GTA 6 Side Activities and Minigames: Everything You Can Do in Leonida Between Missions

Where this list comes from

Two separate sources landed on August 27, 2026, and they are worth keeping apart because they carry different weight.

Official. The first is Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, the presentation Rockstar premiered on Netflix and then published free on its own YouTube channel. Part of it is a rapid free-roam montage — a few seconds each of dozens of things happening across Leonida. Anything in that montage is genuinely in the game, because Rockstar put it in its own marketing. What the montage does not tell you is whether you press a button and play it, or whether it is the world doing its thing while you drive past.

Credible report. The second is the hands-off demo Rockstar ran at Rockstar North for press on the same day, with co-studio head Rob Nelson narrating roughly half an hour of additional gameplay. Several activities — mini golf, the zoo, monster-truck racing, the gym membership — come only from that session, reported by outlets who were in the room. They are well sourced, but they are journalists describing what they were shown rather than something you can go and watch yourself.

Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look — the official presentation, published free on Rockstar Games' YouTube channel after its Netflix premiere.

One caveat runs through everything below. Coverage of the montage does not agree with itself: Shacknews read parts of it as pedestrians going about their day, while Engadget read some of the same shots as player activities. Both readings are reasonable from a montage cut this fast. We have flagged the ones where it genuinely is not clear.

The full activity list, by evidence

Every activity we can source, sorted by how strong the evidence is that you can do it rather than watch it.

Twenty-one entries, and Rockstar has confirmed how exactly none of them are scored. That is the honest state of it three months out.

Sports and bar games

Official. Basketball is the one to point at first, because it is the clearest example of an activity attached to a place you already have a reason to be — reports describe Jason playing near his own home rather than at a dedicated venue on the far side of the map. That is a small design signal worth reading: activities that sit where you already are get used, and activities that require a twenty-minute drive do not.

Credible report. Pool returns, per IGN's preview of the press demo, and mini golf is new to the series. Coverage describes bar games with an active aiming step rather than a menu-driven roll of the dice, which is what you would expect given how much of GTA 6's design leans on manual, timed inputs — the same instinct behind the focus meter in combat and the timing-based tool work in the reworked carjacking system.

Official. The shooting range is in the montage as a military-style target gallery. It is easy to file that under scenery, but it is not: police in GTA 6 build a description of you that includes what you were carrying, so a place to try weapons without generating a witness has an actual function. That connects to the wanted level system more than it does to the rest of this list.

Unclear. Backyard wrestling is in the Extended Look — Engadget noted a genuine wrestling move being performed — and it fits Port Gellhorn's established fight-club flavour from earlier official media, which we cover in the Port Gellhorn guide. What nobody has established is whether Jason and Lucia get in the ring or stand at the fence watching. A content-creator preview goes further and describes cage fighting, MMA and mud wrestling as participatory; that is a single unofficial source, so we are leaving it in the rumor column.

Water, wetlands, and the outdoors

Official. The water content is the densest cluster in the montage, and that tracks with a state built on the Florida Keys, the Everglades and a long coastline. Confirmed on screen: swimming, scuba diving, kayaking, jet skis, and fanboats through the swamp.

Scuba is the notable one. GTA 5 had underwater areas but relatively little reason to be in them; a Leonida built around the Keys and inland wetlands has far more coastline and shallow water per square mile than Los Santos ever did. Whether that means structured dive sites or simply an ocean you can explore has not been said.

Credible report. Fishing appears in the montage and Engadget described it as a returning minigame comparable to Red Dead Redemption 2's. Hunting comes up repeatedly in recaps and appears in in-game television advertising, but no outlet has described actually hunting, so we have not upgraded it.

Both fit a pattern Rockstar has been running since RDR2: the outdoors is a system, not a backdrop. The Leonida map spends a lot of its surface area outside Vice City, and this is what fills it.

Racing, riding, and jumping off things

Official. Racing shows up in at least three flavours in the presentation: loose street racing, a formal oval circuit with a stock-car feel, and off-road dirt-bike racing. Electric scooters are also rideable around the city, which is a small thing that says something about traffic density — the game expects you to move through crowds, not just around them.

Credible report. Monster-truck racing appears in outlet lists of demo activities. No detail exists on whether these are formal events with a series structure or ad-hoc challenges you stumble into.

Official. Base jumping is confirmed by a montage shot of a parachute deploying off a high-rise. Given how much vertical Vice City has in official media, this is the activity most likely to be a genuinely open sandbox rather than a fixed set of jump points — though Rockstar has not said that, and we are not going to pretend it has.

The zoo and the animal checklist

Credible report. One of the more unexpected reveals from the press demo: there is a zoo in Leonida, and studying an animal crosses it off a list. Outlets summarising IGN's preview drew the direct comparison to Red Dead Redemption 2's animal compendium, where observing wildlife fills in a record over the course of a playthrough.

That sits alongside the animal interactions in the montage — petting dogs, and per Kotaku's summary of IGN's session, buying them treats. Rockstar has built a small ecology layer here rather than a single novelty interaction.

Rumor. A widely-shared framing calls this "GTA 6's Pokémon Go", describing a dedicated collection app on the in-game phone. That specific framing traces to a content creator invited to a preview rather than to IGN or Rockstar, and no outlet that attended the press demo has described a collection app. The checklist is credible; the app is not established.

Unverified. One detail circulating from the same coverage — that a pet dog can predict lottery results — is odd enough that we are flagging it rather than repeating it as fact. It appears in secondhand summaries of the IGN preview and we could not confirm it against a primary account.

Downtime that is not a minigame

Official. A large slice of what the Extended Look showed is not scored, timed or rewarded at all. Jason and Lucia can watch television, listen to the radio, scroll social media on their phones, sit in a safehouse, eat, shave and sleep. Nightclubs and bars are shown as places with crowds and music rather than as mission triggers.

Credible report. Reports from the demo add that some downtime has a cost. Time on the couch and time doomscrolling feed the body simulation — eat badly and do nothing and it shows on the characters. Training does the opposite, and reportedly requires buying a gym membership before you can use the equipment, with individual machines carrying their own timing minigames. Our weight and gym system explainer covers that loop in full, including how your appearance feeds back into how police describe you.

Credible report. Working out is also described as something Jason and Lucia can do together, which puts it in the same category as the shared jet-ski and basketball moments — activities built around two protagonists in the same place rather than one. That is a meaningful difference from GTA 5's three-way switch, and it is covered properly in our character switching breakdown.

Why activities matter more this time

Analysis. In GTA 5, side content was optional in the truest sense — you could finish the campaign having done none of it. GTA 6 changes the incentive structure in two directions at once, and this list is where both of them land.

The first is money. Rockstar has confirmed that at points the story will wait until your balance is high enough, which makes free roam the place you fund the plot rather than a diversion from it. That is covered in detail in our money, robberies and fences breakdown. Most of the activities above cost money rather than earn it — gym memberships, bars, mini golf — which means the economy has a sink as well as a source.

The second is the body and reputation layer. Training changes how you look. Looking different changes how easily police match you to a description. How you behave around NPCs feeds a Criminal Profile that the world reads back to you. Almost nothing on this list is inert — the activities plug into systems that follow you into missions.

That is the genuinely new idea, and it is worth stating plainly: GTA 6 appears to have very few pure distractions. Even watching TV on a couch has an output.

What is still unconfirmed

• Whether any of these are scored. No outlet has described a leaderboard, a reward, a completion percentage, or a payout for any activity.
• The playable/spectator line. Backyard wrestling and hunting are the clearest cases where the footage does not settle it — unverified.
• Cage fighting, MMA and mud wrestling as participatory events. Sourced only to a content-creator preview — rumor.
• The animal collection app. The checklist is credible; a dedicated Pokédex-style phone app is not — unverified.
• Gym membership pricing. Whether it is one-time or recurring has not been confirmed by Rockstar.
• Two-player activities. Which activities support Jason and Lucia together, and which are solo-only, has not been laid out.
• The complete list. Rockstar has published no activity list. Everything above is assembled from a montage and from press accounts of a demo, and the real total is almost certainly larger.

For the full picture of what the presentation revealed, see our Extended Look breakdown and the running confirmed vs unverified features tracker. With under three months to November 19, Rockstar is likely to detail more of this before launch — we will update this page rather than write a second one.

Frequently asked questions

What side activities are in GTA 6?

Activities shown in the official Extended Look include basketball, pool, weightlifting, swimming, scuba diving, kayaking, jet skiing, fanboats, fishing, base jumping and parachuting, shooting-range practice, street and track racing, dirt-bike racing, electric scooters, nightclubs and bars, and backyard wrestling. Outlets who attended Rockstar's separate press demo add mini golf, a zoo, and monster-truck racing. Rockstar has not published a complete list.

Can you play basketball in GTA 6?

Yes. Basketball appears in the official Extended Look, and outlets covering the presentation describe Jason shooting hoops near his home as a player activity rather than background scenery. Rockstar has not detailed how the minigame is scored or whether it supports more than one player.

Is there fishing in GTA 6?

Fishing appears in the Extended Look's free-roam montage. Engadget described it as a returning minigame in the style of Red Dead Redemption 2's, but Rockstar has not confirmed the depth of the system, so treat a full RDR2-style fishing minigame as a credible report rather than an official feature.

Is there a zoo in GTA 6?

According to IGN's preview of Rockstar's hands-off demo, yes — you can visit a zoo and study animals, with each new find crossed off a checklist in the style of Red Dead Redemption 2's animal compendium. The zoo was not a highlighted moment in the public Extended Look video, so it sits in our credible-report column.

Do you have to pay for the gym in GTA 6?

Reports from the press demo say a gym membership has to be bought before you can train there, and that individual machines have their own minigames. Whether that is a one-time purchase or a recurring cost has not been confirmed by Rockstar.

Source note: Items labeled Official are visible in Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look, published by Rockstar Games on August 27, 2026. Items labeled Credible report come from named outlets covering Rockstar's hands-off press demo the same day — including Engadget, Shacknews, Kotaku, Dexerto and GTA BOOM, several of which are summarising IGN's exclusive preview with Rob Nelson. Cage fighting, the animal collection app and the lottery-predicting dog are labeled rumor or unverified because we could trace them only to a content-creator preview or to secondhand summaries. We do not link to leaked or stolen material — see our rumor policy.

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