GTA VI Guide
Map & Setting
GTA VI returns to Vice City, the neon-soaked metropolis inspired by Miami, set within the wider fictional state of Leonida — Rockstar's take on modern-day Florida. It is the largest and most detailed open world the studio has ever built.
Rockstar has not released a full world map yet — this is an official look at Vice City. The complete map of Leonida is expected closer to launch.
The state of Leonida
Leonida is Rockstar’s fictional version of Florida, with Vice City as its centerpiece. From neon beachfronts to humid wetlands, the state is built to be explored by land, air and water.
Vice City returns — this time in the present day
For long-time fans, the single most exciting word in the GTA VI reveal was “Vice City.” The neon-soaked, Miami-inspired city first appeared as the whole map of 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a love letter to 1980s excess that remains one of the most beloved settings the series has ever built. Its return has been rumoured for the better part of two decades, and GTA VI finally makes it official.
The crucial difference this time is the era. Where the original was a period piece drenched in 1980s synth-pop and pastel suits, GTA VI drops Vice City into the present day. That shift changes everything about the city’s texture: smartphones, social media, livestreams and modern surveillance are woven into the world the trailers show, setting up the kind of contemporary satire the series is known for. It is the same city’s DNA — the beaches, the Art Deco, the glamour and the grime — updated for the world of today.
A whole state, not just a city
GTA VI’s biggest structural leap is that Vice City is no longer the entire map — it is the anchor of a much larger fictional state called Leonida, Rockstar’s stand-in for modern Florida. That framing gives the studio room for enormous variety in a single contiguous world: a dense coastal metropolis, a chain of sun-bleached keys, Everglades-style wetlands thick with airboats and wildlife, and industrial towns and rural backroads stretching inland.
This is a deliberate echo of Grand Theft Auto V, which paired the city of Los Santos with the countryside, desert and mountains of Blaine County. Leonida looks set to push that contrast further, with ecosystems — swamp, beach, city, farmland — that feel genuinely distinct from one another. The result, on the evidence of the trailers, is a world designed to be crossed by land, air and water, each region with its own look, mood and rhythm.
How big is the map?
It is the question every fan asks first, and the honest answer is that Rockstar has not said. The studio has not published a full world map or a square-mileage figure, and the sweeping numbers you may have seen — most commonly “about 2.5 times the size of GTA V” — come from dedicated fan mapping projects reconstructing Leonida from trailer footage, not from Rockstar itself.
It is also worth remembering that raw size is the least interesting measure of a Grand Theft Auto world. Rockstar has historically cared far more about density — how much there is to see and do per square mile — than about a big headline number. We break down the fan estimates, and why they should be taken with a pinch of salt, in our community guide to the GTA VI map size.
Places across Leonida
Rockstar has toured six destinations across the state so far, each with its own economy, its own weather and its own kind of trouble. The descriptions below are ours; the photography and the tour itself come from Rockstar’s Only in Leonida pages.
Vice City
Four decades on from the 1980s, still the place America comes to burn money in the sun.
Rockstar's pitch is the glamour, hustle and greed of the whole country compressed into a single city, with every neighbourhood selling a different version of it — Art Deco hotels and white sand at Ocean Beach, the bakeries and street life of Little Cuba, knock-off labels at the Tisha-Wocka flea market, and the cruise terminals of VC Port out at the water's edge.
Leonida Keys
Nothing here is formal, and the bars never run dry.
An easy, unglamorous life spread across a tropical archipelago: a deck chair, a drink and no particular schedule. The catch is what surrounds it. Some of the most beautiful and most dangerous water in America starts a few feet from the shore.
Grassrivers
The one part of Leonida nobody has managed to tame.
A primordial sprawl of mangroves where you can rarely see what is under the surface. Alligators are the headline attraction, but Rockstar is promising worse predators than that out among the channels — along with a fair number of things that are simply strange.
Port Gellhorn
Leonida's forgotten coastline.
The motels are cheap, the attractions are shuttered and the strip malls are empty, and the tourists are not coming back. What has grown up in their place is an economy running on malt liquor, painkillers and truck-stop energy drinks. Rockstar's own advice is to take a dirt bike and keep a hand on your wallet.
Ambrosia
Where the fight over Leonida's health — and its money — starts.
Inland Leonida, where American industry and old-fashioned values still set the terms, whatever those terms cost. The Allied Crystal sugar refinery supplies the jobs. The local biker gang supplies most of what else changes hands.
Mount Kalaga
Room to breathe at the top of the state.
A national landmark on Leonida's northern border, given over to hunting, fishing and off-road trails. The backwoods around it belong to people who would rather not be found — backcountry mystics and radicals living well outside the government's sightlines.
All location art © Rockstar Games, shown here for reference. Rockstar has confirmed these six destinations; the full map of Leonida is expected closer to launch.