Guitar Hero 5 is a music video game and the fifth main entry in the Guitar Hero series. The game will be developed by Neversoft and published by RedOctane and Activision. It will be released internationally during September 2009. Similar to the preceding title, Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero 5 is geared towards playing in a four-person band experience, including lead and bass guitar, drums, and vocals. The game will be available as a standalone title, allow players to use existing compatible instrument controllers, and as a bundle that provides these controllers. Guitar Hero 5 adds several new features, such as drop-in/drop-out play, bands composed of any combination of available instruments, a Rockfest competitive mode consisting of several various scoring mechanisms, and both song-specific and general Challenges to unlock new avatars, clothing, and other extras in the game. Many of these changes were added to make the game a more social experience, allowing players across a range of skill levels to be able to play cooperatively and competitively against each other both locally and online. Guitar Hero 5's track list contains 85 songs by 83 separate artists, and like previous Guitar Hero games, several musicians with works in the game have been modeled through motion capture for avatars in the game, including Johnny Cash, Carlos Santana, and Shirley Manson. The game continues to support the user-created music studio introduced in World Tour through GHTunes, and additional downloadable content for the game will be made available. A majority of existing downloadable tracks from World Tour will be forward-compatible with Guitar Hero 5.

Using a special game controller, players attempt to match scrolling notes as they appear on screen along a note track to mimic the playing of rock music and other songs. Hitting correct notes in time with the music increases the player's score and builds their performance meter, while missing notes will cause the meter to drop. Should the meter fall below a certain threshold, the song will end prematurely with the player booed off the stage by a virtual audience. Correctly hitting consecutive notes will build the player's score multiplier. Specially marked sections of the song, if completed correctly, help to build up Star Power when then can be unleashed through an action with the controller to further double the current score.

As with Guitar Hero World Tour, Guitar Hero 5 supports the playing of lead and bass guitar through guitar controllers, drums through a drum controller, and vocals through a microphone. Players can also play in groups of up to four local or remote players to form a band, co-operatively playing through a song. Whereas in World Tour, a band could only have one of each instrument, Guitar Hero 5 allows players to arrange for any combination of instruments, including all four players on the same instrument if they so choose.