Regulatory Developments Across Major Markets: A Rolling Review

Regulatory developments across the major online gambling markets moved quickly through the first eight months of 2026. Six jurisdictions changed something material: Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Ontario, Sweden and Curaçao. This review records what each supervisory body actually published, with the date each measure took effect, and it is revised every quarter as those positions move.

What the UKGC Changed in the LCCP During 2026

The UKGC made four sets of changes to the LCCP in 2026, each published as a separate version of the code with its own effective date. None was a wholesale rewrite. Read together, they narrow the space for promotional design, widen what has to be reported, and align the code with the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. Each amendment sits inside the wider structure of UKGC licence conditions rather than replacing any part of it.

• 19 January 2026. Social Responsibility Code Provision 5.1.1 on rewards and bonuses was restructured, with a new paragraph 3a limiting the use of wagering requirements and a new paragraph 3b banning the mixing of products within a single incentive.
• 19 March 2026. Licence Condition 15.2.1 raised the key event reporting threshold for operator status and relevant persons from 3 percent to 5 percent, extended the definition of relevant persons to entities without share capital with society lottery licensees excepted, and made all relevant loans reportable whether or not the agreement is in writing. The Licensing, Compliance and Enforcement Policy Statement was amended to match.
• 6 April 2026. References to the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 were replaced with the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 in Licence Condition 7.1.1(4) and SR Code 5.1.9(1). SR Code 6.1.1 now refers to the accreditation procedure under that Act, and the references to the Commission’s list of approved ADR providers were removed.
• 29 July 2026. New Licence Condition 18.1.1 requires gambling businesses to remove non-compliant gaming machines from their premises on written notification from the Commission.

The statutory levy runs on a fixed annual cycle alongside these amendments. Invoices appear on eServices on 1 September and must be paid in full, not in instalments, before 1 October. Payment is a licence requirement, so late payment puts the operating licence at risk. Rates run from 0.1 percent to 1.1 percent of leviable revenue depending on the activity. Guidance last updated on 13 March 2026 also records a change of interpretation: the levy is payable only on revenue earned from customers physically located in Great Britain, replacing the earlier split between GB and non-GB invoices, with refunds for cancelled invoices processed by the end of February 2026. As at the end of August 2026 the Commission lists no further LCCP amendments as upcoming.

Financial Risk Assessments Move to Staged Implementation

On 7 July 2026 the Commission confirmed that financial risk assessments will be introduced in stages rather than in a single step. This is the last significant strand of the UK Gambling Act review still to reach operational form, and the staging is a direct response to what the pilot showed. Stage 1 falls on the largest operators only, at a spend pattern the Commission describes as very unusual.

Stage	Customers aged 25 and over	Higher risk groups, including customers under 25
Stage 1	Net deposits above GBP 5,000 in a rolling 24 hours	Net deposits above GBP 2,500 in a rolling 24 hours
Interim stages	To be set after engagement with implementation groups	To be set after engagement with implementation groups
Final stage	Net deposits above GBP 1,000 in a rolling 24 hours, or above GBP 3,000 in a rolling 90 days	Net deposits above GBP 750 in a rolling 24 hours, or above GBP 2,000 in a rolling 90 days

Assessments are supplied by credit reference agencies, return four data points covering defaults, multiple arrears, significant arrears and whether a debt management plan is in place, and do not affect a customer’s credit rating. The Commission expects fewer than 3 percent of accounts to require an assessment once the measure is fully implemented, and roughly 1 in 1,000 to be incapable of a frictionless assessment, usually because identity was never properly verified in the first place. No enforcement action will be taken for a failure to act on an assessment outcome during the early stages of roll-out, provided existing requirements are met. The Stage 1 start date will be confirmed in the formal consultation response.

Germany Enters the Evaluation Year for the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag

The Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021 (Interstate Treaty on Gambling) requires an evaluation to be completed by the end of 2026, and the treaty itself runs to 2028. Because it is an agreement between all sixteen Länder, any substantive amendment has to be ratified by every state parliament, which is why the evaluation matters more as a signal than as an immediate change to the rules. Nothing in the GGL compliance regime shifted as a result of it during the period under review.

What the GGL did publish is instructive about supervisory direction. Its activity report for 2025, released on 3 July 2026, describes a deliberate move away from permit issuance towards structured supervision of licensed operators, built on supervisory interviews and on interventions both triggered by complaints and initiated independently. The report declines to state standalone figures for the size of the illegal market in 2025, relying instead on a survey-based academic study, which is an unusually explicit admission about the limits of black market estimation. On 21 July 2026 the authority set out continued expansion of LUGAS, the cross-state supervision system that underpins the single deposit limit, in partnership with the public sector IT provider Dataport. Compliance teams should read that as investment in the data layer that future enforcement will run on.

The Netherlands Works Through Its First Licence Renewal Cycle

Dutch gambling licence renewal is the defining compliance event of the year in that market. The first remote licences were granted in September 2021 for a fixed five-year term and expire on 1 October 2026. Amended policy rules took effect on 1 January 2026 and apply to new applicants and to incumbents seeking a follow-up licence, although the two follow different procedures. Incumbents face a reassessment of addiction prevention policy, of advertising and marketing policy, and a fresh integration test against the control database. Every application, new or renewed, must now contain four things.

• An exit plan setting out how the operator would wind down its Dutch offering and settle player balances if a licence is not renewed, is suspended or is revoked.
• A document explaining how the regulator will be informed of material changes in policy or operations.
• A risk analysis under the Wet ter voorkoming van witwassen en financieren van terrorisme (Wwft), the Dutch anti-money laundering act.
• Disclosure of breaches over the previous five years, with evidence of what was done about them.

Failure to comply with an enforceable court ruling at the point of application counts against reliability and can lead to refusal outright. The first five-year extensions have already been granted, taking effect on 1 October 2026. Alongside the renewal cycle, the supervisory agenda published on 20 January 2026 names five priorities: illegal supply, protection of minors and young adults aged 18 to 24, duty of care, advertising, and Wwft compliance. Two thresholds in force since 1 October 2024 remain the operational core of duty of care and were revisited in guidance during July 2026. A player who wants a gross monthly deposit limit above EUR 350, or above EUR 150 under the age of 24, must first speak to trained staff. Net deposits above EUR 700 in a calendar month, or EUR 300 for those under 24, trigger an investigation into whether the player can bear that loss. These sit alongside the KSA licensing and CRUKS obligations that have applied since the market opened.

Ontario Switches On Centralised Self-Exclusion

Ontario now has a centralised self-exclusion programme covering the whole regulated market. BetGuard, operated by iGaming Ontario, went live on 14 May 2026 and allows anyone aged 19 or over to opt out of every regulated site in the province through a single portal, for six months, one year, five years or a custom term. The AGCO set the supporting rule in an information bulletin dated 2 April 2026, adding Standard 2.14.1 to the Registrar’s Standards for Internet Gaming, which is the operative provision within the wider set of AGCO standards for Ontario iGaming. It obliges operators to do six things.

• Prevent centrally self-excluded persons from opening new accounts or accessing existing ones.
• Stop all marketing, incentives and promotions to a person no later than 24 hours after they are added to the registry.
• Cancel and refund outstanding wagers to the player wallet within the same 24 hours, except where the person registered less than 24 hours before the relevant event begins.
• Log the person out immediately on confirmation that they are centrally self-excluded.
• Maintain a mechanism for returning unused funds, either on request or automatically.
• Manage system disruptions so that a service failure does not let a centrally self-excluded person reach the gaming site.

The registry itself is iGaming Ontario’s responsibility, and registrants must be added no later than one hour after they sign up. Operator-level self-exclusion under Standard 2.14 has not been withdrawn. The AGCO has undertaken to revisit that requirement no more than 12 months after launch, which places the review in May 2027. Until then operators run both systems in parallel and must honour every existing site-level agreement.

Sweden Tightens the Technical Rules for Spelpaus Checks

Swedish self-exclusion requirements now reach into how operators query Spelpaus, not only whether they do. SIFS 2026:3 was decided on 23 April 2026, published on 29 April 2026 and took effect on 1 August 2026. It applies to every licensee obliged to register its players under Chapter 12, Section 1 of the Gambling Act (2018:1138). Two obligations sit at its centre. A licensee must use the unique connection credentials assigned to it by Spelinspektionen, and it must run the check against the application programming interface corresponding to the purpose of that check. The regulation also settles when a check counts as performed, namely once it has returned whether the person is excluded. Outsourcing the technical work to a platform provider moves neither obligation. The direction of travel is away from Spelinspektionen licensing conditions expressed as outcomes and towards prescriptive system design.

A second Swedish change took effect earlier in the year. From 1 May 2026 an extended credit prohibition applies: licensees and gambling agents may neither permit nor assist gambling financed by credit, and must take appropriate measures to counteract it. The prohibition covers every licensable form of gambling however it is offered, online or through an agent. Spelinspektionen may grant an exemption for public benefit lotteries where there are particular grounds and the aggregate credit does not exceed one fortieth of the price base amount, SEK 1,480 in 2026, and the duty to take measures continues to apply even where an exemption has been granted.

Curaçao Approaches the End of the LOK Transitional Period

The Curaçao transitional period under the LOK ends on 24 December 2026, two years to the day after the National Ordinance on Games of Chance came into force. The Curaçao Gaming Authority confirmed the date in an announcement on 24 June 2026 and settled the question that had been unresolved across the B2B market: the licensing duty applies to suppliers established on the island, while suppliers established abroad are subject to registration alone. Three provisions carry the regime. Article 1.5(1) prohibits the supply of critical services or goods in or from Curaçao without a supplier licence. Article 5.16(4) prohibits a licence holder from obtaining critical services or goods from an unregistered supplier, which places the verification burden squarely on the operator. Article 5.16(1) requires the authority to maintain a public register, which is what makes that verification possible. For anyone assessing Curaçao licensing after the LOK reform, the supply chain is now part of the assessment rather than a separate question.

Date	What is required	Who it applies to
1 September 2026	Filing of supplier licence applications through the CGA Online Gaming Portal, urged by the authority to allow processing time	Suppliers established in Curaçao
September 2026	Upload of a compliant crypto policy to the CGA portal, three months from the guideline taking effect	B2C licensees handling cryptocurrency
October 2026	Opening of the supplier registration process	Domestic and foreign suppliers
December 2026	Completion of crypto risk assessments, due diligence on virtual asset service providers and staff training	B2C licensees handling cryptocurrency
24 December 2026	End of the transitional period; supplier licensing and registration become fully enforceable	Suppliers and the operators contracting with them
June 2027	Wallet segregation, blockchain analytics, transaction reconciliation and audit ready records in place	B2C licensees handling cryptocurrency

The crypto guideline behind three of those rows took effect in June 2026 and applies to every group entity that touches cryptocurrency, not only to the licence holder. Three prohibitions bite immediately rather than on the phased timetable: accepting funds from sanctioned wallets, accepting funds from mixing services, and acting as an exchange, custodian or virtual asset service provider. Crypto sits inside the standard B2C licence rather than under a separate regime, so a failure here is a licence failure. The authority has reserved the right to compress the timetable where it identifies material risk.

Nine Regulators Take a Joint Position on Prediction Markets

The question of whether prediction markets require a gambling licence produced the only genuinely multilateral action of the period. Regulators from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland issued a joint statement in mid-June 2026, timed to the opening of the FIFA World Cup, and the GGL published its endorsement on 19 June 2026. The signatories described platforms operating without a local licence as available around the clock, without operator-imposed stake limits or time restrictions, and with minimal age verification. They asked sports federations, leagues and clubs to check the legality of prediction market partnerships before signing them, which is the part most likely to reach affiliate and sponsorship teams.

National positions had already diverged before the statement and continue to. Germany went further on 13 August 2026, publishing a dedicated FAQ section stating that social bets and prediction market products cannot be licensed under the German regime and that participation from Germany is therefore not permitted. Malta did not sign the joint statement and has said publicly that it is examining the sector. Anyone working from a reference list of gambling regulators by country should not assume that a product treated as unlicensed gambling in one member state is treated the same way in the next.

Reading These Changes Against the Six GICNT Domains

Reading these iGaming compliance updates by jurisdiction is only half the exercise. The same measures cluster into a small number of control areas, and an operator certified against the six GICNT compliance domains will find that most of the period’s activity lands on three of them.

Development	Market	Closest domain	What has to be evidenced
Standard 2.14.1 and the centralised registry	Ontario	GICNT-PP	Registry integration, 24 hour marketing suppression, disruption handling
SIFS 2026:3	Sweden	GICNT-PP, GICNT-DS	Own credentials in use, correct API per purpose, logged responses
Financial risk assessments	Great Britain	GICNT-PP	Threshold monitoring and proportionate action after an assessment
SR Code 5.1.1 as amended	Great Britain	GICNT-AM	Wagering requirement limits, no mixed products in one incentive
Licence renewal policy rules	Netherlands	GICNT-LS, GICNT-AML	Exit plan, Wwft risk analysis, remediation record
LOK supplier regime	Curaçao	GICNT-LS	Registered status of every critical supplier
CGA crypto guideline	Curaçao	GICNT-AML, GICNT-DS	Wallet screening, segregation, analytics, retained records
Joint statement on prediction markets	Nine European markets	GICNT-LS, GICNT-AM	Product legality per market, partnership due diligence

GICNT-FP is the quiet domain of this cycle. No supervisory body among the six changed its published position on random number generation testing or return to player disclosure during the period, which is itself worth recording: an absence of movement is a finding, not a gap in the review.