GTA 6 100% completion: what GTA 5 and Red Dead 2 demanded

Rockstar Games has published no 100% completion criteria for Grand Theft Auto VI. Read on September 7, 2026, 73 days before the November 19 launch: no categories, no percentages, no stated reward, and the words “checklist” and “100% completion” appear nowhere on the official Only in Leonida page.

One checklist has been reported inside the game, and it covers animals. Vice reported it on August 27, 2026, the day after the Extended Look: “Wildlife discovered in captivity or out in Leonida can be examined and recorded on a checklist, expanding upon a feature from Red Dead Redemption 2.” So creatures met in cages or in the wild get studied and logged, the way they were in Red Dead Redemption 2. How many species there are is unknown, and so is whatever filling the list unlocks.

Everything else rests on two measurable precedents, and they agree on one point: at Rockstar Games, 100% has never meant doing everything.

What GTA 5 ticked off, line by line

The GamesRadar+ completion guide, dated July 27, 2023, carries the full grid: every story mission with Lester’s assassinations included, Franklin’s side strands (Tonya’s towing jobs, Beverly’s paparazzo runs, Dom’s extreme sports), six off-road races, five street races and four sea races. A player also has to take bronze across three rounds per weapon type at the shooting range and in all 12 flight school lessons, hand Omega the 50 spaceship parts, gather the 50 letter scraps and buy five money-generating properties.

The rest of the grid settles for a fraction of what the game holds, which is where the word completion misleads.

Game and line	What the game holds	What 100% asked for
GTA 5, stunt jumps	50	25
GTA 5, under the bridges	50	25
GTA 5, knife flights	15	8
GTA 5, random events	57	14
Red Dead 2, compendium animals	178	50
Red Dead 2, plants	43	20
Red Dead 2, weapons	59	48
Red Dead 2, cigarette card sets	12	1

Red Dead Redemption 2 and its half-filled compendium

The GamesRadar+ guide of May 6, 2020 splits the bar into five categories: Missions and Events, Collectables, Compendium, Player, Miscellaneous. The first asks for the 107 story missions, 10 Stranger strands even though the game holds more, 5 bounties, 25 chance encounters, 6 gang hideouts and exactly one ambush.

The last category reads like a shopping list: five shacks, four table games, six recipes to craft, four kinds of robbery, one show, one bath. The same guide flags a trap that will matter for GTA 6 if the studio keeps the rule: once a cheat code is active, progress stops counting and future trophies and achievements are locked out.

What GTA 6 already shows

Three known pieces of the game fall into those boxes. The wildlife list, reported by Vice. The fishing challenges and their collectibles, mentioned on September 3, 2026 by GameSpot after Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, without being named or counted. And the Classic Car Collection, which is not part of the standard game: Rockstar Games sells it with the Ultimate edition, as a commission from the collector Wyman.

Nelson also warned IGN on August 27, 2026 that plenty of the game is found rather than pointed at: “There’s a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently that we’re not necessarily directing you to through objectives or blips or icons on a map as well. If you take a bit of time and explore you will be rewarded, a lot.” A checklist does not measure that.

Then there is the scale of it. Nelson finished a full playthrough in February 2026, story plus optional goals, in roughly 80 hours, a figure reported by the New York Times and picked up by GamesRadar+ on August 27, 2026. For GTA 5, HowLongToBeat gives 32 hours for the main story and just under 90 for a completionist run, close to triple. No completion time has been measured for GTA 6.

One distinction to close on, because searches keep merging the two: the 100% bar and the achievement list are separate grids. The second one already has bounds, with nothing said by Rockstar Games: Xbox certification requirements, version 16.3 of July 1, 2026, allow 10 to 100 achievements at launch for exactly 1,000 Gamerscore.