Leonida is a fictional state based on Florida. That is the point of the design - familiar enough that it feels like the place you see on TV, but different enough to allow Rockstar to take creative liberties. The balancing act between those two ideals is what makes the map tick.
This article is an honest comparison. We break down what is true to real-life Florida, what is compressed for gameplay pacing, and what seems like made-up Rockstar flair. For a wider breakdown of the regions, visit the Leonida map hub and the regions explainer.
What tracks closely
The rough layout of the state. There's a coastal city in the south, suburbs and little towns further inland, and a huge wetlands area in the centre of the map. Finally, a chain of islands drifts off to the south-west into warm water. Sound familiar? That's because it is recognisably Florida, and Trailer 2 shows each of these areas on screen.
You can even follow that logic with how each area is visually coded. Vice City's art deco strip is clearly the Miami Beach stand-in. The wetlands read like the Everglades and Big Cypress - areas full of cypress hammocks, sawgrass, and airboats. The Keys analogue ticks the right boxes for architecture and water colour. Turn inland and you've got strip malls and orange groves that track Florida correctly. The environment art team at Rockstar has done their research.
What is compressed
Distance, in every direction. Real Florida is about 450 miles from north to south. Leonida can't stretch that far. The real Florida Keys chain is 113 miles of bridges; Leonida's Keys proxy can't span that far, either. The real Everglades is massive, so Leonida's wetlands must be smaller by necessity.
That's fine. All Rockstar maps compress real-world space to facilitate gameplay pacing. Los Santos in GTA V is not meant to be the actual size of Los Angeles. Liberty City isn't New York-sized. Compression isn't a mistake or oversight; it's just how these games function. We get into how that compression works in the map size piece and the density vs size piece.
What is invention
All the place names. Leonida was made up. Vice City was made up (and predates GTA 6 - it was previously used in the 2002 game). Where named towns have been spotted in trailer aerials, none of them map 1:1 to an identifiable real Florida town. Rockstar usually borrows from a regional vocabulary, makes up names and lets those names hint at a similar real place without saying they are that place.
Some of the regional layout is invention, too. How the wetlands are placed in relation to Vice City, the exact shape of the Keys-like island chain, where the suburbs fall - all of this is decided by Rockstar, not pulled from a map of Florida. You cannot literally overlay a map of Florida roads onto Leonida and have it match up.
Specific real-world places and their analogues
Miami Beach maps onto the art deco strip in Vice City. Brickell roughly corresponds to downtown. The Florida Keys correspond to the islands south of Vice City. The Everglades correspond to the wetlands area in central Leonida. There is trailer evidence to support each of these connections.
The less certain analogues - Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Cape Coral - are speculative. The trailer shows aerial views of small inland towns and what appears to be an amusement-park-coded area, which some viewers have interpreted as one or another of these real cities. We don't commit to those interpretations. The named-towns question is discussed separately in the Leonida fictional vs real places piece.
What this comparison is good for
Reading the map. If you've spent any length of time in real Florida, you will recognise the regional vocabulary, and that's no coincidence. If you haven't, use the comparison as your Rosetta Stone of sorts for why Leonida is laid out as it is.
What the comparison is bad at is prediction. Don't try to drive yourself around Leonida using an actual map of Florida. Don't look at real Miami's neighbourhood layout and expect to figure out Vice City's. Use the comparison as a jumping-off point, not a blueprint.