The GTA 6 Mapping Project, Explained
Updated · 4 min read
Short answer: the GTA 6 Mapping Project (also called the GTA VI Mapping Project) is a fan effort that has been rebuilding the map of GTA 6 since the September 2022 leak. Hundreds of volunteers match buildings in the footage to real places in Miami and Florida, measure where they sit and draw them onto one map. It's coordinated by a mapper called DuPz0r and runs on Discord and GTAForums. It isn't official: Rockstar hasn't released a full map, and the real one arrives with the game on November 19, 2026. The interactive map on this site is built on the same kind of community work.
Updated Oct 15, 2026: first version.
What is the GTA 6 Mapping Project?
It's a crowdsourced map of Leonida, GTA 6's version of Florida, made before the game is out. Fans study every trailer, screenshot and leaked clip, identify the real building or street behind each shot, and place it on a shared 2D map. The map grows in numbered versions (v0.042, v0.049 and so on) as new footage comes out.
It started in September 2022, days after the GTA 6 footage leak. GTAForums opened a "Mapping Vice City" thread on September 19, 2022, "analysing every inch of GTA VI media to identify buildings, landmarks and locales of Miami and Florida". The thread allowed no leaked footage, only Google Earth images and sketches. Kotaku reported an early map built by more than 100 people that same month. Our map leak guide has the story of the leak itself.
Who runs the GTA 6 Mapping Project?
DuPz0r coordinates it. He has made fan maps of GTA games since before Vice City came out in 2002. In May 2025 RockstarINTEL reported that he curates findings from "nearly 400 community cartographers". Mappers submit suggestions as "tickets", and the ones with the most support go onto the main map.
Most of the work happens on the GTA VI Mapping Discord ("map making, location spotting and general analysis of GTA VI"), which had about 17,800 members in October 2026. Versions are shared there, on X and on Reddit, where a timelapse shows the map growing from v0.001 to v0.051.
How do fans map GTA 6 before it's released?
The methods are surprisingly rigorous:
- Match buildings to real ones. Vice City copies Miami closely, so a hotel in a trailer can often be found on Google Street View. The Ocean View Hotel, for example, was matched to the Clevelander on Ocean Drive, Miami Beach. Vice City vs Miami lists the matches.
- Triangulate. When the same landmark appears in several shots, its angle in each one fixes its position. DuPz0r has described using basic trigonometry for this.
- Use the leaked coordinates. The 2022 debug footage showed in-game coordinates, which helped set the scale.
- Measure in 3D tools. The project has used Photoshop for the map, and 3ds Max and Unity to measure distances. Version 0.042 was a 10,000 × 10,000 pixel image.
- Date the scouting. Details like storm damage from Hurricane Michael (2018) help work out when Rockstar photographed a place.
How accurate is the GTA 6 Mapping Project?
Probably very close for the parts shown in official footage, and less certain everywhere else. There's a track record: fan maps of GTA V made from trailers "nearly perfectly matched" the final game, according to Kotaku.
The best test so far was the unverified map image posted by the CYBERLEEK group on August 18, 2026. German site Mein-MMO compared it with the fan map:
- Right: the overall layout, the positions of small towns and the large lake in the north.
- Different: much more inland water, a separate swamp northwest of Vice City, more small islands to the west and north, and a county structure the fans hadn't drawn.
The mappers didn't agree on the leak itself. Mashable quoted one member saying "The map leak is 100% real" and "Everything is correct on the map". Others in the project and on r/GTA6 called it fake or a placeholder. Rockstar hasn't commented, so treat the leaked counties (such as Lummox County) as unconfirmed.
Fan estimates of the size have moved too. State of Leonida, a related fan map, cut its land estimate from about 110 km² to about 85.6 km² in September 2026 after re-scaling. Our map size guide explains the numbers.
Mapping Project, GTADB, State of Leonida: what's the difference?
Several fan projects work on the same problem and share data:
| Project |
What it is |
| GTA VI Mapping Project |
The Discord and forum community led by DuPz0r that builds the main fan map in numbered versions |
| GTADB (gtadb.org) |
Open-source tools "developed for the GTA VI mapping project" that match "every in-game building to its real-life counterpart"; its basemap is CC BY 4.0 |
| State of Leonida |
An interactive fan map that credits GTADB; version 16 came out in September 2026 |
| gta-6-map.com (this site) |
A fast interactive map with a page for every place, built on GTADB's basemap and State of Leonida's trailer positions (used with permission) |
Where can I see the GTA 6 Mapping Project map?
The latest versions are posted in the GTA VI Mapping Discord and the GTAForums thread. To explore the same area interactively, open our map: start in Vice City, then follow the coast to the Leonida Keys, the Grassrivers wetlands, Port Gellhorn and Mount Kalaga. Every scene from the trailers is pinned in trailer locations.
What happens to the mapping project after launch?
On November 19, 2026 the real map will be in players' hands, and the guesswork ends. Fan maps of earlier GTA games turned into collectible, store and activity maps after launch, and we'll do the same here: the pins on our map move to their in-game positions as players confirm them. Until then, anything that rests only on the leak is labelled on this site, and Rockstar's official map status is tracked separately.
Sources: GTAForums mapping thread; Kotaku on the first fan maps; iGrandTheftAuto interview with DuPz0r; RockstarINTEL on the project; Deltia's Gaming on v0.049; Mein-MMO and Mashable on the leak comparison; Notebookcheck on State of Leonida v16; GTADB.
