The next chapter — Vice City and Leonida. Launches November 19, 2026.
12 entries · Side activities, sports, minigames
Basketball as a playable activity in GTA 6 is not yet shown by Rockstar — this entry is editorial speculation based on map geography and franchise precedent. GTA San Andreas included a one-button arcade basketball minigame on outdoor courts in Los Santos; community datamining of the Vice City map mock-ups has identified open courts as recurring landmarks, but no in-game basketball mechanic has been previewed. If basketball ships, the obvious model is San Andreas's small-court three-point challenge — a timed mode where you bank as many shots as possible from a roving start point. A more ambitious version would mirror GTA Online's golf format: physics-driven shot mechanics with stake-betting against AI or other players. Without footage, both options are plausible. The value of an outdoor sports activity in Vice City is texture — making city blocks feel lived-in, the way arcade machines and pool tables anchor interiors. Until Rockstar shows it, we're treating this as community-anticipated rather than confirmed. A more interesting question is whether Rockstar would tie the activity to specific protagonists or named NPCs. San Andreas's basketball minigame was protagonist-agnostic; GTA V's golf was fully playable by all three leads with separate stat tracking. If basketball ships, expect Lucia and Jason both to be available, with the activity potentially functioning as a fitness-stat side-feed alongside the gym. The most likely outcome, though, is that courts exist as world-set-dressing — visible, walkable past, but not interactive at launch. As more pre-launch footage is released, this entry will be updated to reflect whatever Rockstar confirms — whether that's a full minigame, a passive prop, or something in between.
A boxing or street-fighting activity is implied by Trailer 2's brawl shots — clenched fists, a clear duel framing, and a crowd staging that reads more like an organised match than a chaotic gang scuffle. Whether this is a ring-based career mode, a bar-brawl minigame, or both, isn't yet shown by Rockstar. The in-fiction precedent points to a structured fight ladder: GTA San Andreas had gym-taught moves at three city gyms, and Vice City Stories included an underground boxing ring. GTA 6's hand-to-hand combat looks dramatically deeper from the trailer footage — animation blending, weight-aware impacts, and a more grounded posture system. A dedicated fight activity is the natural place to surface those mechanics. Look for venue locations across Vice City Beach and Little Cuba, with stake-betting and reputation feeding into other social systems. Jason's grounded body type and Lucia's quicker frame might steer them toward different fight styles — the marketing has played up both as physical actors. If an underground fight-club style ladder ships, expect it to be one of the activities Rockstar reveals closer to launch — historically these social side-systems show up in the marketing's second wave alongside the deeper economy details. The Vice City setting also raises the possibility of a Cuban-American boxing-gym arc that doubles as a side-story chain, with named coaches, regional rivalries, and a reputation system that affects how NPCs react to the protagonists on the street. None of this is confirmed, but the genre-fiction setup is unmistakable. For now, what's clearest is the visual intent: fighting in GTA 6 is being framed as a serious, weight-aware combat system rather than the floaty fist-fights of older entries — and a dedicated activity slot is the perfect showcase for it.
Fishing is one of the first GTA 6 side activities Rockstar showed off, and it leans into the slower, atmospheric side of Leonida. In an early screenshot, Jason Duval is seen rod-in-hand on a boat at sunset — a quiet counterpoint to the chaos of Vice City missions. Expect a casting-line minigame in the tradition of Red Dead Redemption 2, with patience rewarded by bigger catches and rarer species. The activity ties into the open-world geography. Leonida's southern Keys, the Vice City coastline, and the freshwater rivers of Mount Kalaga National Park are all confirmed locations with visible water access. Whether species lists, rod tiers, or in-world fishing competitions appear at launch isn't shown yet, but Rockstar's history with the mechanic suggests deep integration with food, money, or relationship progression systems. Fishing pairs naturally with Jason's apparent affinity for the outdoors — he's the protagonist Rockstar has placed in coastal and rural shots most often. We'll likely see Lucia fish too, but the marketing has clearly framed Jason as the laid-back nature-loving half of the duo. If Rockstar follows the Red Dead 2 model, expect bait variety to matter — live worms versus lures, lake fish versus saltwater game — with a separate weight-and-length tracking system feeding into a player journal. The deeper question for GTA 6 is whether fishing connects to side-economies (selling rare catches at marinas), social systems (a rival fisherman side-story arc), or just stands as a relaxing reset between heist arcs. All three are precedented in Rockstar's last three open-world games.
Gyms are confirmed for GTA 6. Trailer 2 includes a clear shot of a workout interior — squat racks, free weights, and the kind of neon-lit fitness aesthetic that fits Vice City's mid-2020s reimagining of 1980s Miami body culture. It's the first time since San Andreas that working out has been previewed as a stand-alone protagonist activity. The likely loop returns to the San Andreas model: build stat lines that affect melee damage, sprint stamina, and possibly aim sway, with visible body-shape changes over time. Lucia and Jason have distinct silhouettes in the marketing, so the system might track them separately. Expect gym memberships as a buy-once unlock, plus per-machine minigames in the tradition of the casino-prep arc. This is one of the activities where Rockstar can quietly add depth without committing to it for the trailers — protein, body-fat, sleep, and recovery systems are all plausible. Whatever the exact mechanic, the gym's biggest narrative job is grounding the protagonists in Vice City's daily life between heists. Visually, Rockstar has been clear about wanting the protagonists to feel like physical actors rather than animated mannequins. The body-shape changes from San Andreas were limited by the era's tech; in 2026, depending on the engine's morph-target work, we could see genuinely visible muscle development, fat gain, and posture changes that affect both cutscene framing and gameplay animation blending. The gym, in that scenario, becomes a slow-burn cosmetic activity with stat side-effects — a habit you maintain across the campaign rather than a one-time stat dump.
Hunting returns to a GTA game for the first time since Red Dead-style mechanics arrived in San Andreas (and were perfected in RDR2). Rockstar's Mount Kalaga National Park screenshots prominently feature deer, alligators, and dense woodland — a clear setup for stalk-and-shoot gameplay across the northern half of Leonida. The Mount Kalaga set-piece is one of the most striking environment reveals from the Rockstar press kit. Tall longleaf pines, marsh, and clear stretches of state-park trail give hunting the geography it needs: visibility for spotting, cover for stalking, and water sources where animals congregate. The hunting gear itself isn't shown yet, but the rifles confirmed in the same screenshots — including a bolt-action sniper — slot directly into the activity. Expect hunting to feed back into other systems: pelts and meat for income, photographic challenges for completion, and possibly a wildlife encyclopedia in the pause menu. Rockstar will almost certainly contrast Mount Kalaga's rural quiet with Vice City's neon — hunting is the outdoor anchor of that pairing. Mechanically, Rockstar's RDR2 hunting system is the obvious benchmark: animal-cleanliness ratings, perfect-pelt rewards, and a dynamic spawn pattern that depends on time of day and weather. If a Trapper-equivalent NPC exists in Leonida, expect crafted gear unlocks tied to the highest-quality kills. Mount Kalaga's marsh-and-pine ecosystem also opens the door to species GTA has never featured — alligators, panthers, wading birds, and bass — each potentially anchored to its own track-and-kill challenge with reputation stakes. It's a quietly significant decision — the first GTA hunting system since CJ's brief desert kills, and the most ambitious nature-focused side activity Rockstar has ever shipped on a contemporary GTA map.
Kayaking is a brand-new GTA traversal option, confirmed by a Mount Kalaga National Park screenshot showing a protagonist paddling a single-seat kayak down a clear, tree-lined river. It's the most physical-traversal-focused activity yet shown for GTA 6 — closer to Red Dead's canoes than to the speedboats that have defined GTA water gameplay since Vice City. The inclusion implies that Rockstar has built proper paddle mechanics, current simulation, and river geography deep enough to make kayaking worth doing for its own sake. Mount Kalaga's rivers, the marshes of Leonida's interior, and the protected coves of the Leonida Keys are the obvious candidate locations. We may also see kayaking double as a stealth-approach option for certain heist or hunting setups. Mechanically, expect a stamina meter, a faster sprint paddle, and the ability to disembark on any reachable shore. Kayaks are the slowest watercraft in the game by definition, but they unlock waterways no speedboat can navigate — narrow river forks, mangrove tunnels, and shallow coastal flats. Kayaking also pulls double duty as world-storytelling. Mount Kalaga's rivers are the kind of geography GTA has never properly rendered — narrow, slow-current waterways that simply aren't drivable in any conventional GTA vehicle. By giving players a kayak, Rockstar opens up exploration of an environment that would otherwise be inaccessible, and it's a quietly significant design statement about how much of Leonida is meant to feel genuinely off-grid. Expect hidden collectibles, environmental story-beats, and possibly fishing-hunting tie-ins along the more remote waterways. For Rockstar, it's also a chance to slow GTA's traversal pace down to a register the franchise has never really inhabited — a stark contrast to the high-speed chase set-pieces that have defined Vice City marketing.
Mini Golf is a kitsch GTA-perfect activity, and Rockstar has placed a course in Cal Hampton, the Leonida tourist-trap town shown in official screenshots. The screen frames a colourful course with novelty obstacles — windmills, neon shapes, the kind of mid-century Florida-roadside aesthetic Rockstar leans on hard for the rural settings outside Vice City. The activity scales naturally as both a solo mode (chase a par, time your putts) and a competitive one (turn-based with up to four players, with money or rep at stake). GTA Online's golf-club minigame from GTA V is the obvious mechanical template — putter mechanics with adjusted physics for the smaller course geometry. What makes mini golf interesting beyond the minigame itself is that it's pinned to a specific named location. Cal Hampton, in a story sense, is one of the small Leonida towns players will pass through repeatedly — anchoring an activity to it builds the world out beyond Vice City and the wilderness extremes of Mount Kalaga. The co-op angle is what makes mini golf interesting for Rockstar's marketing. Lucia and Jason are framed as a duo throughout the trailers — a side activity where they can play against each other, with the loser buying lunch or kicking off a story beat, would land naturally in the existing protagonist-relationship system. Cal Hampton itself is the kind of small-town Rockstar location that the studio uses to soften the tone — between Vice City's chaos and Mount Kalaga's isolation, this is the warm-and-weird middle. It's a small detail, but a telling one — and exactly the kind of side activity Rockstar uses to make a place feel real rather than scenic.
Off-road racing is confirmed by Trailer 1's standout motocross shot — a rider jumping high above a swampy interior track, throttle wide open. Off-road events have been a GTA staple since San Andreas, and VI's environmental variety gives Rockstar the most expansive playground yet: mangrove trails, dirt roads through Mount Kalaga, sandy fire-roads, and the marshy backroads of inner Leonida. The likely event roster spans motocross, off-road buggy, and rally trucks. Each event class would have a dedicated vehicle from the GTA 6 stable — early screenshots have already shown a heavily-modified pickup truck and a motocross bike — paired to looped tracks that reward route memorisation. Expect prize money, weekly leaderboards, and unlock chains tied to vehicle upgrades. The activity also functions as world-building: it gives players a reason to learn the back-country geography ahead of any heist setup that takes them out of the city. By the time you've raced the same swamp circuit twice, you know the area cold. The motocross shot in particular is doing a lot of work narratively. It frames Leonida as a place where rural and urban culture genuinely coexist — not the sanitized country-side backdrop of GTA V's Blaine County, but something messier and more lived-in. Off-road racing slots into that vision: it's the activity that gets players out into the swamps, fire-roads, and back-country routes that the open world has been designed around. Expect at least one race chain to feed into a story-mission arc, in the tradition of GTA San Andreas's countryside vehicle missions.
Pool is confirmed via a Cal Hampton screenshot showing the interior of a small-town bar with a full-size pool table dressed in classic green felt. It's an activity that has appeared across GTA's later 3D entries — GTA IV's competitive billiards minigame is the closest mechanical ancestor — but VI's framing leans into the bar-social side of the activity rather than the precision sim. Expect a cue-stick aim system with adjustable spin, dynamic camera framing on the breakshot, and AI-controlled opponents you can wager money against. Multi-protagonist support is plausible: Jason and Lucia could rack up against each other in a bar-stop scene, or you could challenge a named NPC tied to a side-story chain. Pool also works as a quiet downtime activity between high-stakes missions, which fits the bar-and-grill texture Rockstar has previewed for the smaller Leonida towns. The Cal Hampton location, again, is doing double duty — establishing pool as a small-town pastime distinct from Vice City's neon nightlife. The broader payoff is texture. GTA 6's bars and pool halls are some of the only places in the game where Rockstar gets to slow down and write conversational, low-stakes scenes — and pool fits that beat perfectly. Expect named regular NPCs at certain tables, a small-stakes betting economy, and possibly trick-shot challenges that unlock cosmetic cues. The Cal Hampton-Vice City contrast continues: the same activity feels different played at a smoky Cal Hampton dive than at a chrome-rail South Beach lounge, and Rockstar tends to lean into those tonal distinctions hard.
Scuba diving is back. A Rockstar screenshot set in the Leonida Keys shows a protagonist underwater alongside vivid reef life — the most colourful underwater environment any GTA has ever shipped with. The Keys archipelago, modelled on the real Florida Keys, gives the activity a natural home: clear shallows, reef structures, and the kind of wreck-dotted seabed that has anchored GTA underwater exploration since Vice City's Phil Cassidy's docks. Mechanically, scuba diving in GTA V already established the template — air supply meter, harpoon underwater weapon, hidden wreck loot. Expect Rockstar to expand it for VI with proper marine ecosystems, dive-shop unlocks, and underwater photography ties to other systems. The Keys' reefs are likely the central exploration zone, with periodic shark encounters and structured wreck dives offering the bigger payouts. The activity also slots into multi-step heist setups — recovering items from sunken boats or pre-positioning gear underwater is a Rockstar staple. Expect a returning Cayo-Perico-style stealth-from-the-water approach for at least one Leonida Keys job. The ecology layer is where Rockstar will likely innovate. RDR2 already proved the studio can render a believable wildlife ecosystem; underwater Leonida is a chance to do the same for marine biology — schools of grunts, parrotfish on the reef structures, the occasional barracuda or shark cruising the deeper drop-offs. If a wreck-dive economy emerges (sell salvaged artifacts to a Keys-based pawn broker, say) it would mirror the Cayo Perico approach without rehashing it. Either way, the Keys are too geographically central to the map for diving to be a minor activity.
Street racing returns to GTA, and Trailer 1 shows it in its purest form: a tuned coupe lined up at a Vice City stoplight, neon underglow, palm trees, traffic to weave through. Vice City's grid layout — long boulevards, broad seafront roads, and the central downtown core — is the kind of map geometry that built the GTA street-race format from the start. Expect a multi-class event ladder: stock, sport, super, and possibly drift, with unlocked-by-completion stake escalation. Tuner culture is being telegraphed strongly by the marketing — multiple shots of body-kitted cars, exposed engines, and matte wraps — which suggests Rockstar is leaning into the modification meta-game that GTA Online's tuner update established. Time of day will matter: confirmed screenshots set Vice City racing primarily at night, with skyscraper light reflecting off wet asphalt. Street races bridge the gap between Vice City as a story setting and Vice City as a playable environment. Once you can lap the city under 3 minutes, you own it. Narratively, street racing is also a clean entry point for one of GTA 6's most consistently-teased themes: the protagonists' relationship to underground Vice City scenes. Rockstar has shown both Lucia and Jason in driver's seats throughout the marketing, and a tuner-race side-economy is the kind of activity that builds protagonist identity without requiring a story mission. Look for branded mod shops, named rival drivers, and the kind of late-night radio-station ambiance that has defined GTA's racing culture since San Andreas's nitro-fueled Wang Cars era.
Tennis as a playable activity in GTA 6 is not yet shown by Rockstar — this entry is editorial speculation. GTA V introduced tennis as a fully playable activity for all three protagonists, complete with a proper rally-and-serve minigame across multiple courts. Vice City's class hierarchy — the same beach-club elite that GTA Vice City Stories played up — is fertile ground for the activity to return. The likely structure is the GTA V template: court selection, an AI opponent ladder, a co-op doubles option, and stake-betting against NPCs. Court geography would lean on Vice City's beach clubs and waterfront mansions — the same locations the trailers have established as the playground of Leonida's wealthy class. The activity could double as a narrative beat: a high-society contact who books a court is a clean Rockstar mission hand-off. No trailer or screenshot has previewed tennis directly. Until then, this is one of the activities GTA Base lists in anticipation rather than from Rockstar source material — and we're flagging it as such. There's also a non-gameplay angle: tennis as Vice City status symbol. The 1980s-2020s collision Rockstar is dialing into for GTA 6 has tennis whites and clubhouse mixers right in its iconography. Whether or not the activity is fully playable at launch, it would be a surprise if club exteriors weren't part of the visible city skyline. If it does ship as a playable mode, it's most likely the GTA V model again — court selection, AI ladder, doubles co-op — possibly with a Lucia-Jason rivalry arc as the activity's narrative spine.
