Miami Approves GTA6 Ads, Bans the Name

Miami Beach’s city commission voted 4-3 on September 10, 2026 to approve an agreement letting Rockstar market Grand Theft Auto VI in the city, closing a debate that surfaced exactly the problem this game poses for its real-world counterpart: Leonida is Florida and Vice City is Miami, so the campaign sells the fantasy back to the place it borrows from.

The terms are unusually specific. The campaign, run through Amplify Marketing Inc, is worth roughly $4 million according to Commissioner Tanya Katzoff Bhatt — up from the $3 million the city first sought, with Commissioner Laura Dominguez saying the commission would push for more. Advertising begins October 15 and runs to the end of December, confined to a defined Downtown Miami area bounded by NE 5th Street, the Miami River, Biscayne Bay and NE 2nd Avenue. Banners larger than 5,000 square feet need a separate permit costing $208,000, and much of the inventory is beach furniture: umbrellas and chairs. Separately, the Kaseya Center, home of the Miami Heat, is reported to be preparing a rooftop sign reading “Welcome back to Vice City” in pink and white lettering.

The clause that stands out is what the advertising may not say. None of the permitted material will carry the words “Grand Theft Auto.” The approved wording runs to the game’s iconography instead — “VI”, or the name of the fictional city. That is a strange outcome for a marketing deal: the location is licensed, the brand name is not.

Not every commissioner was persuaded. David Suarez opposed the item outright, playing GTA5 footage and clips from the Extended Look during the session and saying, “I certainly don’t want to see our brand associated with this video game, I don’t think it’s worth any amount of money.” He described the proposal as feeling like a “Black Mirror episode” and called it the wrong image for Miami Beach. Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz put it more plainly: “Miami-Dade County is not Vice City.”

Preparation is already visible. On September 12, creator Joel Franco posted aerial footage of promotional signage being assembled behind the Kaseya Center, with work underway that morning. The scale is well beyond the GTA5 campaign, which amounted to banners around Los Angeles. The compromise the commission landed on is arguably the interesting part — a city willing to host the iconography while refusing to put the name beside it. Whether that reads as distance or as complicity is a question the next two months will answer.