LOVE magazine gives GTA 6 one of six covers on issue 27, and Rockstar's writers talk Jason and Lucia inside

A luxury issue of a fashion magazine, and on the cover a couple who’d be happy just to get out of debt. LOVE, the glossy fashion title, has made GTA 6 one of the six covers of issue 27, on sale October 5, 2026. The artwork is by Rockstar Games: Lucia in profile, Jason in a leaf-print shirt, and the line “America’s Most Wanted” above the logo. Inside, four people from Rockstar talk about the characters and the world, next to new screenshots. I rebuilt the issue in 3D, so you can spin it at the top of the page.

The issue

LOVE’s theme for number 27 is luxury, and GTA VI shares the newsstand with five other covers. Here’s what we know about the print issue:

That’s the third magazine cover for Jason and Lucia in about a month, after Dazed and Game Informer. Dazed went into fashion and Miami, Game Informer into systems and the map. LOVE spends its pages on who Jason and Lucia are and what they want.

The people who spoke to the magazine:

• Rob Nelson, co-studio head and head of development at Rockstar North, who also gave Famitsu a long interview last month;
• Rupert Humphries, senior vice president of narrative;
• Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern and Alexa D’Agostino, writers on the game.

The interview covers almost a decade spent building the world, and a world so detailed that nobody you meet is just background filler.

Two people who get it wrong

Lucia is the one who pushes. She does whatever it takes to get a better life, while Jason spends his time cleaning up his own problems. The writers say both will make mistakes, argue and slowly learn from each other. Gauvey-Kern describes them as vulnerable and tough, flawed, sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

Lucia has her own goals, wants and reasons. D’Agostino calls her “perfectly imperfect”: she comes with clichés, but she is undeniably real. Lucia makes her own decisions, while Jason’s are often made for him by circumstances. Their life of crime starts out naive: the pair think it’ll be easy and barely think about what comes next. The Bonnie and Clyde comparison comes up again, the one Humphries already made in Dazed.

I like that a lot. GTA V opened with Michael and Trevor robbing a bank like seasoned pros. Here, by the sound of it, the first jobs will be clumsy, and I’d love the missions themselves to feel a bit clumsy too, with a getaway that goes wrong because nobody planned past the door.

The American dream, made smaller

The most interesting part is Humphries on the story as a whole. One of its big themes is the modern American dream, and in his words it has become smaller: not a huge success, just a home for your family and your debts paid off. Money, a house, a family and a way out of debt, that’s the whole wish list. Leonida is the place where enormous wealth runs into ambition just as enormous, and Rockstar makes the world a deliberately crazier, more exaggerated version of today’s America. Humphries calls it “a pressure cooker for all kinds of insanity”, and says the goal isn’t a mirror but satire, bigger than life and more grotesque.

That’s why the cover works for me. A magazine about luxury, and two people on it who’d settle for a paid-off mortgage.

Nelson has one line I’d pin above my desk. Sometimes things have to feel realistic to keep you immersed, he says, and sometimes realism has to go because something else is more convenient for the player. In my job that argument happens every week. Physically correct light looks great in a screenshot and terrible in a corridor where you can’t see the door, so you cheat. I trust a studio that says out loud that it cheats on purpose.

The issue reaches newsstands on October 5. Somewhere in those 1,250 grams there’s a black-and-white photo of Jason on a folding chair outside a trailer, a bottle in his hand and Lucia looking away. That’s the American dream Humphries is talking about: a chair, a beer and a plan that’s about to go wrong.

What the full interview adds

Update, October 6. The issue is out, and the full interview has a few things the preview didn’t. As retold by IBTimes UK and VGTimes:

• Lucia comes from Liberty City. The writers call it her hometown: she spent her early years there with a mother who dreamed of a better life, and then ended up in Leonida. Until now Rockstar had never said it outright.
• Lucia next to Arthur and Niko. D’Agostino says writing Lucia as a fully realised person lets her “stand tall” beside Arthur Morgan and Niko Bellic.
• Jason isn’t a statement. Humphries says Jason’s backstory wasn’t meant to say anything about class or social mobility. Whether he drifted into crime out of need or out of character is for you to decide.
• Satire without memes. The writers don’t recreate single viral moments. They take wider things, conspiracy theories and strange reactions to ordinary events among them, and blow them up until the absurdity is plain to see.
• Opposites that work. Jason is pushed around by circumstances, Lucia pushes ahead, and the friction between them is what drives the story.

Liberty City is the detail I’ll remember. In GTA IV Niko came to that city chasing the American dream his cousin kept promising him. Lucia leaves it chasing a smaller one. Same city, opposite direction.

FAQ

Is GTA 6 on the cover of LOVE magazine?
Yes. LOVE issue 27 has six covers, and one of them is GTA VI, with artwork of Jason and Lucia by Rockstar Games.

When does LOVE issue 27 come out and how much is it?
It goes on sale on October 5, 2026. The French press shop KD Presse sold it for €25, and its preorders sold out in minutes.

Who from Rockstar is interviewed in LOVE magazine?
Rob Nelson of Rockstar North, Rupert Humphries, senior vice president of narrative, and the writers Elizabeth Gauvey-Kern and Alexa D’Agostino.

Where is Lucia from in GTA 6?
Liberty City. In LOVE issue 27, Rockstar’s writers call it her hometown: she spent her early years there before ending up in Leonida.

What did Rockstar say about Lucia in LOVE?
That she has her own goals and makes her own decisions. Writer Alexa D’Agostino calls her “perfectly imperfect”, and the writers say she and Jason will make mistakes and learn from each other.