Kai Cenat is playing his way through the Grand Theft Auto series on Twitch, and the sets he has built for it have become almost as big a talking point as the games. The streamer went live on 5 November with a simple promise, posting on X that he was “PLAYING EVERY GTA UNTIL I BEAT IT”. Each new game has come with its own real-life set, from a garage inspired by GTA III to a neon hotel front for Vice City. Viral posts on X have since claimed the setup cost $450,000, a figure Kai Cenat has not confirmed, and that claim has pulled his school project in Nigeria back into the conversation.
He first announced the marathon on 2 November, writing that he would play “GTA 3, VICE CITY, SAN ADREAS, 4 & 5 ALL ON STREAM” from 3pm Eastern Time on 5 November. A few minutes later, he followed up with a single word, “Andreas”, to fix the spelling. The timing is deliberate, because the run ends with Grand Theft Auto V just as the new game arrives. Grand Theft Auto VI launches on 19 November on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and our GTA 6 release date guide has the full launch details.
How Kai Cenat’s GTA marathon has gone so far
The stream started with GTA III, and Kai Cenat spent a little under ten hours on it before moving on, according to the Twitch statistics site TwitchTracker. He then switched to Vice City in the early hours of 6 November, Eastern Time, and played it for more than 18 hours. San Andreas followed on the evening of 6 November in New York, and it was still running on his Twitch channel on Saturday. By then, the broadcast had passed 39 hours without a break in the stream itself.
The numbers have been steady rather than record-breaking for a creator of his size. TwitchTracker puts his average audience at around 31,600 viewers across the whole stream, with a peak of 46,812 concurrent viewers during San Andreas. The broadcast had also passed 1.2 million hours watched and gained more than 19,000 new followers. Those figures are a long way below his subathons, but he was also the first streamer to pass one million active Twitch subscribers, during Mafiathon 3 in September 2025.
Each switch between games has also brought a new set and a new outfit. For GTA III, he posed in a leather jacket and combat trousers with a baseball bat, in front of a garage front signed “8-Ball’s Autos” and a poster of the game’s cover. For Vice City, he swapped to a palm-print shirt in front of a neon-lit hotel facade lined with palm trees. San Andreas brought a white vest, a green bandana and a BMX bike on a set built around a Grove Street graffiti wall.
Where the $450,000 claim came from
The price tag spread through viral posts on X shortly after the marathon began, often shared alongside clips of the Vice City hotel set. One widely shared post set the figure against his promise to build a school in Africa, and the comparison quickly became the main line of criticism. Kai Cenat has not said what the sets cost, and nobody connected to the stream has published a breakdown. As of 7 November, he had not responded to the claim on X either.
Not everyone has joined in, and plenty of fans have taken the marathon for exactly what it looks like. For many viewers who grew up with these games, watching a streamer replay them in full before GTA VI arrives is a nostalgia trip worth sitting through. The real-world sets fit a launch period in which GTA VI has been turning up far from the screen, including a hand-painted mural in Brooklyn that was tagged with graffiti this week. The game itself has already passed an estimated $750 million in pre-orders, so creators have every reason to build their schedules around it.
What has happened to Kai Cenat’s Nigeria school project
The school project dates back to Kai Cenat’s first visit to Lagos in March 2024, when he toured a school in Makoko, a waterfront community built over the lagoon. According to Guardian Nigeria, he saw overcrowded classrooms and gave about $2,800 on the spot for learning materials and basic needs. He then promised a far bigger project, funded by his Mafiathon subathons and other fundraising. In an update in April 2025, he announced the Kai Cenat Foundation and said it had raised more than $1 million.
Progress since then has been slower than many fans expected. During Mafiathon 3, he said the target was a $5 million investment to “get us to the first day of class”. Two representatives working with the Nigerian law firm Banwo & Ighodalo and Enko Education also joined the stream. They said the difficult terrain in Makoko had slowed the work, that the project had moved to nearby Yaba, and that a new school would take at least two years to build. In his April 2025 update, Kai Cenat had already said that earlier construction over the water was destroyed by a storm.
Under the revised plan, children from Makoko would study at the new school for free, while pupils from elsewhere would pay fees. Kai Cenat returned to Lagos in February 2026, when he visited pupils at a school linked to the project and donated supplies. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu received him at Lagos House on 4 February, writing that it was “a pleasure to meet him and hear his perspective on our city”. No opening date for the new school has been announced, which is why the $450,000 claim has landed where it has. Kai Cenat has not commented on the school since the marathon began, and GTA IV and GTA V are still to come before GTA VI launches on 19 November.
