GTA 6 Wanted System Explained: Stars, Icons and How to Lose the Cops

GTA 6 replaces the five-star wanted level from GTA 5 with a six-star system that tracks exactly what the police know about you, not just how many crimes you have committed. Rob Nelson, co-studio head at Rockstar North, walked IGN through it during a hands-off demo at Rockstar’s Edinburgh HQ, in a preview IGN published on August 27, 2026: a row of red icons under the stars tracks your description, clothing and vehicle independently of each other, so losing the cops means feeding them bad information, not just outrunning them. SubscribeForTacos breaks the same system down in his August 28, 2026 video, "GTA 6 New Wanted System Explained," built on Rockstar’s own Extended Look footage and IGN’s reporting. This article checks his breakdown against the frames, Nelson’s exact words and Rockstar’s own HUD, and marks plainly which parts are still his own reading rather than confirmed fact.

What is GTA 6’s wanted system?

It is a six-star system, the first time the series has gone past five stars since 2009’s Chinatown Wars, according to IGN’s hands-off preview. Rockstar’s own Extended Look confirms the same thing on screen: six star slots sit in the HUD’s top-right corner through every wanted scene in the footage, whether the game is currently rendering them as hollow, white or red. Underneath the stars sits the real change, a row of red icons that tracks specific things the police have learned about you: your face, your clothes, your vehicle, whether you were caught on camera, and whether you are part of a couple. Nelson calls it a "heat system": the police keep what they know about you until you change it, by changing clothes, getting rid of the car or splitting up.

How do you get a wanted level in GTA 6?

Someone has to witness the crime, or an alarm has to go off. "The Wanted system in GTA 6 requires that someone witness the crime, or an alarm needs to be set off for it to be reported to the law," Nelson told IGN. "Our dispatch is extremely specific in what it knows." That means starting a fight, robbing a store or stealing a car with nobody watching and no alarm tripped will not, on its own, bring the police down on you. Once police are dispatched, how you got their attention still matters: in the demo Nelson played for IGN, Jason aimed a gun at a group of aggressors without firing, and the group fled. "I aimed the gun at the person, which defused the situation and they all ran," he told IGN. "If you commit a crime and run, get into trouble and move on before the cops get there, and you don’t start shooting people, don’t start escalating, you’re generally going to be fine." IGN reports that the crime was still reported and the police were on their way, but because it was not a violent crime the wanted level stayed low.

What do the red icons under GTA 6’s wanted stars mean?

Six different icons appear in the Extended Look’s wanted scenes: five in the store robbery, and a car during the chase that follows. IGN gives the meaning of three of them, Nelson’s own words to IGN cover two more, and the last is SubscribeForTacos’s reading, not confirmed by IGN or Rockstar.

Icon	What it means	Source
Camera	The police have witnessed you on CCTV security footage	IGN, confirmed
Silhouette	The police have a physical description of you	IGN, confirmed
Clothes hanger	The police know what you are wearing	IGN, confirmed
Two heads	The police know they are hunting a couple, Jason and Lucia together	Rob Nelson to IGN
Car	The police know what vehicle you are in	Rob Nelson to IGN
Pistol	The police know you are armed, possibly with which weapon	SubscribeForTacos, his own reading

Nelson’s own words tie two of those icons to what was on his HUD during the demo: "You can see with these little icons on-screen, the police know what we’re driving, so we should just jump out the vehicle. They also know we’re a couple. You could split up, and that will also help lower the police’s perception of you." SubscribeForTacos is the one who names the pistol icon specifically as "weapon known," a reasonable reading of a gun pictogram sitting in the same row, but not a line IGN or Nelson says on the record, so it stays attributed to him rather than stated flat.

What do the different GTA 6 wanted star colors mean?

Rockstar’s own Extended Look shows three distinct star renderings on the same HUD: a hollow outline, a solid white fill and a solid red fill. Of the three, only the hollow star has a meaning IGN puts on the record.

Star rendering	Confirmed on screen	SubscribeForTacos’s reading
Hollow (outline)	Rockstar’s Extended Look, twice in the same footage	Police are responding but do not know who you are, matching IGN’s own definition
Solid white	Rockstar’s Extended Look, foot chase and driving scenes	Police have direct contact: they know your look, your car and your location
Solid red	Rockstar’s Extended Look, same chase sequence	Police are actively searching after losing direct contact, once you have switched vehicle or clothing

IGN’s own definition covers only the hollow star: "A ’hollow’ wanted star is displayed when the police are responding to a crime but have no information who the perpetrator is." Neither IGN’s article nor Rockstar’s own footage states what white or red specifically represent. SubscribeForTacos’s descriptions of both are plausible readings of what plays out in the same clips he shows, but they are his interpretation of Rockstar’s footage, not a line from Nelson or a caption Rockstar has published.

How do you lose the cops in GTA 6?

Nelson gave IGN a short list directly: "We could wait for it to die down, change our outfits, or split Jason and Lucia up. There’s a lot of smart things we could do." A location stays a "hot area" on the map after a crime, per Nelson: "I can check my map, this is a hot area. The cops are there. If I go back, they’ll be hanging around for a little while." Changing your look only helps so far. "Changing your hair will change your appearance," Nelson told IGN, "but the police will still know what you are wearing, so not great if I am standing out in the open." IGN’s own demo notes back this up: Jason bought a baseball cap from a convenience store, which removed the description icon from his HUD but left the clothing icon active, since he was still wearing the same outfit. A mask covers the same gap from the start: SubscribeForTacos notes that equipping one during the crime and removing it afterward can stop a description from reaching the police at all, even if you were caught on camera.

The vehicle icon works the same way. Nelson’s advice to IGN once the police know your car is to "just jump out the vehicle", and SubscribeForTacos goes further over the same footage: "If they know what car you’re in and you escape and destroy that car, they will no longer know what vehicle you’re in." The Extended Look footage backs this up directly: after Lucia sets the getaway car on fire in a parking garage, the car icon that had been sitting next to two heads, a hanger and a silhouette simply disappears from the row, while the stars themselves stay red.

The next clip is the one SubscribeForTacos uses to make his point: in a different vehicle, a van, still under red stars, "we pass straight by the police and we can drive away." On screen, a police SUV crosses in front of the van at a stop sign and nothing happens. That is one clip, not a rule Rockstar has spelled out.

What is GTA 6’s criminal profile system?

SubscribeForTacos also describes a separate, longer-running tracker he calls the criminal profile system, comparing it to Red Dead Redemption 2’s honor system. By his account, violence, running people over, police chases, killing animals, stealing cars and robbing stores all lower it; throwing away trash, petting animals and helping people raise it; and mission crimes do not touch it at all. None of that behavior list appears in IGN’s article or the Extended Look footage checked here, so it stays his own account rather than a confirmed mechanic. The GTA 6 money system runs alongside it as a separate consequence for the same robbery.

What is not confirmed yet

Rockstar has not published the specific triggers for each of the six star levels, what white and red stars mean, or whether a flashing star state exists at all. The gun icon’s meaning, the busted-and-respawn detail for an arrested partner, and the text message sent once a split-up pair is clear are all SubscribeForTacos’s own claims, not lines from Nelson or IGN. Until GTA 6 launches on November 19, 2026, treat every reading above the confirmed rows in both tables as a creator’s best guess at pre-release footage. See money, heists, robberies and the heist planner for where this system applies, the map for the hot-area behavior Nelson describes, and Jason and Lucia for who it tracks.