GTA 6 Miami Beach deal: the city voted to talk, not to sign

The Miami Beach vote of September 10, 2026 did not clear a Grand Theft Auto VI marketing campaign: it authorized the city manager to go and negotiate one with Rockstar Games, PC Gamer reported on September 11, 2026. It carried by 4 votes to 3, in a meeting streamed live on the City of Miami Beach YouTube channel.

Miami New Times named the agency on September 14, 2026: Amplify Marketing, hired by Rockstar Games. The paper describes that same meeting as approving a marketing agreement, gives the same 4-3 tally, and attaches the document to its article.

The $3 million shifts status with the vote. PC Gamer calls it a reported figure rather than the price of a settled contract. The roughly $4 million that commissioner Tanya K. Bhatt put on the deal, quoted by IGN France, covered total benefits to the city, where Miami New Times gives the same figure as the agreement’s ceiling.

On September 11, 2026 this page described an approved campaign worth at least $3 million, following IGN’s account, and was corrected the same day against PC Gamer’s.

What beachgoers see depends on which reading holds. Commissioner Laura Dominguez described advertising confined to the chairs and umbrellas of the city’s partner, the Boucher Brothers, and kept off city property, lifeguard chairs included. The wording Miami New Times quotes lets Amplify Marketing “install signage and other promotional materials on beachfront concession equipment, and on other city-owned property as designated by the city manager.” Art Basel still stays out of the campaign: its Miami Beach edition runs the weekend of December 4, 2026.

The Boucher Brothers, a Florida beach management company, are already in the game: GTA 6 parodies them as Sol Sisters, whose umbrellas sit in the first trailer, PC Gamer notes.

None of this comes from Rockstar. PC Gamer’s query went unanswered by the time it published, and no Rockstar Newswire post mentions the campaign. Miami Beach sits inside Miami-Dade County, which is weighing far louder placements of its own: Metromover trains wrapped in Vice City branding, Vice City murals on public buildings, branded manhole covers, a temporary rename of Miami International Airport as “Vice City Airport.” NBC 6 listed those ideas, USA Today picked them up on September 12, 2026, and the county says it has agreed to nothing formally.

The City of Miami, a separate city next door to Miami Beach, has cleared temporary banners of its own downtown, NBC 6 Miami reported on September 16, 2026. The item put to the city commission, file 19783 on the city’s legislative portal, draws a tight perimeter: the blocks bounded by Northeast 5th Street, the Miami River, Biscayne Bay and Northeast 2nd Avenue.

A banner larger than 5,000 square feet carries a $208,000 application fee there. It may stay up for no more than 56 consecutive days, and its artwork goes through a city permit and then Take-Two Interactive’s approval. The window is the Miami Beach one, to the day.

The dates are still those of the proposal put to the vote: October 15 to December 31, 2026, or 77 days, 35 before the November 19, 2026 release and 42 after. The release date falls in the middle of that window. Miami only accounts for part of the game anyway: Vice City is the metropolis of the state of Leonida, and the map runs south to the Leonida Keys.