The GTA 6 Map Leaks, Explained
Updated · 5 min read
Short answer: there have been three GTA 6 "map leaks" worth knowing about. The September 2022 hack showed early Vice City footage, which fans turned into the first community maps. In August 2026 a group called CYBERLEEK posted a full map image that Rockstar hasn't confirmed. And in September 2026 Rockstar itself briefly showed a labelled map on a merchandise poster. Rockstar has still not released an official, readable map. The interactive map on this site is built from official trailers and screenshots, not from leaked material.
Updated Oct 14, 2026: first version.
What was the 2022 GTA 6 leak?
On September 18, 2022, a user calling themselves "teapotuberhacker" posted 90 videos, about 50 minutes in total, from an early GTA VI test build on GTAForums. The next day Rockstar confirmed "a network intrusion" in which an "unauthorized third party illegally accessed and downloaded confidential information from our systems, including early development footage." Take-Two filed copyright takedowns, and Rockstar said it expected no long-term effect on development.
City of London Police arrested a 17-year-old in Oxfordshire on September 22, 2022, later named as Arion Kurtaj, a member of the Lapsus$ group. In 2023 a jury at Southwark Crown Court found that he had carried out the hack. He was found unfit to stand trial and was given an indefinite hospital order in December 2023. Rockstar told the court the hack cost it about $5 million.
What did the 2022 leak show about the map?
The clips were debug footage, not a map, but they gave away a lot:
- A modern Vice City. A metro train with "Vice City" on it, a V.C.P.D. police car and a waffle-restaurant robbery by the two protagonists.
- Returning names such as the Ocean View hotel. Today you can find the Ocean View Hotel on Vice Beach's seafront, matched to Miami Beach's Clevelander.
- Rural and swamp areas outside the city, which hinted at a much bigger state.
- On-screen coordinates. The debug overlay showed in-game positions, which gave mappers a scale to work with.
Fans also matched leaked shots to real Miami buildings and streets, an early sign that Vice City copies its real-life model closely. See Vice City vs Miami for the matches confirmed since.
How did fans map GTA 6 from the leak?
Within days, players on GTAForums and Discord started mapping. They triangulated landmarks, stitched minimap frames together, used the leaked coordinates and leaned on local knowledge of Miami's roads. GTAForums only allowed Google Earth images and sketches, so the threads that posted leaked images were shut down. Kotaku reported an early map built by more than 100 people in September 2022.
After Rockstar's official trailers, the effort moved to official material only. The GTA VI Mapping Project matched in-game buildings to real ones and triangulated their positions. GTADB (map.gtadb.org) built open-source tools to match "every in-game building to its real-life counterpart", and State of Leonida ran an interactive map. Our basemap and most of our places come from GTADB (CC BY 4.0), and our trailer scene positions from State of Leonida, used with permission.
What was the August 2026 GTA 6 map leak?
On August 18, 2026, a group calling itself CYBERLEEK posted two short gameplay clips and an image it said was the full map of Leonida. The group said it was protesting digital-only pre-orders, and its videos also promoted a crypto coin. Rockstar and Take-Two issued takedowns but didn't comment.
- The gameplay was reportedly real but from an old build, according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier.
- The map image is the disputed part. GTABase reported that mappers judged it authentic. Others in r/GTA6 and the Mapping Project called it fake or a placeholder. Rockstar hasn't authenticated it.
The image shows five counties (Lummox, Kelly, Leonard, Vice-Dale and Mariana), a large airport southwest of Vice City, an island airfield and a long chain of southern islands. It also names places such as Catalan Key and Gloriana Key. Because none of that is confirmed, we label anything that rests only on the leak. The Lummox County page, for example, says so at the top.
Did Rockstar leak its own map?
Sort of. Around September 24, 2026, Rockstar opened pre-orders for the "Goodtime State – Vice City Collection", a $399.99 merchandise box that doesn't include the game. One of its 11 items is a double-sided poster with a map of Leonida on one side. Rockstar's first product photo showed place labels, and Reddit users read names such as "Sandbars" and "Crude Islands" before Rockstar replaced the photo with an unlabelled version.
Both names were already on the community map: Sandbars and Crude Islands sit off the Gulf coast near Port Gellhorn. More in our official map guide.
Which leaked map details turned out to be real?
Comparing the leaks with what Rockstar later showed officially:
| Claim |
Source |
Status |
| Modern-day Vice City |
2022 leak |
Confirmed by Trailer 1 (Dec 2023) |
| A Latina female lead with a male partner |
2022 leak, Bloomberg |
Confirmed: Lucia and Jason |
| A whole state beyond Vice City |
2022 leak |
Confirmed: six regions (Trailer 2, May 2025) |
| Ocean View hotel |
2022 leak |
Confirmed in Trailer 2 |
| Five named counties |
Aug 2026 image |
Not confirmed (some county names appear on in-game signs) |
| Full map layout |
Aug 2026 image |
Not confirmed by Rockstar |
The six regions Rockstar did confirm are Vice City, the Leonida Keys, Grassrivers, Port Gellhorn, Ambrosia and Mount Kalaga.
Which GTA 6 map leaks were fake?
- The 2018 "prototype map" of the Americas. A map with beach postcards claiming a game covering the USA and South America. A 2020 Reddit post said it had been teased inside GTA V; it was debunked within days as two stock images.
- "Project Americas" with South America or Cuba. Rumours since 2018 claimed you'd fly between Vice City and South America, or that Cuba would be a key location. None of it is in the announced game. See Is Cuba in GTA 6?
- The 2023 AI coastline. A viral zoomed-in map mixed one real 2022 leak frame with what was likely an AI-generated hoax.
- August 2026 AI clips and "maps". Alongside the CYBERLEEK posts, AI-generated "gameplay" and maps stitched together from promo art spread quickly. At least one account admitted using AI.
Where can I see the real GTA 6 map?
Rockstar hasn't released one. The closest thing is the community map built from official trailers and screenshots, which is what you see on gta-6-map.com: 889 places, each pinned where it appears in official footage, with a badge saying how sure the position is. For a single picture of the whole state, see the GTA 6 map image. From launch day on November 19, 2026 we'll add in-game confirmed locations within hours.
Sources: The Record and PC Gamer on the 2022 leak; Kotaku on the first fan maps; VGC and GTABase on CYBERLEEK; Notebookcheck on the poster; Inverse and Dexerto on the fakes.
