Music has been a cornerstone of the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) experience since GTA III (2001), with radio stations providing both diegetic atmosphere and a player-driven soundtrack. Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA VI), scheduled for release on 19 November 2026 (Rockstar Games, 2026), is expected to dramatically expand the music ecosystem of Vice City and Leonida. While Rockstar has not yet disclosed the full feature set, evidence from official promotional material, the September 2022 leaks, prior franchise iterations, and industry reporting points to a layered music-switching system built around a radio wheel, a favourites/playlist system, mood- and context-based switching, and personal device playback (wireless earbuds). This report synthesises the available information on how players will switch between music sources in GTA VI and contextualises these options within the design heritage of the series.
Music switching in GTA refers to the suite of input mechanics and UI affordances that allow the player to change the audio source playing in or around the protagonist — most commonly while driving. Since GTA V (2013), this has predominantly meant the radio wheel, but Rockstar has progressively layered additional systems (Self Radio, Los Santos Rock Radio favourites, the Cayo Perico tape deck) on top (GTA Wiki, 2026a). With Leonida's expanded scale, contemporary 2020s social-media setting, and a story partially built around the fictional hip-hop label Only Raw Records (Rockstar Games, 2026), GTA VI is widely expected to evolve these systems significantly.
The radio wheel is the canonical music-switching interface in modern GTA. Introduced in GTA V, it is summoned by holding a controller bumper (L1/LB) or a keyboard hotkey, slowing time and presenting a circular menu of available radio stations from which the player selects one using the right analog stick (GTA Wiki, 2026b). Station tiles display the station's logo and currently playing track metadata.
Leaked footage from September 2022 — confirmed by The Guardian and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier to be authentic in-development material (MacDonald, 2022; Wikipedia, 2026) — depicted the GTA VI test builds using placeholder radio stations carried over from GTA V and GTA Online, including Blonded Los Santos 97.8 FM, iFruit Radio, Music Locker Radio, and Non-Stop-Pop FM (GTA Wiki, 2026a). The presence of a fully functioning radio wheel in pre-alpha builds strongly implies the wheel will return as the primary switching interface. The leaks also revealed one non-GTA V track audible in a vehicle — Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" (1972) — suggesting station previewing will function similarly to prior titles (GTA Wiki, 2026a).
The wheel is expected to expand: Trailer 2 alone introduced six confirmed licensed songs, including Tom Petty's "Love Is a Long Road", The Pointer Sisters' "Hot Together", Wang Chung's "Everybody Have Fun Tonight", and Tammy Wynette's "Talkin' to Myself Again" (Wikipedia, 2026; GTA Wiki, 2026a), spanning country, new wave, R&B, kompa (Zenglen's "Child Support") and classic rock. Such genre breadth maps onto the long-rumoured 15–20 station count anticipated by industry observers (Henderson, 2024, cited in GTA Wiki, 2026a).
A persistent player complaint across GTA V was the inability to mark favourite tracks or skip songs without changing stations. Rockstar partially addressed this in subsequent updates and in the Cayo Perico Heist DLC, which introduced a personal media stick / "Music Locker" allowing curated track playback during the heist mission (GTA Wiki, 2026b). On PC, GTA V additionally shipped with Self Radio, where users could drop MP3 files into a folder for in-game playback alongside licensed stations (Rockstar Games, 2015).
For GTA VI, expectations centre on a fully featured favourites/playlist system. The official Rockstar website depicts Lucia Caminos wearing wireless earbuds (Rockstar Games, 2026), interpreted by the GTA Wiki community as evidence of a personal-device music feature — effectively a portable playlist that travels with the character on foot, not only inside vehicles (GTA Wiki, 2026a). This would mirror the trend in open-world games (e.g. Cyberpunk 2077's personal radio implant) toward decoupling music from vehicles. Combined with the confirmed prominence of Only Raw Records and the Real Dimez rap duo in the narrative (Rockstar Games, 2026), a likely scenario is that players will be able to "favourite" tracks heard on the radio, build custom in-game playlists, and switch between radio, favourites, and playlist modes from the same wheel — extending what was a single-ring menu into a multi-tier selector.
A more speculative but well-evidenced category is mood- or context-based switching, where the game (or the player via a single command) selects music suited to the current activity. GTA V already implemented limited context awareness: each protagonist had a preferred station (Trevor's Channel X, Michael's Los Santos Rock Radio, Franklin's Radio Los Santos) that auto-played upon entering a personal vehicle, and the score system swelled dynamically during heists (GTA Wiki, 2026b). The leaks confirm GTA VI carries over the RAGE-engine audio infrastructure that powers this dynamic score (Wikipedia, 2026).
Industry commentators expect GTA VI to extend this into explicit mood selection. Schreier (2024), reporting for Bloomberg, noted that Rockstar's audio team has invested heavily in adaptive systems for Leonida's denser ambient world. Possible mood categories — drawing on patterns from Red Dead Redemption 2's tonal score and GTA Online's station rotation — could include "chase", "cruise", "night out", and "stealth", each cued either automatically by gameplay state or selected via a long-press of the radio-wheel button. The promotional emphasis on Vice City's nightlife, strip-club scene, and recording studios (Rockstar Games, 2026) suggests location-triggered switching, where simply entering Boobie Ike's club would shift the diegetic source from in-car radio to club PA without manual input from the player.
The cumulative design heritage matters: San Andreas (2004) pioneered station memory per-vehicle; GTA IV (2008) added Independence FM (the user-import precursor to Self Radio); GTA V introduced the wheel; GTA Online added the Music Locker and Media Stick. GTA VI is positioned to consolidate all of these into a single, unified switching architecture. Anticipated controls therefore include: (i) tap-to-cycle stations, (ii) hold-to-open the wheel, (iii) sub-menu for favourites and personal playlist, (iv) automatic mood/context overrides that the player can disable, and (v) cross-modal continuity, where music started on Lucia's earbuds continues seamlessly when she enters a car.
While Rockstar Games has not formally documented GTA VI's music-switching UI, triangulating across the official website, two trailers, the 2022 leaks, and franchise precedent indicates a sophisticated three-tier system: a returning and expanded radio wheel, a new favourites/personal-playlist layer enabled by character-worn audio devices, and increasingly mood- and context-aware automatic switching. These features collectively promise to make music in Leonida less a passive backdrop and more an interactive, player-curated layer of the experience.
GTA Wiki (2026a) Radio Stations in GTA VI. Available at: https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Radio_Stations_in_GTA_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
GTA Wiki (2026b) Radio Stations in GTA V. Available at: https://gta.fandom.com/wiki/Radio_Stations_in_GTA_V (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
MacDonald, K. (2022) 'Rockstar owner issues takedowns after Grand Theft Auto VI leak', The Guardian, 19 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2022/sep/19/rockstar-owner-issues-takedowns-after-grand-theft-auto-vi-leak (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Rockstar Games (2015) Grand Theft Auto V PC: Self Radio. Rockstar Newswire. Available at: https://www.rockstargames.com/newswire (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
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Schreier, J. (2024) 'Inside Rockstar's Push to Finish GTA VI', Bloomberg, April. Available at: https://www.bloomberg.com (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
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