Quick answer: Leonida is Rockstar's version of Florida. Vice City is Miami, the Leonida Keys are the Florida Keys and Grassrivers is the Everglades. The other three regions are less obvious, but Rockstar's own descriptions point to the Panhandle's Forgotten Coast, the sugar towns around Lake Okeechobee and the backwoods of north Florida.
Rockstar has described six destinations across Leonida on its official GTA VI site. Below, each one starts with what Rockstar has actually said about it, then the real place it lines up with. The descriptions are official; the real-world matches are our reading of the clues, and we say how strong each one is.
Vice City is Miami, down to the neighbourhoods
Rockstar pitches Vice City as the glamour-and-greed capital of America and names four places in it: the art deco hotels and white sand of Ocean Beach, the bakeries of Little Cuba, the Tisha-Wocka flea market and the VC Port, which it calls the cruise ship capital of the world.
Every one of those has a Miami original:
- Ocean Beach is Miami Beach — specifically South Beach and its Art Deco Historic District along Ocean Drive. Ocean Beach was also a district in 2002's GTA: Vice City, so the name is a deliberate callback.
- Little Cuba is Little Havana, the Cuban heart of Miami, where the panaderías (bakeries) on Calle Ocho are a fixture.
- Tisha-Wocka is a play on Opa-locka, home of the Opa-locka Hialeah Flea Market, a South Florida institution for nearly four decades.
- VC Port is PortMiami, which really does market itself as the Cruise Capital of the World.
How sure: certain. Vice City has stood in for Miami since the first GTA in 1997, and 2002's GTA: Vice City set it in 1986; the new version keeps the parody going street by street. One more official detail: Rockstar's bio for Lucia mentions her family's days in Liberty City, the series' New York.
The Leonida Keys are the Florida Keys
Rockstar describes the Leonida Keys as a laid-back tropical island chain — casual dress code, well-stocked bars — sitting next to some of the most beautiful and dangerous waters in America.
That is the Florida Keys almost word for word: the roughly 120-mile string of islands south of Miami, joined by the Overseas Highway, with Key West bar culture at the end of it. The "dangerous waters" line fits the Keys' history too. Rockstar's character bio for Brian Heder calls him a drug runner from the golden age of smuggling in the Keys — a nod to the 1970s and '80s, when the islands were a major entry point for marijuana and cocaine. Jason lives in the Keys and works for local drug runners.
How sure: certain.
Grassrivers is the Everglades
Rockstar calls Grassrivers a wild wetland where alligators are the famous attraction, but warns of deadlier predators and stranger finds among the mangroves.
The name gives it away. The Everglades is nicknamed the "River of Grass", from Marjory Stoneman Douglas's 1947 book The Everglades: River of Grass, which helped turn it into a national park. The "deadlier predators" line has a real counterpart as well: invasive Burmese pythons, released pets that have spread through Everglades National Park since the 1980s and wiped out much of its small-mammal population. Expect airboats and alligators here.
How sure: certain — the name is a direct translation.
Port Gellhorn is the Panhandle's "Forgotten Coast"
Rockstar's tagline for Port Gellhorn calls it Leonida's forgotten coast: a former vacation spot of cheap motels, closed attractions and empty strip malls, now running on malt liquor, painkillers and energy drinks.
"Forgotten Coast" is a real Florida nickname. It covers the quiet stretch of the Gulf coast in the Panhandle, roughly from Mexico Beach to St. Marks, around Port St. Joe and Apalachicola — the part of Florida tourism forgot. The faded-resort mood and the opioid-era economy also echo the wider Panhandle and Gulf beach towns past their peak.
The name has a second layer. Martha Gellhorn was a war correspondent and Ernest Hemingway's third wife; the two famously met in a Key West bar in 1936. For a state built on Florida, that is unlikely to be a coincidence.
How sure: strong for the region, since Rockstar uses the real nickname. Which exact town inspired it is open.
Ambrosia is Florida's sugar country
Rockstar places Ambrosia in the heart of Leonida: an old-school industrial town where the Allied Crystal sugar refinery provides the jobs and a local biker gang runs most of the rest. Its tagline is about keeping Leonida sweet.
Inland Florida has exactly this place. The sugarcane belt south of Lake Okeechobee is dominated by big growers — U.S. Sugar is headquartered in Clewiston, which calls itself "America's Sweetest Town", and one of the largest producers is called Florida Crystals. Allied Crystal reads like a blend of the two.
How sure: strong. The sugar refinery and "sweet" tagline only fit one part of Florida.
Mount Kalaga stands in for north Florida's backwoods
Rockstar describes Mount Kalaga as a national landmark on the state's northern border with hunting, fishing and off-road trails, surrounded by backwoods home to hillbilly mystics and paranoid radicals.
Here Leonida departs from the map: Florida has no mountains. Its highest natural point, Britton Hill, is about 345 feet above sea level — near the Alabama border, which is where Rockstar puts Mount Kalaga. The surrounding country matches north Florida's big national forests, such as Apalachicola and Ocala, known for hunting, off-road trails and remote communities. Think of it as Leonida's answer to GTA V's Blaine County.
How sure: loose. The location and the backwoods fit north Florida; the mountain itself is invented.
See it on the map
All six regions are marked on our interactive Leonida map, along with community pins from the trailers. When the game is out on November 19, the completion tracker covers each region's missions and collectibles.