How the GTA 6 Wanted System Works

Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6) brings back six wanted stars, and the police now work from what they actually know about you: your face, your outfit and your vehicle, each tracked separately. Everything marked CONFIRMED below was shown in Rockstar’s 26-minute Extended Look on August 27, 2026. Everything marked REPORTED comes from press previews of the game.

Last updated: September 14, 2026.

What the Extended Look confirmed CONFIRMED

• Six wanted stars are back.
• Police need to witness the crime or be alerted (an alarm, a call) before they react.
• Officers identify you by face, outfit and vehicle, with separate HUD indicators for each.
• Hollow stars mean police are searching without a description of you yet.
• Wearing a mask during a crime protects your identity even on CCTV.
• Jason and Lucia can split up to divide a pursuit, and one of them can get arrested alone (separate Busted screen).

How to lose the cops CONFIRMED REPORTED

• Changing your haircut or outfit erases the police description. Sunglasses alone are not enough. CONFIRMED REPORTED
• Crime scenes stay active search zones after you leave. REPORTED
• Narrow Vice City streets make escapes harder at three stars and above, according to previews. REPORTED

Your car is a third of that description, so the vehicle you leave in is part of the escape: car theft and the WAINK app are covered on the vehicle page. The narrow streets previews describe belong to Vice City, the main city among Leonida’s six named regions.

What is still unconfirmed

• Exact star by star response tiers.
• Whether dispatch behavior differs between cities and countryside.
• Any online wanted system: Rockstar has said nothing about GTA Online.

FAQ

Everything else Rockstar has put on the record is collected in everything we know about GTA 6.

SixManual is an unofficial fan resource, not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive.