Grand Theft Auto V
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GTA 5 Walkthrough: All 69 Missions, Gold Medals, Heists and Endings

Everything the campaign decides for you without saying so — the real mission count and why four different numbers are in circulation, how gold medals actually unlock, what every heist pays, which crew members quietly cost you millions, and exactly what each of the three endings deletes from your save.

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By Gerardo Salcido Updated 2026-10-23

Story missions: 69
Heists: 6
Endings: 3
Gold medals available: 115
Items for 100%: 161
Biggest single take: $201.6M

Heist crew artwork: gunmen in gas masks, Lester at his computer and a Bugstars operative — The three roles the planning board sells you — gunman, hacker, disguise. What it never explains is that cost and competence are separate columns. Official Rockstar artwork.

The answer, in one line

Gold medal requirements accumulate across replays. Hit the time target on one attempt and the accuracy target on another and the medal is awarded — you never need a clean single run. This is the single most misstated fact about the campaign.

On the ending: The Third Way is the only one of the three that keeps all three protagonists playable, costs no side content and blocks no trophies. Gold medals → · What each ending deletes →

Rockstar's original gameplay reveal. The switching, the planning boards and the three-way mission structure shown here are still exactly how the campaign works twelve years later.

How the campaign is actually structured

Start with the number, because four of them are in circulation and they are all defensible. 69 is what the in-game 100% Completion checklist and Rockstar Social Club count, and it is the figure to quote. 74 is how many you can actually play on one save. 79 is how many main-story mission files exist. 83 is every story mission including the setups Rockstar leaves off its own list.

The gap is not sloppiness, it is three specific things. Four missions branch into mutually exclusive approaches and the finale branches three ways, so one playthrough physically cannot contain every file. Rockstar omits two heist setups — Fire Truck and BZ Gas Grenades — from the checklist while counting the other thirteen. And the three optional Family Missions (The Good Husband, Doting Dad, Parenting 101) are excluded entirely.

Worth knowing before you plan a route

Lester's five Assassinations are inside the 69. Only The Hotel Assassination is required to advance the story; the other four are optional for the plot but mandatory for completion. They are also the missions tied to the stock market, which is why the order you play them in is worth more than the missions themselves.

There are no acts — and anyone telling you otherwise invented them

This is worth saying plainly because a lot of guides present a three-act structure as if the game shipped with one. It did not. Rockstar never labelled acts, the game never displays them, and the major wikis organise the campaign by protagonist and location instead. Gamepressure and GTABase both use a flat chronological list.

What the campaign does have are hard gates, and those are worth memorising because they control who you can play and when:

Protagonist unlock gates. These are scripted and cannot be reordered.
Gate mission	What it unlocks	Practical effect
Prologue	Michael and Trevor, in the 2004 North Yankton flashback	Tutorial. Neither is available in the present day yet.
Franklin and Lamar	Franklin	Second mission. Your only character for the opening stretch.
Complications	Michael + the switch wheel	Character switching begins here. Michael's mansion becomes a safehouse.
Mr. Philips	Trevor	Trevor's trailer becomes a safehouse — but Michael and Franklin go dark.
Friends Reunited / Fame or Shame	All three, freely switchable	The real start of the open campaign. Fame or Shame also unlocks The Hotel Assassination.

That lockout after Mr. Philips catches people out. The story explains it — Michael and Franklin are lying low after the Jewel Store Job — but if you were mid-way through someone's side content when you triggered it, that content is parked until you clear Trevor's introduction arc.

The switch wheel and when it refuses to work

The wheel has four quarters: Michael, Franklin, Trevor and your GTA Online character, with a number under each showing how many missions that protagonist currently has available. Switching is blocked in five situations, and knowing them saves a lot of confused button-mashing:

Any time you have an active wanted level
During side missions and most regular missions — multi-character missions like Blitz Play are the exception
During friendship activities
During story segments where Michael or Trevor are being hunted by Martin Madrazo's people
Chop appears on the wheel in certain missions but is never controllable

In three-way missions, a character's slot flashing white or red is the game telling you to switch — white for a required action, red for someone about to die. It is the only tutorial you get for the mechanic.

Downtown Los Santos at night, lit windows reflected on the freeway — One city, three lives running in parallel. The campaign’s real structure is deciding whose problem tonight is — the switch wheel is the whole design in one button. Official Rockstar screenshot, GTA V Enhanced.

GTA 6 watch

GTA 6 has two confirmed protagonists, Jason and Lucia. Whether they use anything like this switch wheel is not confirmed — Rockstar has published no systems documentation at all, and the August 2026 gameplay presentation came with no feature breakdown. Treat every "confirmed character switching in GTA 6" headline as a writer's reading of footage. We will update this section the moment there is something official.

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The full mission list in order

Grouped by the unlock gates above rather than by invented acts. Protagonist tags show who you control. Missions marked setup are heist prep; the two Rockstar leaves off the checklist are marked as such.

Story missions in play order. Numbers are play-order positions, not checklist indices. Branching missions are listed together — you play one of each pair.
#	Mission	Plays as	Note
1	Prologue	Michael Trevor	North Yankton, 2004
2	Franklin and Lamar	Franklin	Present day begins
3	Repossession	Franklin
4	Complications	M F	Michael unlocked · switching begins
5	Father/Son	M F
6	Chop	Franklin
7	Marriage Counseling	M F
8	Daddy's Little Girl	Michael
9	Friend Request	Michael	Unlocks hacker Rickie Lukens
10	The Long Stretch	Franklin
–	The Good Husband	Michael	Optional Family Mission — not in the 69
11	Casing the Jewel Store	Michael	Heist 1
12	Carbine Rifles	—	Setup
13	Bugstars Equipment	—	Setup
–	BZ Gas Grenades	—	Setup — not counted by Rockstar
14	The Jewel Store Job (Smart / Loud)	M F	Pick one approach
15	Mr. Philips	Trevor	Trevor unlocked · M and F locked out
16	Trevor Philips Industries	Trevor
17	Nervous Ron	Trevor
18	Crystal Maze	Trevor
19	Friends Reunited	Trevor	Franklin restored
20	Fame or Shame	M T	Michael restored · unlocks The Hotel Assassination
21	Dead Man Walking	Michael
22	Three's Company	All three	First three-way mission
23	By the Book	M T
24	Hood Safari	F T
25	Did Somebody Say Yoga?	Michael
26	Scouting the Port	Trevor	Heist 2
27	Minisub	Trevor	Setup
28	Cargobob	—	Setup (Offshore only)
29	The Merryweather Heist (Freighter / Offshore)	All three	Pays nothing — see below
30	The Hotel Assassination	Franklin	Lester 1 of 5 · story-required
31–34	Boiler Suits · Masks · Trash Truck · Tow Truck	All three	Setups
35	Blitz Play	All three	Heist 3 · unlocks Chef
36	I Fought the Law…	All three
37	Eye in the Sky	F T
38	Mr. Richards	Michael
39	Caida Libre	M T
40	Deep Inside	Franklin
41	Minor Turbulence	Trevor
42	Paleto Score Setup	M T	Heist 4
43	Predator	All three
44	Military Hardware	M T	Setup
45	The Paleto Score	All three	No approach choice
46	Derailed	M T
47	Monkey Business	All three
48	Hang Ten	M T
49	Surveying the Score	All three	Heist 5
50	Bury the Hatchet	M T
51	Pack Man	F T
52	Fresh Meat	M F
53	The Ballad of Rocco	Michael
54	Cleaning out the Bureau	Michael
55	Architect's Plans	Franklin
–	Fire Truck	—	Setup — not counted by Rockstar
56	The Bureau Raid (Fire Crew / Roof Entry)	M F	Pick one approach
57	The Wrap Up	M T
58	Reuniting the Family	Michael	Heist 6 run-up
59	Legal Trouble	Michael
60	Lamar Down	All three
61	Meltdown	Michael
62	Planning the Big Score	All three	Approach and crew locked in here
63–66	Stingers · Sidetracked · Gauntlet · Driller	All three	Setups
67	The Big Score (Subtle / Obvious)	All three	Pick one approach
68–71	The Multi Target / Vice / Bus / Construction Assassinations 4 missions	Franklin	Lester 2–5 · optional for story, required for 100%
72	Something Sensible / The Time's Come / The Third Way	F or all	Ending — pick one, see section 07

How the numbers here reconcile with the 69

This list runs to 72 positions. Add the two setups Rockstar leaves off its own checklist — Fire Truck and BZ Gas Grenades, marked “–” above — and you have the 74 missions playable on one save from section 01. Rockstar's completion checklist counts 69 of them. The 69 is Rockstar's number, not a count of the rows on this page: the checklist groups several setups differently from every community mission list, and we are not going to invent a reconciliation nobody has published. Quote 69, and use this table for the order.

One irreversible decision, no warning

Everything in this list is replayable afterwards except the ending. Two of the three permanently remove a protagonist — and with him, his properties, his garages, his businesses and every side mission he had left. The game gives you no indication of this at the moment it asks. Finish the doomed character's content before you take that call, and make a manual save.

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Gold medals: the rule everyone gets wrong

The myth, and the fix

You do not need a clean single run. Gold medal requirements are cumulative across replays. Meet the time target on one attempt and the accuracy target on another, and the medal is yours. This is documented on every GTABase mission page and by PowerPyx, and it is the single most misstated fact about GTA 5's campaign — it turns medal hunting from a nightmare into bookkeeping.

Replay from the pause menu: Game → Replay Mission. The replay screen lists each requirement and shows which ones you have already banked. Because they accumulate, you can deliberately split mutually hostile objectives — one run rushing the clock, another run taking your time to hold 60%+ accuracy — instead of trying to satisfy both at once.

What the criteria actually are

Every story mission and every Strangers and Freaks mission carries its own set, drawn from five recurring types plus a named mission-specific stunt:

Time — finish within a target, e.g. Complications in 05:00
Accuracy — end with at least a set shooting percentage, commonly 60–70%
Headshots — a kill quota, e.g. 20 in The Big Score (Obvious)
Damage — take none yourself, or keep a vehicle intact
Named objective — a one-off stunt with its own label, like Dirt Nap (stealth-knockout the gardener in Complications) or Cha-Ching (drop the gold on the train inside 30 seconds in The Big Score)

First-person view down the sights of a carbine at an industrial site — Accuracy and headshot quotas are the two criteria that fight each other — one wants patience, the other wants volume. Splitting them across two replays is the entire trick. Official Rockstar screenshot.

Two worked examples of a full criteria set.
Mission	Criteria
Complications	Time: under 05:00 · Can't Touch This: take no damage in the Simeon fight · Dirt Nap: stealth-knockout the gardener
The Big Score (Obvious)	Headshots: 20 · Time: under 16:00 · Cha-Ching: gold on the train within 30 seconds · Accuracy: 60%+

There are 115 gold medals in total — 69 across story missions and 46 across Strangers and Freaks. The Solid Gold, Baby! achievement needs only 70, from any mix of the two. That means 45 can be skipped entirely, so pick the ones whose criteria suit how you play rather than grinding the list in order.

The order to do them in

Because the criteria accumulate, medal hunting is a sorting problem rather than a skill problem. Three passes, and the replay screen is your checklist — it shows which requirements are already banked.

How to sort the list before you start. Open each mission's replay screen to see its criteria set.
Pass	Take these missions	Runs needed	Why
1	Criteria set is Time plus a named objective, nothing else	One	Nothing in the set fights anything else. These are free medals and there are more of them than people expect
2	Criteria set has Accuracy or Headshots but no tight time target	One	You can take as long as you like to hold 60–70% accuracy or fill a headshot quota
3	Criteria set has Time and Accuracy together, or Damage and Time together	Two	These are the ones people quit over. Run A rushes the clock and ignores everything else; run B ignores the clock and banks the rest

Two rules that decide how long this takes

Never chase a medal you do not need. Solid Gold, Baby! wants 70 of 115, from any mix of story and Strangers and Freaks. Sort by pass 1, then pass 2, and you will normally hit 70 without touching the pass-3 list at all.
Never use a cheat on a run you intend to bank. Any cheat active during a mission caps it at Bronze, so that attempt banks nothing — including the criteria you would otherwise have met.

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The six heists and what each one pays

Half of them do not pay the protagonists a cent. That is not a bug and it is not a failure state — it is how the script is written, and knowing it in advance stops you agonising over crew choices in heists where the choice is worth nothing.

All six heists. "Net to protagonists" is after Lester's cut and the crew's, at the best documented crew.
#	Heist	Approaches	Crew hired	Gross take	Net to protagonists
1	The Jewel Store Job	Smart / Loud	Driver + Gunman + Hacker	$4,946,153	$1,223,073 M $293,538 F
2	The Merryweather Heist	Freighter / Offshore	None	—	$0
3	Blitz Play	None	None	—	$0
4	The Paleto Score	None	1 Gunman	$8,016,020	$464,395 each All three
5	The Bureau Raid	Fire Crew / Roof Entry	Roof: Gunman + Driver + Hacker Fire Crew: 2 Gunmen	$331,985	$242,349 F $0 M T
6	The Big Score	Subtle / Obvious	Subtle: 2 gunmen, 2 drivers, hacker Obvious: 2 gunmen, 2 drivers	$201,600,000	$41,664,000 each All three

Verified 2026-09-18 · story mode, all platforms

Heist 1 — The Jewel Store Job

Gross take $4,946,153, minus Martin Madrazo's $2,500,000 payoff, leaving $2,446,153 net. Lester takes 14%. Trevor is not in this one. Smart and Loud pay identically — Grand Theft Wiki confirms the financial outcome is the same either way, so pick Smart because the knockout gas is simply less trouble than a firefight, not because it is worth more.

Heist 2 — The Merryweather Heist: zero, on both routes

Lester orders the device returned to Merryweather. No cash on Freighter, no cash on Offshore, no crew to hire, and nothing you do in the mission changes it. Freighter needs one setup, Offshore needs two. Pick on preference.

Heist 3 — Blitz Play

No approach choice, no crew choice, and the bearer bonds go to Devin Weston and the FIB rather than into anyone's account. What you actually get is the Blitzed trophy, four weapon unlocks (Assault Shotgun, Bullpup Shotgun, Combat MG, RPG), two contacts, and Chef as a hireable gunman.

An armoured limousine on a Los Santos street with a gunman firing from the sunroof — Armoured transport and a shooter out of the roof — the shape of every scripted convoy set piece in the FIB arc. Official Rockstar screenshot, GTA V Enhanced.

Heist 4 — The Paleto Score, where the cheap gunman is correct

Gross $8,016,020, of which the FIB takes 78% ($6,252,496), leaving $1,763,524. Lester takes 12%. Here is the counterintuitive part, and it is documented rather than folklore:

A poor gunman on this heist gets pinned to a wall by a police car and left behind. It is scripted — he dies regardless of your skill. A dead crew member costs 1.5× his cut, so Daryl Johns's 6% becomes 9%. That still beats hiring a good 12% gunman who survives:

Daryl Johns (6% → 9% on death) — $464,395 each
Norm Richards (7% → 10.5% on death) — $455,577 each
A good 12% gunman who lives — roughly $446,760 each

Heist 5 — The Bureau Raid, where Michael works for free

The FIB budget is a fixed $331,985, identical on both approaches — no crew choice moves that number, only how it is divided. Lester takes 12%. Michael uncharacteristically refuses his share and Trevor gets nothing, so the entire remainder goes to Franklin: between roughly $150,000 and $242,349 depending on how cheap your crew is.

Roof Entry with Taliana Martinez (5%), Daryl Johns (6%) and Rickie Lukens (4%) is the documented optimum at 15% crew cost, and nobody dies, so there is no 1.5× penalty. It also needs less prep than Fire Crew.

GTA 6 watch

Whether GTA 6 has heists at all, let alone a planning board, an approach choice or a hireable crew, is not confirmed. Rockstar describes the game only as "a single-player experience set in the biggest, most immersive evolution of the series yet" — no systems, no mission structure, no economy details. If you see a feature list presented as confirmed, it is somebody's write-up of the 27 minutes of footage, not Rockstar documentation.

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The crew table: cuts, skill and consequences

Thirteen hireable specialists. The planning board shows you a name and a percentage and tells you nothing about what the percentage buys. Cost and competence are separate columns, and in two cases the cheap option is strictly better.

Every hireable crew member. "Earliest" is the first heist they can be selected in.
Role	Name	Cut	Skill	Earliest	How you get them
Driver	Eddie Toh	14%	Good	Jewel Store	Default
Driver	Karim Denz	8%	Poor	Jewel Store	Default
Driver	Taliana Martinez	5%	Good	Bureau Raid	Random event after Mr. Philips
Gunman	Gustavo Mota	14%	Good	Jewel Store	Default
Gunman	Packie McReary	12%	Good	Jewel Store	Random event after Pulling Favors
Gunman	Chef	12%	Good	Paleto Score	Phone call after Blitz Play
Gunman	Karl Abolaji	8%	Poor	Big Score	Default
Gunman	Norm Richards	7%	Poor	Jewel Store	Default
Gunman	Hugh Welsh	7%	Poor	Bureau Raid	Default
Gunman	Daryl Johns	6%	Poor	Paleto Score	Default
Hacker	Paige Harris	15%	Good	Jewel Store	Default
Hacker	Christian Feltz	10%	Mediocre	Jewel Store	Default
Hacker	Rickie Lukens	4%	Poor	Jewel Store	Phone call after Friend Request

Verified 2026-09-18 · story mode, all platforms

Name check

There is no crew member called "Norm Koneru". The 7% poor gunman is Norm Richards. The wrong name circulates widely in copied guides — if a site has it, treat the rest of its numbers with suspicion.

What "poor" costs you, heist by heist

Documented in-game effects of crew skill. These are scripted outcomes, not probabilities.
Heist	Role	Good	Poor
Jewel Store Job	Hacker	90 seconds before the alarm	50 seconds (30 on PS3/360)
	Gunman	Empties the cases cleanly	Drops roughly 10% of the jewellery
	Driver	Picks Sanchezes — good on any surface	Picks Bati 801RRs — poor in mud
Paleto Score	Gunman	Holds off police, creates a diversion	Pinned by a police car and killed — cut rises to 1.5×
Bureau Raid	Gunman	Black parachute, good weapon	Rainbow parachute, poor weapon
Bureau Raid	Hacker	Helps hack, kills the sprinklers	Does neither
Big Score	Helicopter driver	Clears the wind farm	Crashes — you lose half the take
	Gauntlet driver	Loads and escapes clean	Drops roughly 9% of the gold
	Hacker (traffic lights)	No delay	4 second delay (Mediocre: 2 seconds)

The mechanic that pays for everything

Every crew member who survives a heist gains roughly 25% skill — and their pay rate does not move. Rickie Lukens climbs Poor → Mediocre → Good across successive heists while still charging 4%. This is why the correct play is to hire the cheapest usable crew in heist one and keep re-hiring the same people: by The Big Score you are fielding a Good crew on a 26% total cut instead of a 40%+ one. Caveat: experience gained in the Bureau Raid does not raise a gunman's classification in later scripted events.

Two more pieces of folklore worth killing. Karim Denz does not lose part of the Jewel Store take — his only penalty is the escape bikes, which you ride yourself. And Paige Harris is not required for the maximum Jewel Store gross — Rickie's 50-second window is enough to clear the cases if you do not dawdle.

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The Big Score: where $201.6 million goes

The gross is $201,600,000 on both approaches. That figure is fixed — nothing you do raises it. What varies is how much of it leaks out before it reaches the three of you.

The arithmetic is simple once you see it written down:

The formula

each protagonist = (gross take × (1 − 0.12 Lester − Σ crew %)) ÷ 3

Lester always takes 12% of the Big Score, and the three protagonists split whatever is left in equal thirds. Every published payout figure reproduces exactly from this.

Obvious approach at the documented optimal crew — the highest payout in the game.
Line	%	Amount
Gross take	100%	$201,600,000
Lester	12%	−$24,192,000
Taliana Martinez · driver	5%	−$10,080,000
Karim Denz · driver	8%	−$16,128,000
Daryl Johns · gunman	6%	−$12,096,000
Norm Richards or Hugh Welsh · gunman	7%	−$14,112,000
Michael / Franklin / Trevor	—	$41,664,000 each

Verified 2026-09-18 · arithmetic reproduces from the formula above

That maximum only exists because all four of those cheap hires have been levelled to Good by earlier heists. Run the same 26% crew cold and the helicopter goes into the wind farm, costing half the take, and the Gauntlet driver sheds another 9% of the gold on the way out.

Why Obvious beats Subtle on paper

Subtle carries a $300,000 hostage/bribe deduction; Obvious does not
Subtle needs the Bravados upgraded, a minimum $30,000 out of your own pocket beforehand
Subtle needs a fifth crew member — a hacker — so that is another cut off the top

A red muscle car parked in a Los Santos garage — The getaway cars are the part of the Big Score you control directly. Who drives them is the part you pay 26% for. Official Rockstar screenshot.

Why the Subtle figures never match between sites

You will find $38,918,000, $35,563,000 and $34,892,000 quoted for Subtle on three different sites. None of them is wrong. They assume crew cuts of 30%, 35% and 36% respectively. A Subtle payout figure is meaningless without the crew list attached to it — if a guide gives you one without the other, it copied the number from somewhere else.

One more thing to treat carefully: Grand Theft Wiki states that choosing Something Sensible as the finale raises Michael's and Franklin's cuts by 50%. The GTA Wiki mirror does not carry that line, so it is single-sourced. Do not plan a route around it.

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The three endings and what they delete

All three branch from one phone call to Franklin after The Big Score, triggered by meeting Devin Weston at Franklin's house. Option A is Steve Haines's demand, option B is Weston's, option C is calling Lester.

What each ending costs. "Lost content" is permanent on that save file.
Ending	Who dies	Unplayable after	Lost content	Trophies blocked
A — Something Sensible	Trevor. Michael rams his truck into a tanker; Franklin shoots the fuel.	Trevor	All remaining Trevor Strangers and Freaks, McKenzie Field Hangar and its smuggling missions, his trailer, his vehicle storage. Vanilla Unicorn stays in the world but stops working as a safehouse. Michael stops hanging out with Franklin.	4–5
B — The Time's Come	Michael, killed by Franklin on a chimney walkway at the Palmer-Taylor Power Station.	Michael	All remaining Michael Strangers and Freaks, many properties and vehicle storages, his mansion goes up for sale. Trevor severs all ties with Franklin; Jimmy and Amanda cut him off too.	1–2
C — The Third Way	Nobody on your side. Trevor kills Haines, Michael kills Stretch, Franklin kills Wei Cheng, all three deal with Devin Weston.	Nobody	Nothing. Every uncompleted mission stays available and each protagonist keeps his full share.	0

The good news about 100%

All three endings still allow 100% completion. This is deliberate: only Franklin's Strangers and Freaks count toward the total, precisely because Michael's and Trevor's can become unreachable. So if the completion percentage is your goal, the ending is a free choice.

The bad news about trophies

Six trophies are missable at the final mission, and unlike the completion percentage they do not forgive you:

Missable trophies and who they need alive.
Trophy	Needs	Requirement
TP Industries Arms Race	Trevor	Buy McKenzie Field Hangar, run 10 smuggling missions
Red Mist	Trevor	All 5 Rampages
Altruist Acolyte	Trevor	Deliver a hitchhiker to the Altruist Cult
Wanted: Alive or Alive	Trevor	Bring in a Maude bail-bond target alive
Kifflom!	Michael	The full 19-step Epsilon Program questline
Three Man Army	All three	3 minutes at 3 stars with all three together

Replaying the ending does not undo it

After the credits, the other two ending missions appear in Replay Mission. Playing them changes nothing: a dead protagonist stays dead and stays unplayable, and the world does not revert. The only ways to see a different outcome with your world intact are a manual save made before the phone call, or a new playthrough.

Which ending is canon

C, The Third Way. But be precise about how that was established, because it was not a Rockstar announcement. It was settled retroactively inside GTA Online: Smuggler's Run in 2017 showed Trevor alive, and The Contract in December 2021 had Franklin reference a movie-studio producer he knows — Michael's post-GTA V job. Press and community read that as confirmation, and the wikis now state A and B are non-canon. There is still no press release saying so.

Vinewood Hills mansion artwork with a supercar and stacks of cash — After The Big Score every protagonist is rich enough that money stops being a motivation — which is exactly why the finale is written as a loyalty test instead. Official Rockstar artwork.

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The 100% completion checklist

161 required items across five categories. The category list is consistent everywhere; the percentage weights attached to them are not, so we give the range rather than pretending there is one answer.

The completion checklist. Weight columns show where sources disagree.
Category	Required	Available	Weight (range across sources)
Story missions	69	69	50–55%
Strangers and Freaks	20 or 24	58	10%
Hobbies and Pastimes	42	59–61	10%
Random Events	14	57–60	5–15%
Miscellaneous	16	30	10–20%
Total	161	207	100%

The Strangers and Freaks requirement is genuinely disputed: GTA Wiki, GTATracker and PowerPyx all say 20; GTABase and Sportskeeda say 24. Every source agrees on the important part — only Franklin's count. Tonya, Beverly, Barry, Dom, Hao, Mary-Ann, Omega and Peter Dreyfuss are the ones that matter. The Epsilon Program, Civil Border Patrol and Cletus do not.

The Miscellaneous 16, where people stall

Buy 5 income-generating properties, and buy one vehicle from a website
All 50 Spaceship Parts and all 50 Letter Scraps — these also gate two required Strangers missions
25 of 50 Stunt Jumps · 25 of 50 Under the Bridge flights · 8 of 15 Knife Flights
Walk or play fetch with Chop · a Booty Call · a prostitute service · hold up a store · visit the cinema
Four friend activities: cinema, bar, strip club, darts

Explicitly not required, despite showing up on a lot of lists: submarine pieces, nuclear waste, clothing purchases and watching TV. Activities added in the Enhanced release do not count either.

The Vinewood sign on the hills above Los Santos at golden hour — 161 items, most of them scattered across terrain like this. Completion in GTA V is a map problem far more than a skill problem. Official Rockstar screenshot.

Hitting 100% unlocks The Last One, Franklin's Bigfoot hunt, which grants the Golden Peyote Plant and lets you play as Sasquatch — plus a commemorative T-shirt and UFO spawns near Mount Chiliad and Sandy Shores.

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Playing GTA 5 before GTA 6

GTA 6 arrives on 19 November 2026. That is close enough that "should I still play V" is now a reasonable question, and the honest answer depends on one confirmed fact people keep missing: GTA 6 ships on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S only. Rockstar's own product page lists no PC version, and none has been announced. On PC, GTA 5 stays the current game in the series for the foreseeable future.

"An Extended Look", 27 August 2026 — roughly 27 minutes captured in-game on a base PS5, and the most substantial thing Rockstar has shown. Note the name: there has never been a video Rockstar called "Trailer 3".

What is actually confirmed

Sourced to Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive only. Everything else on this page is labelled as unconfirmed.
Item	Confirmed
Release date	19 November 2026 digital · physical one week earlier, 12 November (download code in the box, no disc content)
Platforms	PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X\|S. No PC version announced.
Protagonists	Two: Jason and Lucia
Setting	Vice City, in the state of Leonida
Premise	"An easy score goes wrong" and the two end up "in the middle of a criminal conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida"
Official videos	Three: Trailer 1 (4 Dec 2023), Trailer 2 (6 May 2025), An Extended Look (27 Aug 2026)
Price	Standard $79.99 · Ultimate $99.99. Pre-orders opened 25 June 2026
Product type	Described by Take-Two as "a single-player experience"
GTA Online	Take-Two's Strauss Zelnick: "I have every reason to believe we'll continue to support GTA Online"

The delay history, in full

4 Dec 2023 — announced alongside Trailer 1, window given as 2025
17 May 2024 — narrowed to Fall 2025 on Take-Two's earnings call
2 May 2025 — first delay, moved to 26 May 2026
6 Nov 2025 — second delay, moved to 19 November 2026
Feb, May and June 2026 — Take-Two reaffirms 19 November three separate times

Two delays so far. No third has been announced, and Zelnick went out of his way in May 2026 to say that "reiterating November 19 as a launch day today is probably a positive".

What is NOT confirmed — and gets reported as if it were

A map figure. Rockstar has published no area and no square-kilometre number. The only official reference point is Rob Nelson's verbal comparison to press — about three times Red Dead Redemption 2 — and Rockstar's own written language stays qualitative: "the biggest, most immersive evolution of the series yet".
Mission count. No figure of any kind has ever been given. Story length has exactly one data point, and it is Nelson's own playthrough at roughly 80 hours — one person's run, not a spec.
Gameplay systems. Property ownership, businesses, character switching, heists, wanted-level mechanics, vehicle customisation — none of it documented in writing. The Extended Look shows gameplay; Rockstar published no systems breakdown to go with it.
An online mode for GTA 6. Completely unannounced. Not its existence, name, format or timing.
A PC version. Not announced. Early-2027 reports are rumour. Any "GTA 6 system requirements" article is a prediction.
The 2022 leak footage. Real, but stolen pre-alpha material Rockstar has never acknowledged as representative. Not a source for anything.

How we will update this

This section is deliberately thin, because the confirmed set genuinely is thin: a date, two consoles, two names, one city, one paragraph of premise, three videos and two prices. We add to it only when Rockstar or Take-Two says something on the record — not when an outlet infers a feature from footage. If you are reading this after a new Newswire post, check the "updated" date at the top.

What playing V now actually prepares you for

Honestly: less than the marketing around "get ready for 6" suggests, because nobody outside Rockstar knows which of V's systems carry over. What is defensible is narrower and still useful. GTA 6 has more than one playable lead, and V is the only game in the series that has ever built a campaign around switching between several — so the habits of reading a mission from three positions, and of planning around a crew you do not directly control, are the transferable part. Everything else is a guess until Rockstar says otherwise.

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10Common questions

How many missions does GTA 5 have?

69 on the in-game completion checklist and Social Club, which is the figure to use. 74 are playable on a single save, 79 main-story mission files exist, and 83 is the count including the two setups Rockstar leaves off its own list. The differences come from branching approaches, the three endings, and the optional Family Missions.

Do I have to get a gold medal in one run?

No. Requirements accumulate across replays. Hit the time target on one attempt and the accuracy target on another and the medal is awarded. Replay from Pause → Game → Replay Mission; the screen shows which requirements you have already banked.

Which heist pays the most?

The Big Score, by three orders of magnitude: $201,600,000 gross, $41,664,000 to each protagonist on the Obvious approach with an optimal crew. Every other heist combined does not come close, and two of them — Merryweather and Blitz Play — pay you nothing at all.

Should I hire the cheap crew or the good crew?

Cheap, consistently, and re-hire the same people. Crew who survive a heist gain about 25% skill without raising their price, so the cheap hires from heist one are a Good crew by The Big Score at a 26% total cut. The one exception is scripted: the poor gunman on The Paleto Score dies regardless, and even at the 1.5× death penalty he is still cheaper than a competent 12% alternative.

Which GTA 5 ending should I choose?

C, The Third Way, unless you specifically want a different story. It is the only one that keeps all three protagonists playable, costs no side content, blocks no trophies, and it is the canon ending. A and B each permanently delete a protagonist along with his properties, garages and remaining missions.

Can I still get 100% after killing Michael or Trevor?

Yes. Only Franklin's Strangers and Freaks count toward completion, precisely so that the ending choice cannot lock you out. Trophies are a different matter — ending A blocks four Trevor trophies, ending B blocks Kifflom!, and both can block Three Man Army if you have not earned it already.

Is GTA 5 worth playing before GTA 6?

On PC, it is not really a choice: GTA 6 launches on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S only, with no PC version announced. On console it is a genuine question, and the honest answer is that nobody outside Rockstar knows which of V's systems carry over — no gameplay systems for VI have been documented at all. What does transfer is the multi-protagonist habit, since V is the only game in the series built around it.

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