Where does GTA 6 take place?

In Leonida — Rockstar's fictional version of modern-day Florida. The state contains Vice City (the urban anchor), the Leonida Keys (a coastal island chain), at least one secondary urban area not yet named, and a wide hinterland of swamps, beach towns, and suburban belts.

How big is the GTA 6 map?

Rockstar hasn't published numbers. Community measurements pegged GTA V's San Andreas at roughly 49 square miles. Leonida is probably comparable in total area but materially denser — more named urban places, less empty desert, a new boat-based traversal grammar via the Keys. See our full comparison.

Is Vice City the only city in GTA 6?

No. Vice City is the primary urban core, but trailer footage shows at least one secondary urban area that hasn't been named on signage yet. Smaller named towns appear in the Keys and the hinterland. Final city count won't be confirmed until launch wave coverage.

What are the Leonida Keys?

Rockstar's fictional version of the Florida Keys — a coastal island chain south of Vice City. Confirmed in Trailer 1 footage. They establish a fundamentally new traversal grammar for GTA: boats become essential rather than novelty, since the road network can't reach all of the playable space.

Will GTA 6 have multiple cities like San Andreas (2004)?

Probably yes, but with a different shape. 2004's San Andreas had three full cities (Los Santos / San Fierro / Las Venturas) connected by hinterland. GTA 6's Leonida appears to follow Florida's actual geography: one dominant urban core (Vice City), one secondary urban area, several smaller named towns, and a wide rural / coastal interior.

Is there a desert in GTA 6 like in GTA V?

No. Florida's geography is wetlands, beaches, and forest — there's no desert analog. The hinterland of Leonida is swamp, beach, mangrove, suburban belt, and small-town. This is a fundamental tonal shift from V's San Andreas.

The GTA 6 Map: Every Confirmed Region of Leonida

TL;DR

GTA 6 takes place in Leonida — Rockstar's fictional version of modern-day Florida. Three regions are confirmed:

Vice City — the primary urban core. Modern-day Miami analog. Largest density of mission setups, NPCs, businesses, and landmark interiors.
Leonida Keys — a coastal island chain south of Vice City. Florida Keys analog. Working-class, sun-bleached, hurricane-shuttered. Boats become essential traversal.
A secondary urban area — visible in some trailer cuts but not yet named on signage. Could be a Tampa-coded west coast city, a Jacksonville-coded north city, or an Orlando-coded interior city. Speculation only.

Plus a wide hinterland: swamp belts, beach towns, suburban arterials, and the smaller named places that surface in trailer cuts. The state of Leonida itself is the umbrella entity — the first time mainline GTA has used the state as the canvas rather than a single city.

This guide is the canonical reference. Each region links to its full codex entry. Updates land the moment Rockstar confirms anything new.

What "Leonida" actually means

Mainline GTA has a long tradition of state names that are the canvas, not the destination. San Andreas (2004) used the state name. V (2013) used it again. But in both cases, the city — Los Santos — was where the game lived. Leonida shifts the equation:

The state IS the setting. Vice City is the entry point, not the totality.
The hinterland matters narratively — Trailer 2 spent more time outside Vice City than inside.
Rockstar's framing language consistently positions the game as "in Leonida," not "in Vice City." That's a deliberate choice the marketing has reinforced for two years.

This matters because of what it predicts: missions distribute across multiple regions rather than clustering in a single city. The Keys aren't a side detour. The secondary city isn't a Sandy Shores–scale weekend trip. The state is the story.

Vice City — the urban anchor

Full codex entry: Vice City →

This is Rockstar's first return to Vice City since 2002. The 1986 Tommy Vercetti version is in the vault — Rockstar kept it untouched for over two decades. Coming back now, with the largest entertainment release in history, means they chose to satirize Florida-as-America-2026 over Los-Angeles-as-America-2026 or New-York-as-America-2026. That choice tells you what they think the country actually is right now.

What's visible in Trailers 1 and 2:

A financial-district downtown — high-rise commercial blocks, glass-and-steel skyline shots, modern transit.
A beachfront strip — neon-saturated club row, palm-lined arterial, the obvious 2026 reread of the 1986 vibe.
A working-class waterfront — fishing-supply shops, weathered storefronts, small-craft marinas. This is the part that didn't exist in 1986 Vice City.
A swamp-edge suburb — single-story homes, alligator-adjacent backyards, the borderlands between urban and the actual swamp belts.
NPC density visibly higher than peak GTA V Online lobbies. Whether this is in-engine streaming or marketing bullshot is the most-watched technical question.

What we're still watching for:

Named neighborhoods (T1/T2 had very little on-screen signage)
Returning landmarks from 1986 Vice City (the Malibu Club, Vercetti Estate, Ocean View Hotel, Star Island — all unconfirmed)
The full count of enterable buildings vs decorative frontage

Leonida Keys — the coastal counterweight

Full codex entry: Leonida Keys →

Rockstar's fictional Florida Keys. A coastal island chain south of Vice City — small fishing-coded towns, white-sand stretches, mangrove channels, hurricane-shutter storefront economy. Where Vice City is club music and supercars, the Keys are gas-station LP gas and 30-foot fishing boats.

Why the Keys matter structurally: they're the reason GTA 6's map can plausibly be larger than V's without becoming traversal-tedious. V's San Andreas was a desert / mountain hinterland the player crosses primarily by car or plane. A coastal island chain is a fundamentally different traversal grammar:

Boats become essential rather than novelty
Low-altitude flight becomes a real mode of movement
"Drive across the map" gets replaced with "drive to a marina, take a boat, switch to a smaller boat, walk"

That changes mission design more than fans are giving it credit for. Heists involving boat getaways. Smuggling routes through mangroves. Escape-by-water sequences that simply weren't possible in V's grammar.

What we're watching for:

Named towns and islands (Trailer 1 footage included visible signage for several distinct settlements, none publicly cataloged)
Real-world analog mapping (Key Largo / Marathon / Islamorada / Key West templates)
Hurricane as gameplay system vs cinematic dressing
Smuggling / trafficking gameplay structure (Vercetti's empire was the original; Trevor's air smuggling was the V update; the Keys are the perfect setting for the next iteration)

The secondary urban area — unnamed

Trailer 2 included cuts of an urban environment that doesn't read as Vice City. Different skyline, different palette, different street grid. Rockstar hasn't named it.

The plausible analogs, ordered by how cleanly the trailer footage matches:

A Tampa-coded west coast city — port-and-bay geometry, cruise-ship visible in some cuts, reads as commerce-anchored.
A Jacksonville-coded north Leonida city — riverfront downtown, more Atlantic-coded than Gulf-coded, possibly the secondary entry point if the player travels north from Vice City.
An Orlando-coded interior city — theme-park-mocking aesthetic possible, corporate-suburb feel, would explain some of the swamp-belt geography clustered around it.

This is the single biggest open structural question for Trailer 3. The named-on-signage reveal of this secondary city would confirm:

There ARE multiple urban anchors (the V structure of "one big city + small towns" is over)
Which Florida geography Rockstar is actually riffing on
How much of the player's time will distribute outside Vice City

The hinterland

Beyond the named regions, trailer footage shows extensive populated hinterland:

Swamp belts — the wetland interior of Leonida, with airboat usage visible, hunting-camp shacks, what reads as mid-density residential settlement adapted for waterlogged terrain.
Beach towns — small coastal settlements outside the Keys proper, likely along Vice City's outer arc.
Suburban arterials — strip-mall corridors, gas-station archetypes, fast-food signage that satirizes 2020s American suburb language.
Smaller named towns — at least three visible in trailer cuts with on-screen signage, none publicly cataloged.

The honest read: V's hinterland (Mount Chiliad, Sandy Shores, Paleto Bay, Grapeseed) was about 80% of the map by area but maybe 20% by mission density. Leonida's hinterland appears to flip that ratio meaningfully — denser settlement, more named places, more visible activity per square mile of trailer footage.

What is NOT in the GTA 6 map

Setting expectations honestly. Things that are NOT confirmed and almost certainly NOT in Leonida:

A desert. Florida geography doesn't have desert. The closest analog is the dry-scrub interior, which is still meaningfully different from V's Sandy Shores aesthetic.
Mountains. Florida's highest natural elevation is under 350 feet. There is no Mount Chiliad analog. The "vertical" gameplay grammar of V doesn't apply here.
Snow. Florida has had measurable snowfall maybe twice in the last fifty years. A snow-coded northern region is not in the picture.
Dense forest like the Pacific Northwest. The Florida ecosystem is mangrove, pine flatwoods, cypress swamp. It reads forested in trailer cuts but not in a coniferous, NorthCal way.
A San Fierro / Las Venturas-scale third major city. 2004's San Andreas had three full cities. Leonida footage has shown one major (Vice City) plus one secondary plus the Keys. A third major city would have shown up in trailer cuts by now.

Map size context

GTA V's San Andreas community-measured to about 49 square miles, roughly 80% hinterland by area. Rockstar has never published square-mile numbers for any GTA map. Leonida's exact total area is unconfirmed.

The honest read: Leonida is probably comparable in total area to V's San Andreas, possibly somewhat larger, but materially denser in usable terrain. The qualitative shift matters more than the raw numbers — multiple urban anchors, less empty desert, an entirely new traversal grammar via the Keys. Our Leonida vs San Andreas comparison walks through the math.

What we're watching for at Trailer 3

Per our pre-T3 watchlist, the map-relevant items:

The secondary urban area gets a name. Confirms ≥2 distinct urban centers in Leonida.
Named neighborhoods inside Vice City surface. Each name = one more usable-density data point. Trailer cuts have suggested distinct neighborhoods; this is when the signs go up.
Highway / road network reveals. Full interstate analog plus named state routes signal full traversal grammar.
Boat handling demonstrated. Confirms the Keys are sustained-gameplay zones, not just visual backdrop.
Smaller hinterland towns get named. The first 3–5 confirmed named places outside Vice City and the Keys.

Specific square-mile figures? Almost certainly not. Rockstar typically doesn't publish them.

When this guide updates

This page updates the moment Rockstar confirms:

New named region, neighborhood, or town
The secondary urban area's name
Highway / road network details
Specific map size figures (if ever)
Boat-as-gameplay confirmation
Hurricane / weather as gameplay system

Until then, the regions above are the canonical confirmed map. Treat speculation in fan communities as speculation; treat what's on this page as defensible against Rockstar's actual public record.

Sources

Rockstar Newswire — primary publishing surface for any future map confirmations
GTA VI Trailer 1 (YouTube, December 5, 2023) — first reveal footage
GTA VI Trailer 2 (YouTube) — second reveal
GTA V San Andreas community measurements (gosh99 + GTA Forums archives) — methodology + 49 sq mi figure
Florida geographic baseline — used to calibrate which real-world analogs the trailers are riffing on

Vice Atlas is the independent player hub for the next-gen open world. We publish first-publisher coverage of every Rockstar reveal under a real byline, with sources for every claim. Editorial standards live in our editorial policy. Corrections handled per the corrections policy.