Last week, I traveled to Smyrna, Georgia, to attend the public debut of Glock’s new Gen6 models. As I understand it, this is the first time Glock has gone through this level of effort towards a modern, major product introduction. The event brought together members of the press, prominent YouTubers and other creators, as well as members of the Glock family—including Kathrin Glock—and senior executives from both Austria and the United States.
The launch event included a press conference, a technical briefing, hands-on range time, and a brief tour of Glock’s U.S. manufacturing facility. Team Glock Captain Shane Coley and Glock U.S. Director of Sales Taylor Crowley led the presentation and introduced the three new Gen6 models to the press group. Crowley did an excellent job outlining the changes from the fifth to the sixth generation, and I especially appreciated that he explained his team’s reasoning behind those updates.
After the morning presentations, the junket divided itself to tour the factory, listen to technical break-out sessions, capture content or try out the new models at the firing line. As luck would have it, my group was the first to head to the on-site indoor range and I was one of the first writers to try out the new 9 mm pistols.
Gen6 Changes and Upgrades
I’ve been carrying, training and competing with Glock pistols far before I started writing about firearms, and I do personally think that Gen5 Glock models are the company’s strongest work to-date. Obviously, at the time of this writing, no Gen6 Glocks have been released into the wild. The company states that they will be available on dealers’ shelves on January 20, 2026, at the earliest.
After shooting the new Gen6 Glock G17, G45 and G19, I think the new crop of pistols feels like the logical continuation of the Gen5. And this is a good thing, because the last generation was the product iteration that introduced the superlative Glock Marksman Barrels to the product line. In addition, the last generation also saw the application of Glock’s extremely durable nDLC finish to its slides along with a pair of ambidextrous slide stop levers.
With the new Gen6, Glock’s reliable and nearly indestructible “operating system” that consists of a tilting delayed blowback action and its safe-action trigger scheme both remain intact.
During the development of the Gen6, which had now been taking place for several years, Glock took a two-pronged approach and addressed both the pistol’s top and bottom halves.
Gen6 Slide
The most significant change on the Gen6 slide is reflected in the gun’s adoption of a new factory optics-mounting system, which will be completely standard across the product line.
Whereas the Gen5 was merely adapted to accommodate mounted red-dot optics using Glock’s older Gen4-era MOS system, the new Gen6 models instead take a more thorough approach to accommodate the way modern shooters use handguns with Glock’s new Gen6 Optic Ready System.
The new Optic Ready System not only does away with traditional MOS-style plates, but the Gen6 pattern also revises the interior of the slide in order to prevent any errant screws or thread-locking compound from inadvertently interfering with the pistol’s mechanical function, especially in terms of its extraction. Because Glock’s new Optic Ready System does away with traditional optics-mounting plates, Gen6 slides themselves bear the corresponding screw hole threads that are compatible with Trijicon RMR/SRO, Leupold DeltaPoint Pro and C-More footprint screws. Each pistol ships with three corresponding polymer shims that also have the footprint-specific recoil bosses (posts).
During the press conference, Crowley mentioned that the Glock team found better results with using a polymer shim as opposed to a metal one, due to the way the material compresses and friction-fits under screw tension. He also stipulated that the team is still developing a solution for other footprints like the Aimpoint ACRO or Holosun 509T patterns. It’s also worth noting that Glock COA models will not be going away.
Besides revising the optics-mounting system and the extractor channel for better mounted optics compatibility, Glock also tweaked the rear of the Gen6 slide: the backplate and firing pin channel have been modified to dissuade the use of illegal “switches” like with the V-series. Additionally, Gen6 slide serrations front and rear are milled slightly deeper for an improved grip.
Gen6 Frame
The Glock Gen6 launch consists of three standard models including the sixth-generation Glock G17, G19 and G45. The company plans to bring back the Glock 49 to international markets as well. Glock is continuing to expand on the partial modularity that we first witnessed with the introduction of the original Glock G45 and later the Glock G47. Like those, all Gen6 members have the capacity to mix and match each other’s slides and frames. This makes the new Glock G17 the spiritual successor to the very relevant Glock G47.
This systemwide standardization also means that the three new models share the same locking block and recoil spring assembly. Glock also determined that its Gen4 style dual-spring RSA (recoil spring assembly), a feature meant to support .40 S&W pistols when they were more relevant, was no longer needed. Because of this, Gen6 pistols use a simpler Gen3 Glock-style single RSA.
The most dramatic changes to the Gen6 are found in their new frames. Glock made a concerted effort to reprofile and recontour the grips of its existing products without fundamentally altering the core function of its semi-automatic pistol design. That is to say, the guns still keep the original 22-degree grip angle and feed from the same magazines.
However, Glock took end-user and customer feedback into consideration and attempted to pare down the grip profile and make it less boxy. To develop the new dimensional averages for the Gen6 grip, Glock sampled the hand and palm sizes of its entire workforce across the U.S. and Austria in order to have a statistically meaningful data set to work from.
The Gen6 grip contour is more rounded, with subtle palm swells on each side paired with Glock’s new RTF-6 texture—an evolution of the RTF-2 and RTF-4 designs. The updated texture covers more surface area than previous generations and strikes a balanced middle ground between coarseness and utility. On Gen6 pistols, the texturing now extends up to the ambidextrous slide stop, rather than stopping below the magazine release.
The slide stop itself gains an enlarged protective shelf to reduce accidental activation, particularly for shooters with larger hands. All Gen6 frames also feature a modest integrated beavertail to help prevent slide bite. While Gen6 pistols retain interchangeable backstraps, the beavertail is now part of the frame.
Addressing long-standing complaints of “Glock knuckle,” Gen6 frames feature increased undercutting of the trigger guard at its junction with the frontstrap—a known friction point. This is the most aggressive undercut ever found on a factory Glock frame. Crowley noted that the final dimensions were tested for both structural integrity and user safety.
Forward on the Frame
While Gen6 pistols maintain Glock’s familiar Safe Action trigger, this generation introduces a flat-faced trigger shoe. The distance from the backstrap to the trigger face has also been reduced to improve reach for shooters with smaller hands. From the models I handled, the Gen6 triggers felt consistent with Gen5 units—which have always felt better to me out of the box than Gen3 or Gen4 triggers.
The “rectangular” areas ahead of the trigger guard—between the takedown levers and the dustcover—now include added radiusing, scalloping and RTF-6 texturing. Glock carved out this portion to create thumb ledges for improved control. Many people have been calling this feature a “gas pedal,” but I disagree with the term since it’s not a true gas pedal. Competitors need not worry—nothing about the Gen6 factory design should disqualify it from Carry Optics division. Crowley emphasized that the new ledge does not affect Glock holster fitment.
FCU and Modularity Rumors Dispelled
Prior to the official Glock Gen6 announcement, there were many rumors that these new pistols would be built around trigger packs and chassis like other modular handguns currently on the market.
I spoke with Glock US’s Jeremy Sims, who led my group’s technical breakout session and dispelled those rumors. He simply explained that neither the Glock team nor its customers saw a need to incorporate those types of features.
Range Time: Gen6 G17, G19 and G45
With the understanding that range time would be limited in account of everyone at the event getting a fair turn to shoot the new pistols, my sole focus during this portion of the day was to watch how the guns behaved during shooting, namely with the mounted red dots—which all nine pistols on the firing line had.
Given my interest in full-size pistols in the context of competition shooting, I paid extra attention to the new Gen6 G17 in particular. Shooting the Aguila 147-grain FP loads that were provided to us, this new Glock G17 shows a lot of promise in how its red dot and slide both track.
I perceived the Gen6 G17’s slide’s reciprocation and recoil impulse to be smoother than what I expected given my experiences with the Glock G47, a gun which I really enjoyed shooting and using in competition.
By far, the new Glock G17 was my favorite of the three models to shoot that day. That isn’t to say that the new Gen6 G19 or G45 are without merit. Thanks to their shorter slides which have less mass, they tend to reciprocate faster and this means that the shooter needs to be more proactive in how they drive the guns. Though this is far from a comprehensive review, it just seems like the new Glock G17 was the most forgiving to shoot. It also ties directly into my interest in performance and competition shooting. I still carry my original 2019 Gen5 G45 in its stock configuration for self-defense.
This event didn’t provide a chance to really test accuracy, but given that the Gen6 makes use of the Glock Marksman Barrels, I doubt it will be a concern. From a reliability standpoint, I don’t think any of the nine pistols on the line suffered a single stoppage. I think we’d have heard about it by the end of the day.
The Takeaway
I am grateful for Glock’s hospitality and for inviting a group of us in firearms media to their product launch. As someone who spends much of his time shooting and fielding some of the latest and greatest handguns from across the industry, it was nice to have a closer and more intimate look at the Austrian-American gunmaking giant and how it does things. It wasn’t just Coley’s or Crowley’s presentations during the morning press conference, but after interacting with Glock’s Professional team throughout the day, it was obvious to see that this isn’t some stodgy company resting on laurels and relying on work it did decades ago.
I look forward to getting my hands on a couple of the new models and seeing how they shake out in the real world.
MSRP for the Glock Gen6 G17, G19 and G45 is $749. Go to gen6.glock.us.
Most Popular
