GTA 6 is shaping up to feature an enormous open world, with Rockstar North revealing that Vice City alone is around twice the size of GTA 5’s Los Santos, while the built-up areas beyond the main city are dramatically larger.

Rockstar Games has spent years talking about creating its biggest and most immersive open world yet with Grand Theft Auto 6, and we’re finally getting a clearer idea of what that actually means.

Following the massive new GTA 6 showcase, Rockstar developers have started discussing the scale of the game’s map in considerably more detail.

And it sounds absolutely enormous.

According to Rockstar North co-studio head Rob Nelson, Vice City itself is roughly twice the size of Los Santos from GTA 5.

But the main city might not even be the most impressive part.

GTA 6’s Vice City Is Twice the Size of Los Santos

Speaking about GTA 6’s world, Nelson emphasized that Rockstar doesn’t simply want to create a larger map.

The studio wants to fill it with things players can discover naturally without constantly being directed toward icons and objectives.

“There’s a whole lot of stuff that you discover emergently that we’re not necessarily directing you to through objectives or blips or icons on a map as well. If you take a bit of time and explore, you will be rewarded – a lot. It’s a big map, a very big map.”

That “very big map” becomes easier to understand when comparing it directly with GTA 5.

According to Nelson, GTA 6’s version of Vice City alone is approximately twice the size of Los Santos.

Considering Los Santos was already a substantial city filled with neighborhoods, highways, businesses and countless smaller locations, doubling that urban footprint should give Rockstar considerably more room to create a dense metropolitan environment.

GTA 6 Could Take Around 80 Hours to Complete

Areas Outside Vice City Are Even Bigger

Vice City is only part of GTA 6’s map.

Perhaps the more surprising detail is the scale of everything surrounding it.

Nelson reportedly explained that the built-up areas outside Vice City are around 11 times larger than their equivalents in GTA 5.

That’s because GTA 6 won’t simply surround its main city with countryside and wilderness.

The wider map will contain multiple smaller cities and populated areas, significantly expanding the amount of urban space players can explore outside Vice City itself.

That could represent one of the biggest differences between GTA 5 and GTA 6.

Los Santos dominated GTA 5’s map, while much of the northern portion of San Andreas consisted of mountains, desert, countryside and smaller settlements such as Sandy Shores and Paleto Bay.

GTA 6 appears to be taking a different approach by spreading substantially more civilization throughout its world.

Rockstar Wants Players to Explore Without Map Icons

Size alone doesn’t necessarily make a great open world, and Rockstar appears well aware of that.

One of the more interesting details surrounding GTA 6 is the studio’s emphasis on emergent exploration.

Rather than covering the map with icons pointing players toward every available activity, Rockstar wants some encounters, locations and rewards to be discovered naturally.

Players willing to leave the main roads and explore seemingly unimportant areas could therefore uncover content that others completely miss.

That philosophy becomes particularly exciting when combined with the scale Rockstar is describing.

If Vice City is twice the size of Los Santos and the surrounding populated areas are significantly larger than those found in GTA 5, GTA 6 could contain an extraordinary number of places that aren’t directly connected to the main story.

GTA 6’s Map Could Be Rockstar’s Most Ambitious Yet

Rockstar still hasn’t provided exact square-mile or square-kilometer measurements for the entire map, so comparisons based purely on total landmass remain difficult.

But raw geographical size might not be the most important measurement anyway.

What matters is how much of that world actually contains meaningful locations, NPCs and activities.

Everything revealed so far suggests Rockstar is prioritizing density alongside scale.

We’ve already learned that GTA 6 will feature more sophisticated NPC behavior, a redesigned police and Criminal Profile system, denser traffic and more realistically proportioned streets.

Now we know all of those systems will exist within a world substantially larger than GTA 5’s Los Santos and surrounding settlements.

After spending more than a decade exploring Los Santos, players could have an entirely different kind of monster on their hands with Vice City.

Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

What do you think about the reported scale of GTA 6’s map? Would you rather have an enormous world like this or a smaller map packed with even more detail? Let us know in the comments below.