A decade ago, this would have been a surreal headline from The Onion, but in 2026, it’s actual reality: A U.S. Army unit based in Georgia is offering soldiers a four-day leave pass to play Grand Theft Auto VI if they reenlist for up to six years.
And 20 people have already accepted the pass, an Army spokesperson told CBS News.
As you probably know, GTA VI is the very eagerly anticipated addition to Rockstar Games‘ leading cash cow IP (sorry, Red Dead Redemption). Its predecessor, Grand Theft Auto V, came out way back in 2013, and the long wait time for VI has turned its release into an omnipresent meme.
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
After several production delays, GTA VI‘s drop date is finally set for Nov. 19, 2026.
That’s when soldiers at Fort Stewart, in the Army’s 9th Brigade Engineering Battalion, part of the 3rd Infantry Division, will get their four-day leave passes–if they sign a reenlistment contract between Aug. 1, 2026 and Nov. 14.
So, again, to be clear, that’s four days off for a minimum of two more years of military service–up to a maximum of six more years.
Though soldiers don’t explicitly have to use the pass to play GTA, playtime is how the pass has been advertised to them. An Army memo issued to soldiers said the pass is being issued to align with “the highly anticipated release of the video game Grand Theft Auto VI (GTA 6).”
“The idea was to have a unique incentives program that connects to what Soldiers are interested in,” Lt. Col. Angel Tomko, a spokesperson for the 3rd Infantry Division, said in a statement reported by CBS. “The command team, in conjunction with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited to reenlist.”
Obviously this is far from the first time the military has used incentives to convince soldiers to sign up and/or reenlist. Post-service college tuition coverage is a well-known incentive, and branches have also offered things like cash bonuses, career training, and choice duty station assignments.
As CBS points out, this also isn’t the first time the Army has set out to specifically woo gamers. Back in 2018, alarmed by shrinking enlistment, the branch decided to try new, pop-culture-savvier methods of reaching the youths. It dispatched recruiters to gaming conventions and launched its own esports team to compete in tournaments for high-traffic titles like Call of Duty, Fortnite, and League of Legends.
Here at Tubefilter, we’ve seen a rise in interactions between military branches and our industry. For example, in April, the 2nd Marine Division collaborated with Newsweek‘s YouTube series Unconventional for a Jeep-sponsored video that promises to take viewers “inside a Marine expeditionary operation.”
We’re guessing the Marines’ ultimate goal with that video, like the Army’s with the GTA VI pass, is to attract more enlistment.
Right now, the GTA VI pass is limited to the roughly 130 soldiers who are part of Fort Stewart’s 9th Brigade Engineering Battalion. But it could be expanded to more units–and if Army leaders consider it successful, maybe they’ll offer other, similar passes for gaming/pop culture touchstones in the future.
What a world we live in.
