.
History's Warning: The 2018 Upset
Favorites don't always win.
In 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2 walked into the ceremony as the presumed lock and walked out with four trophies, just not the big one. God of War took Game of the Year instead, on the strength of a game that felt like a genuine turning point for its genre, not just the year's biggest release.
That's the risk under GTA VI's current price.
Nothing else has broken through yet as this year's God of War moment: a game people talk about as a shift in what the medium can do, not just this year's best-seller. Until something does, GTA VI's scale, pedigree, and marketing muscle keep it as the number the market drifts toward.
Where This Leaves The Race
Grand Theft Auto VI hasn't launched, hasn't been reviewed, and might scrape into eligibility by a single day, and it's still the runaway favorite to win Game of the Year in December. That says something about how much weight the GTA name still carries, and something about how open this race could get once the rest of the field makes its case. Between now and November 19, that's the gap this market will keep trying to price in.
