Grand Theft Auto VI lands on 19 November 2026, and it's already expected to be the most profitable piece of entertainment ever made — pre-orders have reportedly topped $476 million. But beyond the hype, the game is quietly doing something interesting for travellers: its fictional state of Leonida is one big, distorted mirror of Florida, and fans are already planning trips to the real places behind it.
The obvious starting point is Vice City, the game's neon-soaked home base and a clear riff on Miami. Rockstar has updated the franchise's 1980s party town into a modern city of high-rises, rooftop bars and clubs — and the real Miami has leaned into the connection, especially as local crime has dropped sharply. Beaches, car culture and legendary EDM venues like Club Space and E11EVEN cover the checklist nicely.
South of the city, the game's Leonida Keys maps onto Key West, the laid-back archipelago at the very bottom of the continental US — just 90 miles from Cuba. Expect white-sand beaches, glass-bottomed boat tours, seafood shacks and a spring-break energy. The cultural counterweight is the Hemingway Home, where the author finished A Farewell to Arms and To Have and Have Not, and where his famous six-toed cats still roam the grounds of a house with the first swimming pool built in the Keys.
Inland, the swampy Grassrivers region is clearly modelled on the Everglades. The real thing delivers airboat rides, alligator sightings and the surreal spectacle of invasive pythons wreaking havoc on the ecosystem — plus, if you're brave, deep-fried gator. Better still is the food culture of the Seminole nation: fry bread, swamp cabbage and sofkee, a thin corn porridge. The Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum near Fort Lauderdale puts the region's Indigenous and Black history in context.
Two grimmer game locales translate surprisingly well into trips. Port Gellhorn, a down-at-heel failed resort, is believed to draw on Panama City in the Panhandle — in reality a solid pick for seafood, kayaking and snorkelling at St Andrews State Park. Ambrosia, a sugar-refinery town run by biker gangs, points to Clewiston on Lake Okeechobee, which bills itself as "America's Sweetest Town" and is a serious draw for largemouth bass fishing.
Finally, Mount Kalaga National Park, the game's wilderness playground, has no single real twin — fans suggest a blend of North Carolina's Table Rock Mountain, Georgia's Providence Canyon and the Suwannee River. The takeaway is simple: Florida is more than Miami and theme parks, and its preserved wild spaces deserve time on any itinerary.
This is part of a wider trend of gaming-inspired travel — fans already pilgrim to Tokyo for the Yakuza series, Paris for Assassin's Creed and Iceland's black-sand beaches for Hellblade. GTA VI's huge map, the franchise's largest yet, looks set to send a fresh wave of players straight to the Sunshine State. If that's you, the real Florida has one clear advantage over Leonida: nobody will shoot at you.
