GTA 6 Download Could Take More Than Two Days in the UK's Slowest Broadband Spot

Downloading GTA 6 could take more than two days in the slowest part of the UK, according to an analysis published by Uswitch. The price comparison site measured 825,170 broadband speed tests run between November 4, 2025 and November 3, 2026, and applied them to the 212GB install size Rockstar confirmed on November 3.

At the median speed in those tests, 71 Mbps, Uswitch puts the download at more than six and a half hours. Pre-loading opens on November 10, nine days before the game unlocks, so most players have room for that. The gap shows at the two ends of the table.

Where the download takes longest

Caistor, a market town in Lincolnshire, recorded the slowest typical speed in the data at 9 Mbps. At that speed Uswitch calculates more than 52 hours, which means starting more than two days before launch to be playing at midnight. Turriff in Aberdeenshire came next at 15 Mbps, around 31 hours, followed by Whitwick in Leicestershire at 24 Mbps, Wedmore in Somerset at 25 Mbps and Wellow in Hampshire at 26 Mbps.

The fastest place in the data was Milton in Cambridgeshire at 388 Mbps, where the same download takes 72 minutes. East Craigs in Edinburgh followed at 311 Mbps. Among larger cities Hull was quickest at 157 Mbps and Oxford slowest at 53 Mbps.

"Fans have waited 13 years for GTA VI, and nobody wants to lose another day of it to a progress bar," said Ernest Doku, broadband expert at Uswitch. "Where you live makes a big difference to when you play. Our speed tests suggest a gamer in Hull could be cruising around Vice City while someone in Oxford is still a third of the way through the download."

How many people are waiting

Uswitch puts the UK audience at 13.5 million adults, or 24 percent, who plan to play at some point, and 2.8 million, or 5 percent, who plan to play on launch day. Those figures come from an Opinium survey of 2,000 UK adults carried out between November 3 and November 6, 2026, with the headline numbers scaled to Office for National Statistics mid-2024 population estimates. Among employed gamers, 9 percent said they may call in sick to play.

Only 19 percent said they would check their broadband speed before launch, and 61 percent expect no trouble with their connection. Doku's advice is to test now: "Run a speed test now, and if the result is well below what your provider promised, ask them why."

Rockstar opens pre-loading for digital copies on November 10, with boxed copies that carry a download code from November 12. GTA 6 unlocks at midnight local time on November 19.