Not a City. A State.
If you take one thing away from this article, let it be this: GTA VI is not set in Vice City. It's set in Leonida, and Vice City is just one part of it. That distinction sounds small, and it changes everything.
GTA V gave us Los Santos and Blaine County — one big city and the countryside around it. GTA VI gives us an entire fictional state, Rockstar's version of Florida, with six officially named regions: Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia, and Mount Kalaga National Park. That's not a map. That's a geography. And if Rockstar is to be believed, it's the biggest world they've ever built — by a lot.
Here's the catch, and I want to be upfront about it: Rockstar has not published a full map of Leonida. Not a screenshot of the in-game map screen, not an official measurement, not a scale. Everything in this article comes from three sources — Rockstar's trailers and screenshots, the region pages on Rockstar's official GTA VI website, and what Rockstar's own staff have told reporters. Anything beyond that is fan detective work, and I'll label it as such every time.
How Big Is Leonida, Really?
This is the question everyone asks, and the honest answer is: we don't know exactly, but we know it's enormous. Rockstar told Edge magazine that the total landmass of Leonida — Vice City plus all the surrounding areas — is nearly as large as the playable maps of GTA IV, GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 combined. Read that again. Three of the biggest open worlds ever made, added together, and Leonida is nearly that big.
A Rockstar North developer separately told reporters the map is roughly twice the size of GTA V's. The community has tried to put numbers on that. The GTA VI Mapping Project, which triangulates positions from trailer footage, estimates usable land at somewhere between 75 and 90 square kilometres, with total surface including navigable waters above 120. Other analyses cluster around 125 to 160 square kilometres, or 1.5 to 2 times GTA V. One careful measurement of leaked map material put the land at 83.2 square kilometres — 1.73 times GTA V's 48.15 square kilometres of land.
Here's my take on all these numbers: they're educated guesses, and they disagree with each other, because they're measuring different things. Land only? Land plus water? The leaked outline or the official art? Until Rockstar publishes the map — and they've said a free printable map of Leonida arrives on launch day, November 19 — every square kilometre figure you read is an estimate. Treat it that way, including the ones in this article.
What I do trust is the direction of travel. Every source, official and unofficial, points the same way: Leonida is roughly double GTA V, and it's the largest world Rockstar has ever made. For comparison, the original Vice City in 2002 was about 9 square kilometres. Leonida is, conservatively, ten times that. Think about that for a second. Ten Vice Cities, stitched together into a state.
Vice City — The City That Anchors Everything
Let's start where every fan starts: Vice City, Rockstar's fictional Miami, back for the first time since 2002. But this isn't the Vice City I grew up with. The 2002 version was neon, pastel, and gloriously stylised — a Miami filtered through 1980s movies. The 2026 version is a modern city: glass towers downtown, Art Deco hotels on the beach, a port full of container ships, an elevated train that looks exactly like Miami's Metrorail, and neighbourhoods that range from beachfront wealth to the kind of streets where Lucia and Jason actually live.
The trailers show Vice City as a place of extremes. Ocean Drive at night, all neon and crowds. The beaches in the morning, all sun and tourists. The downtown towers where the money lives. And underneath it all, the implication that the city is a character in its own right — the way Los Santos was in GTA V, but denser, taller, and more alive.
What I'm most curious about is how the city will feel to drive through. GTA V's Los Santos was big, but it was also strangely empty in places — whole blocks that existed only as scenery. Rockstar has been talking for years about interiors, about buildings you can actually enter, and even a fraction of the rumoured hundreds would change how a GTA city feels.
The Leonida Keys — Where Jason Lives
South of Vice City, trailing off into the ocean, is the Leonida Keys — Rockstar's version of the Florida Keys, and the place Jason Duval calls home. Trailer 2 opens here, on the roof of a green house that has clearly seen better days, and the Keys set the tone for the whole game: slower, poorer, stranger than the city.
The Keys are an island chain, which means boats matter here in a way they never have in GTA before. The trailers show speedboats, fishing boats, jet skis, and long bridges connecting the islands — the kind of roads where a chase would be genuinely different from a chase in the city. There's also underwater exploration, or at least the strong suggestion of it: the trailers linger on the water, on docks, on boats, in a way that makes me think the ocean isn't just a boundary. It's a place.
What I love about the Keys as a setting is what they represent. Vice City is wealth and noise. The Keys are the people who live in the shadow of that wealth — working-class, weather-beaten, held together by favours and debts. Jason lives rent-free in a house owned by Brian Heder, a local drug runner, in exchange for doing his dirty work. That arrangement is the whole game in miniature: freedom that isn't really freedom, in a place that looks like paradise and works like a trap.
Grassrivers — The Swamps That Swallow People
West of Vice City are the Grassrivers, Rockstar's Everglades — and if you think a swamp sounds boring as a game location, you haven't been paying attention. The trailers show airboats skimming across black water, alligators on the roads, mud parties, hunting, and the kind of people who live so far off the grid that the law is more of a rumour than a presence.
The Grassrivers are important for a reason that has nothing to do with scenery: they're the part of the map where the game's wanted system and its wilderness systems will actually matter. A swamp is the perfect place to hide. It's also the perfect place to get lost. And in a game about two people on the run from a criminal conspiracy, a place where you can disappear is worth more than a place where you can shop.
I'll be honest — the swamps are the region I'm most excited to explore, precisely because they're the least like a traditional GTA location. Los Santos had a desert. Leonida has a living wetland full of wildlife, weather, and people who don't want to be found. That's new territory for this series, literally.
Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga — The Rest of the State
The remaining three regions fill out the map, and each one has a distinct personality.
Port Gellhorn, on the Gulf coast, is a run-down resort town of motels, working docks, storage tanks and industrial waterfront — the kind of place that was probably glamorous in the 1970s and has been rusting ever since. It reads as Leonida's second real settlement, a blue-collar counterweight to Vice City's gloss, and the trailers suggest it will be a hub for the game's rougher, working-class storylines. Think Panama City on the panhandle, filtered through Rockstar's eye for decay.
Ambrosia is the region we know least about, and that makes it interesting. It's the agricultural interior, built around a sugar refinery next to Lake Leonida, and the official screenshots show biker territory — rural, industrial, and rough around the edges. Ambrosia is sugar country, the Florida that tourists never see, and I suspect it will be where some of the game's most grounded, least glamorous missions take place.
Mount Kalaga National Park is the wild card, in every sense. It's forested, elevated wilderness in the north of the state — hunting, trails, and terrain that breaks up Florida's famous flatness. Rockstar has introduced actual elevation into a state that, in real life, is famously flat, which tells me they care more about gameplay variety than geographical accuracy. A national park means hiking, hunting, off-road driving, and light aircraft — and it means the map has a vertical dimension that GTA V's desert never quite achieved.
What We Still Don't Know
For all the detail in this article, the honest truth is that the map of Leonida is still mostly a mystery. Rockstar hasn't shown the in-game map screen. No full official map has leaked — the detailed maps you see online are fan reconstructions built from trailers, and the best of them, the Yanis V16 base map, is openly a community project, licensed for reuse with credit. The six counties and the district names floating around online come from leaked material, not from Rockstar.
So take every measurement in this article with a pinch of salt, and take the excitement seriously. The map is twice the size of GTA V. It's six regions, one state, and a city I've waited twenty-four years to return to. That's enough for me.
Conclusion
Leonida is Rockstar's version of Florida, and it's the biggest world the studio has ever built — roughly twice GTA V's map by the developer's own account, with six named regions from the neon of Vice City to the wilderness of Mount Kalaga. We don't have an official map yet, and we don't have an official size in square kilometres, but we have enough: a state, not a city, built for two people on the run, with boats, swamps, a port town, a sugar belt and a national park in between. On November 19, we'll finally get to drive it. Until then, the fan maps and the trailer detective work will have to do — and honestly, that's half the fun.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is GTA VI set?
The fictional state of Leonida, Rockstar's version of Florida, with Vice City — its fictional Miami — as the central city. The game launches November 19, 2026, on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
How many regions are in the GTA VI map?
Six officially named regions: Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia, and Mount Kalaga National Park.
How big is the GTA VI map compared to GTA V?
Rockstar says the landmass is nearly as large as GTA IV, GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 combined, and roughly twice the size of GTA V alone. Community estimates put it at 1.5 to 2 times GTA V, or roughly 125 to 160 square kilometres. No official square-kilometre figure exists.
Has Rockstar released the official GTA VI map?
Not yet. Rockstar has said a free printable map of Leonida will be available on launch day, November 19, 2026. The detailed maps online are fan reconstructions built from trailers.
What is Port Gellhorn in GTA VI?
A run-down resort and port town on Leonida's Gulf coast, shown in Trailer 2 — motels, working docks and industrial waterfront, and the map's blue-collar counterweight to Vice City.
Can you explore underwater in GTA VI?
Rockstar hasn't confirmed underwater exploration, but the Leonida Keys trailers emphasise boats, docks and open water far more than any previous GTA, suggesting the ocean is a real gameplay space rather than just a map boundary.
