No matter how far GTA 6 tries to distance itself from past settings, Liberty City keeps showing up like a ghost from another life.
It looks like Rockstar is zeroing in on Leonida—its Florida-inspired open world—but clues buried in trailers, character bios, and fan theories keep dragging Liberty City back into the conversation.
Intentional or not, the signs are becoming impossible to overlook. Liberty City is explicitly mentioned in the bio of Lucia Caminos, one of GTA 6’s two playable characters. According to Rockstar’s official site and promotional material, Lucia and her mother once dreamed of a better life while living there.
That mention might sound like a throwaway detail at first, but it opens the door to some pretty big possibilities. If her past is rooted in Liberty City, there’s a good chance we’ll either return there through flashbacks or get missions that tie back to her childhood.
The trailers don't put the rumors to rest either. In the second trailer, fans spotted a Liberty City license plate on the back of a truck Jason is chasing. There’s also a moment where Lucia delivers a kick in a cage-fighting arena—something we’ve seen before in The Ballad of Gay Tony, which was set in Liberty City.
The pendant she’s often seen wearing in screenshots might even be tied to her past there, possibly a gift from her father, who reportedly taught her how to fight. There's a chance Liberty City will appear in a smaller role, possibly as a self-contained mission, much like the North Yankton sequence in GTA 5 or Guarma in Red Dead Redemption 2.
In both cases, Rockstar introduced a side area through a cutscene or one-off event that was only accessible during specific parts of the game. It's the framework that most are expecting here as well.
Another reason could be Rockstar’s habit of progressively adding to their open-world maps. RDR2 brought back a region from the first game, and GTA Online’s Cayo Perico island added a new area outside of Los Santos.
If Rockstar applies this approach to GTA 6, Liberty City could be added later through DLC or online expansions, possibly with its own airport. Another theory is that Lucia’s prologue might begin in Liberty City, showing how she ended up incarcerated before being transferred to Leonida.
It would be a clever way to use geography as storytelling, separating past and present with physical space while giving players a taste of GTA’s most iconic city without bloating the base map.
Still, the idea of adding Liberty City to an already massive game isn’t without skeptics. Many argue the logistics just don’t make sense. Leonida is based in Florida, and Liberty City is GTA’s version of New York—over a thousand miles apart in real life.
Unless Rockstar cuts corners with scale or relies on loading screens, including both in a seamless open world, it would demand enormous resources.
Rockstar hasn't explicitly revealed anything about Liberty City’s return, and considering their usual reluctance to tease maps prematurely, it’s likely these references to Liberty City might just be for flavor. Regardless of whether Liberty City appears as a playable area, it’s clearly baked into the DNA of GTA 6’s story.
Lucia’s connection to the city adds emotional depth to her character, and Rockstar knows how to use subtle worldbuilding to its advantage. A brief return through a flashback, memory, or one-time mission could satisfy fans while keeping the focus on Leonida.
And if GTA 6 is indeed set to evolve over time, as many believe, Liberty City may not be part of the base game. But it’s very possible it’s being saved for something bigger down the road—an update, a DLC, or even part of the future of GTA Online.