Following Rockstar Games' formal pivot back to Vice City for Grand Theft Auto VI (Rockstar Games, 2023), speculation has intensified across enthusiast communities and trade press regarding when, and in what form, the fictional state of San Andreas might receive a contemporary, ground-up treatment within the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise. The original Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar North, 2004) remains one of the best-selling titles in video game history, with over 27.5 million units sold and lasting cultural significance tied to its 1992 Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas pastiches (Wikipedia, 2024a). Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games, 2013) revisited a single city within that state — Los Santos — in a present-day register, but did not restore San Fierro or Las Venturas. This report evaluates the plausibility, form, and timing of a "modern San Andreas" return, drawing on Rockstar's stated franchise patterns, leak-derived industry signals, and analyst commentary.
San Andreas was a generational artefact. The narrative wove the Bloods–Crips rivalry, the 1990s crack epidemic, the 1992 Los Angeles riots and the Rampart scandal into a single open-world tapestry, with Rockstar North consulting Los Angeles natives DJ Pooh, Estevan Oriol and Mister Cartoon to authenticate street culture (Wikipedia, 2024a). The 36 km² map — roughly four to six times the area of Vice City — established a template of multi-city open worlds bridged by countryside, deserts and mountains that the series has not fully revisited since (Wikipedia, 2024a). GTA V shrank that ambition to a single metropolitan area plus Blaine County hinterland; San Fierro and Las Venturas were absent (Wikipedia, 2024a).
A faithful remake of the 1992 storyline using the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) has been a recurrent fan request, particularly after the poorly-received Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition (2021), whose backlash reportedly caused Rockstar to pause remasters of Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption (Wikipedia, 2024b). Industry reporting suggests Rockstar's appetite for legacy remakes has cooled because internal resources were redirected to GTA VI following that backlash (Wikipedia, 2024b). A modern reimagining would face the additional editorial problem of how 2020s Rockstar — which Jason Schreier reports has been "cautiously subverting the series's trend of joking about marginalised groups" — would treat the gangland and racial caricatures that defined the 2004 product (Wikipedia, 2024b).
A more economically rational pathway is expansion content layered onto GTA VI's Leonida map. Tom Henderson reported in 2021 that the GTA VI map could evolve in a manner reminiscent of Fortnite, suggesting a live-service backbone capable of grafting on new regions over time (Wikipedia, 2024b). DFC Intelligence projects GTA VI will earn US$3.2 billion in its first year and reach 40 million unit sales, providing the commercial runway to fund expansions on a scale unseen in prior GTA cycles (Wikipedia, 2024b). A "Return to San Andreas" expansion — analogous in scope to Red Dead Redemption 2's aborted single-player content — could deliver Los Santos, San Fierro and Las Venturas as a contemporary travel destination from Vice City, fast-travelled or flown into, rather than as a wholly separate product.
The most ambitious speculation positions a fully modernised San Andreas as the setting for Grand Theft Auto VII. Sam Houser justified the 2004 setting choice by noting the franchise's habit of touring its three iconic regions in sequence: "We'd done the East Coast in GTA3, and then '80s Miami with Vice City, so going to L.A. in the early '90s just seemed like an obvious place for us to go" (cited in Wikipedia, 2024a). That logic implies a future rotation back to the West Coast at a contemporary date. However, the development timeline argues against impatience: Rockstar began preliminary work on GTA VI in 2014, full production in 2020, and is now targeting 19 November 2026 for release after multiple delays — a roughly twelve-year cycle (Wikipedia, 2024b). On parity, a GTA VII set in San Andreas would not arrive before the late 2030s.
Three factors temper the speculation. First, Rockstar fired 34 employees in October 2025 amid alleged union-busting activity, and a Rockstar North developer described morale as "at rock bottom" (Wikipedia, 2024b); studio capacity for ambitious post-VI projects is therefore uncertain. Second, Dan Houser — whose writing voice defined the San Andreas tone — left Rockstar in 2020 and did not write GTA VI (Wikipedia, 2024b), making a stylistic reprise of the 2004 sensibility unlikely. Third, no leaked materials from the 2022 "teapotuberhacker" breach referenced San Andreas content; all confirmed footage depicted modern-day Vice City (Wikipedia, 2024b), suggesting San Andreas is not in active development.
A modern San Andreas treatment is highly probable on a multi-decade horizon, but improbable within the current GTA VI development cycle. The most realistic near-term route is post-launch expansion content riding on GTA VI's live-service infrastructure; a full GTA VII San Andreas remains the franchise's logical destination but is structurally distant.
Rockstar Games (2023) Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 1. New York: Rockstar Games.
Rockstar North (2004) Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas [video game]. New York: Rockstar Games.
Wikipedia (2024a) 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas', Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas (Accessed: 14 May 2026).
Wikipedia (2024b) 'Grand Theft Auto VI', Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_VI (Accessed: 14 May 2026).