GTA 6 is set in Leonida, a fictional US state that serves as Rockstar's version of Florida — the studio's first entirely new mainline setting since Grand Theft Auto V's Los Santos in 2013, and the first mainline GTA game to feature Vice City, Rockstar's long-running Miami stand-in, since 2002's Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Here's a complete breakdown of what Rockstar has actually confirmed about the map, plus how its size stacks up against GTA V's.
Vice City sits at the center, but it's not the whole map
Vice City is Leonida's largest and most central urban area — the modern rebuild of the location GTA fans have known since 2002, now built for current-generation hardware and Rockstar's more systemic, densely simulated world design. But unlike some past GTA settings that centered almost entirely on one city, Leonida is explicitly built as a full state, with Vice City as its anchor rather than its entirety.
Every confirmed county and region
Rockstar has officially named several distinct areas of Leonida across its marketing and character pages. Confirmed counties include Vice-Dale County, Ambrosia County, Kelly County, Leonard County, Mariana County, and Lummox County — a naming structure that mirrors how Florida itself is organized into counties, reinforcing how directly Leonida is meant to evoke the real state rather than just borrowing its aesthetic.
Beyond the county-level structure, Rockstar has confirmed several named regions and landmarks:
- Vice City — the state's major urban center, GTA's Miami analog.
- Leonida Keys — a chain of islands extending off the coast, mirroring the real Florida Keys.
- Grassrivers — explicitly inspired by Florida's real-world Everglades, suggesting dense wetland biomes distinct from Vice City's urban environment.
- Port Gellhorn — a named coastal location distinct from Vice City itself.
- Ambrosia — both a named county and a specific region within Leonida.
- Mount Kalaga National Park — a wilderness/nature-focused area, a first for the franchise in terms of explicitly named protected parkland.
That range — dense urban city, island chain, wetland ecosystem, coastal port town, and protected wilderness — points toward a considerably more biome-diverse map than GTA V's Los Santos and Blaine County, which leaned heavily on desert, mountain, and a single major city rather than this many distinct named ecosystems.
How big is Leonida, really?
Rockstar has not released an official map size for GTA 6, which is worth stating clearly before citing any specific number. That said, community mapping projects — built by fans analyzing trailer footage, the Extended Look's map glimpses, and other available visual evidence — have produced estimates in the range of 118 to 132 square miles (roughly 300-340 square kilometers) of landmass.
For comparison, GTA V's combined Los Santos and Blaine County map is widely cited at approximately 49 square miles. If the community estimates for Leonida hold up, that would put GTA 6's map at roughly 2.4 to 2.7 times larger than GTA V's — a substantial jump, though notably less dramatic than some of the wilder "twice the size of GTA V" or larger claims that circulated earlier in the game's marketing cycle. It's worth treating even the 118-132 range as an informed estimate rather than a confirmed figure, since it's derived from fan analysis rather than an official Rockstar statement.
Why Rockstar chose Florida as the model
Florida has long been an unusually rich setting for crime fiction and satire — a state whose real-life news cycle regularly produces stories stranger than fiction, giving Rockstar's satirical writing style (already well-established through GTA V's satire of Los Angeles and California culture) a natural, almost gift-wrapped target. The original 1980s-set Vice City leaned on Miami's Miami Vice-era cocaine-boom aesthetic; GTA 6's modern Leonida trades that specific era for a contemporary satire of Florida's current reputation — a state simultaneously associated with retirement communities, spring break tourism, hurricane seasons, and a very online reputation for bizarre local news stories.
Vice City's history in the franchise, briefly
Vice City isn't a new invention for GTA 6 — it's one of the franchise's oldest and most beloved settings, and understanding that history explains some of the excitement around its return. The original Grand Theft Auto: Vice City released in 2002, set in a heavily 1980s-styled version of Miami, built around cocaine-trade crime stories, pastel neon aesthetics, and a soundtrack steeped in that decade's music. It became one of the best-reviewed and best-selling games of its console generation, and its 1980s Miami setting remains one of the most fondly remembered in the entire franchise's history, referenced and revisited in spin-off material for years afterward (including 2006's Vice City Stories on PSP and PS2).
GTA 6 doesn't appear to be replicating that 1980s period setting — Leonida's version of Vice City is confirmed as a contemporary, present-day location rather than a period piece, judging by the modern vehicles, smartphones, and social media integration shown in the Extended Look. That's a meaningful choice: rather than a straightforward nostalgia revisit, Rockstar is using the beloved Vice City name and location while updating its entire cultural moment to reflect 2020s Florida rather than 1980s Miami.
Real Florida landmarks behind Leonida's fictional geography
Each of Leonida's confirmed regions maps fairly transparently onto a real Florida counterpart, continuing a pattern GTA has used throughout its history — Los Santos as Los Angeles, Liberty City as New York, the original Vice City as Miami. The Grassrivers' explicit Everglades inspiration is the clearest example: Florida's actual Everglades is one of the state's most distinctive natural features, a vast subtropical wetland ecosystem found nowhere else in the continental United States, making it an obvious and instantly recognizable region to fictionalize. The Leonida Keys similarly mirror the real Florida Keys — the chain of tropical islands extending southwest from the Florida mainland toward Key West, long associated in popular culture with a laid-back, tourist-heavy, slightly lawless atmosphere that fits naturally into a GTA setting.
Mount Kalaga is a more interesting case, since Florida is famously flat and has no significant mountains in reality — its highest natural point, Britton Hill, sits at only 345 feet above sea level. A named "national park" mountain setting in Leonida is likely more of a creative liberty than a direct Florida analog, giving Rockstar's world designers a genuine elevation-based biome to work with that the real state's geography wouldn't naturally provide.
What the biome diversity means for gameplay
The range of confirmed regions — swampland, keys, mountains (Mount Kalaga), dense urban city, and coastal port towns — suggests GTA 6's world systems (previously reported to lean toward a Red Dead Redemption 2-style simulated approach, including new wildlife not seen in prior GTA games) will have considerably more environmental variety to work with than GTA V's map did. Wildlife and environmental behavior in the Grassrivers wetlands, for instance, would need to differ meaningfully from whatever's simulated in Vice City's urban core — a level of biome-specific systemic design GTA V's more desert/urban/mountain-focused map didn't require to nearly the same degree.
How the map has been revealed across GTA 6's marketing so far
Information about Leonida's geography has come out gradually rather than all at once, tracking with each major marketing beat. Trailer 1 (December 2023) gave brief glimpses of Vice City's skyline and coastline. Trailer 2 (May 2025) expanded that view further. The August 27, 2026 Extended Look provided the most substantial look yet, explicitly emphasizing the map's overall scale and showing footage from beyond Vice City itself into the wider state. That gradual reveal pattern — rather than a single complete map unveiling — is consistent with how Rockstar handled GTA V's Los Santos and Blaine County reveal a decade earlier, expanding the known map incrementally across multiple pieces of marketing rather than showing everything in one trailer.
The bottom line
GTA 6 takes place in Leonida, Rockstar's fictional Florida analog, anchored by a modern rebuild of Vice City but extending across at least six named counties and several distinct biomes — from the Everglades-inspired Grassrivers wetlands to the island-chain Leonida Keys to Mount Kalaga's wilderness. While Rockstar hasn't confirmed an exact map size, credible fan estimates put it at roughly two and a half times GTA V's landmass. Whatever the precise number turns out to be, the confirmed regional diversity alone marks a real departure from GTA V's more geographically uniform Los Santos and Blaine County setting.
For everything else confirmed ahead of the November 19 launch, see our full GTA 6 what-to-expect and prep guide.
