Liberty City's seven gangs in 2001 — who runs what, who's allied with whom, and how the campaign rewrites the entire balance of power by the end.
Coming back to GTA III in 2026? Here's the full story — Claude's revenge arc, the gang chart, the betrayals, and how 2001's Liberty City set up everything that followed.
Eight named gangs operate across San Andreas — Grove Street, Ballas, Vagos, Aztecas, Triads, Mafia, Loco Syndicate, San Fierro Rifa. Here's the complete chart.
PS5 & Xbox Series X|S launch — PC delayed beyond. Stay current with our daily intel.
Twenty-five years after release, Grand Theft Auto III remains the foundational text of the modern open-world genre. Here's what it invented, what it perfected, and what every GTA since owes it.
Grand Theft Auto III's Liberty City is split between seven distinct gangs, each with its own territory, color scheme, and faction leader. The campaign moves Claude across multiple gangs as a contract operator — sometimes loyal, sometimes betraying — and by the end of the game the entire criminal balance of power has been rewritten. Below: the full chart.
The dominant Italian-American crime family. Operates from Saint Mark's (Portland Island), with Salvatore Leone as don. Salvatore is voiced by Frank Vincent, a Goodfellas / Sopranos veteran whose performance set the tone for every subsequent Rockstar mob figure.
Key members:
The Leones are Claude's first-act employers. The relationship sours when Salvatore tries to have Claude killed.
The Japanese organised-crime presence, operating out of Staunton Island. Led by the Kasen siblings — Asuka and Kenji.
Key members:
The Yakuza fund Claude's revenge on the Leones in the second act. Asuka is killed by Catalina toward the end of the act.
The Chinese-American organisation in Chinatown (Portland). Wear red. Operate the Chinatown laundromats and several Portland restaurant fronts.
Significantly less narrative weight than the Leones or Yakuza in GTA III, but central to Liberty City Stories (2005), the prequel set in 1998 where Toni Cipriani is the protagonist and the Leone-Triad-Sindacco gang war anchors the campaign.
The drug-importing Colombian crime ring, the campaign's primary antagonists in the third act. Operate from Shoreside Vale with extensions across all three islands. Drive the Cartel Cruiser (yellow Esperanto sedan, instantly recognisable).
Catalina is the Cartel's lead in Liberty City. The third act centres on dismantling Catalina's supply chain and killing her at Cochrane Dam.
The Jamaican faction in Newport (Staunton Island). Run by King Courtney. Drive the Yardie Lobo (purple lowrider). The Yardies are a contract-employer for Claude in the second act, then betray him at the start of the third.
The Yardies' role in GTA III is comparatively minor; they get a fuller treatment in Liberty City Stories.
A street gang in Hepburn Heights (Portland). Wear red bandanas. Led by El Burro, who employs Claude for several side missions involving pornography and organised petty crime.
The Diablos are mostly a contract-employer faction with no narrative weight. Their missions exist because GTA III needed enough side content to fill the early game.
The street gang of Wichita Gardens (Shoreside Vale's project housing). Wear grey. Hostile by default; no contract-employer role. Mostly antagonists in the third-act missions.
A few story-significant characters operate outside the gang structure:
By the end of the campaign:
Liberty City's criminal landscape post-GTA-III is, in canon, never explicitly addressed in any later 3D Universe game — Liberty City Stories goes back to 1998 (pre-III), and the HD Universe's Liberty City (GTA IV) is a separate continuity. The Cartel's destruction is the end of that thread.
For the per-character entries, see the GTA III characters database. For the broader story, see GTA III's Story Primer.
