2026-10-25

The GTA 6 Mapping Project: How Fans Drew Leonida Before Rockstar Did

Rockstar hasn't published the full map of Grand Theft Auto VI. Fans didn't wait. Since 2022, a volunteer effort known as the GTA 6 Mapping Project has been rebuilding Leonida, Vice City and everything around it from trailers, screenshots and official art, one building at a time. Its latest version landed in September, and it changes how big you should expect this world to be.

Official GTA VI Vice City postcard art — Vice City, the heart of Leonida. (Official GTA VI art, Rockstar Games.)

What it is

A fan project, not an official one. The mappers say plainly that they aren't affiliated with Rockstar or Take-Two.
Started by a mapper called DuPz0r after the September 2022 leak, which put the first unfinished footage of GTA VI on the internet.
Built by a community. Contributors work together on Discord and GTAForums, matching what they see in the footage to places in real-life Miami and South Florida.

How you map a game that isn't out

Freeze the frame. Every trailer, screenshot and postcard is combed for a building, a road sign or a coastline.
Find it on the real map. Leonida is a parody of Florida, so a Vice City tower often has a real Miami twin.
Measure and place it. Camera angles, shadows and distances fix where each piece sits on a shared map.
Redraw when new footage lands. Every trailer moves something. That is why the project is on its sixteenth version.

Version 16: smaller than the hype

Version 16, released in September, reworked coastlines, beaches, urban areas and county borders, and added roads and buildings in Vice City, Key Lento, Hamlet, Capri and Ambrosia. The surprise was the size:

Land area: about 85.6 km², down from nearly 110 km² in version 15.
For comparison: community mapping puts GTA V's map at just under 50 km².
The whole map is roughly 21 × 20 km, but much of that is water, so don't read it as a 420 km² world.

So Leonida still looks like the biggest map Rockstar has built for GTA, at well over GTA V's landmass, just not the giant some early estimates promised. Treat every number as a fan estimate until the game is out.

Official GTA VI Leonida Keys postcard art — The Leonida Keys. (Official GTA VI art, Rockstar Games.)

A word about leaks

Version 16 also drew on a map image that leaked on August 18, alongside Rockstar's own Extended Look footage. Rockstar has been taking leaked material down, and an unfinished map can be out of date, so we don't link to it. As always on this site: if it didn't come from Rockstar, it's a clue, not a fact.

Explore it yourself

GTADB interactive map: searchable, with the mapped locations.
State of Leonida: the project's own map, with a link to the mapping Discord.