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If you’ve played at an international online casino in Europe, there’s a good chance it carried a Malta Gaming Authority licence. At the end of 2025 the MGA oversaw 311 gaming licences held by 302 companies, from household-name casino brands to the game studios and platforms working behind them. That’s why the MGA logo turns up in so many casino footers.
This review explains what that logo actually means for you: the rules MGA casinos have to follow, how to check a licence in about two minutes, what to do when a casino won’t pay, and where the MGA’s protection runs out. Every figure comes from the MGA’s own publications, Maltese legislation or EU court records, checked in October 2026.
Short answer: an MGA licence is one of the strongest trust signals an international casino can show. Your money is legally ring-fenced, disputes go to free independent ADR, and the regulator publishes its enforcement actions. The catch: a Maltese licence doesn’t make a casino legal in your country, and the MGA’s fines are modest next to what the UK or Dutch regulators hand out.
The MGA at a glance (verified October 2026)
What Is the Malta Gaming Authority?
The Malta Gaming Authority is the statutory regulator for all gambling in and from Malta, online and land-based. It was set up in 2001 as the Lotteries and Gaming Authority, later took the MGA name, and today operates under the Gaming Act 2018 (Chapter 583 of the Laws of Malta), which came into force on 1 August 2018 and replaced the older gaming laws.
Malta describes itself as the first EU member state to specifically regulate online gaming, and the industry that grew from that head start is now a pillar of Malta gambling and of the island’s economy. According to the MGA’s 2025 Annual Report, the gaming sector produced an estimated €1.42 billion in gross value added in 2025, about 6.3% of Malta’s economic output, and roughly 15,000 full-time jobs sit with MGA-licensed operators. You’ll still see “12% of GDP” quoted on many sites; that figure dates from 2017.
Day to day, the MGA:
- licenses and vets online casinos, sportsbooks, poker and bingo operators (B2C) and the game studios and platforms that supply them (B2B)
- supervises Malta’s land-based casinos, gaming parlours, bingo halls and the National Lottery
- audits licensees on player protection, player funds and anti-money laundering (15 full-scope compliance audits and 109 thematic reviews in 2025)
- takes enforcement action, from warnings and fines to suspending or cancelling licences
- handles player requests for help through its Player Support Unit (3,718 resolved in 2025)
The MGA is based at SmartCity Malta, employs 183 people and is led by CEO Charles Mizzi. Its official website is mga.org.mt. The licensee register, the URL checker and the licence seals all run on mga.org.mt subdomains, which matters when you’re checking whether a licence is real.
What an MGA Licence Protects, and What It Doesn't
The MGA’s player rules sit in the Gaming Player Protection Regulations and the Player Protection Directive (Directive 2 of 2018). These are the ones that affect you directly:
| Protection | What MGA rules require | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Player funds | Kept apart from company money at an MGA-approved bank or payment institution; the account must always cover every player balance | Your balance legally belongs to you, not to the casino's creditors |
| Withdrawals | Paid within 5 working days where practicable; withdrawal limits can never be set below €250 a month | No tiny payout caps, and money waiting to be withdrawn can't be gambled |
| Deposit and wagering limits | Offered before your first deposit; tighter limits apply instantly, looser ones only after 24 hours | You can cap your spending in seconds and can't undo it on impulse |
| Reality checks | Pop-up alerts at intervals you choose, showing time played, amount wagered and wins or losses | Play pauses until you confirm you want to continue |
| Self-exclusion | Fixed or indefinite, effective immediately; reopening needs a request plus a 24-hour (fixed) or 7-day (indefinite) cooling-off | Your balance stays withdrawable while you're excluded |
| Fair games | RNG games must pay back at least 85% on average; demo versions must use the same RTP as real-money play | Free-play results aren't inflated to lure you in |
| Disputes | Every B2C licensee must sign up with a free ADR provider before it goes live | An independent body can rule on your complaint at no cost to you |
| Minors | Under-18s barred; a minor's account is closed, deposits refunded and winnings confiscated | Age checks are a licence condition, not a courtesy |
Player funds and the "bank account" question
Searches for a “bank account for the Malta Gaming Authority” usually come down to two questions: where does a casino keep my money, and does the MGA hold it? The answer to the second one is no. The MGA never holds player money, and it publishes no bank account for players on its website. Licensees pay their fees through the MGA’s own Licensee Portal.
What the rules do require is that every licensee keeps player money in a segregated player-funds account:
- The account must sit with a licensed credit, financial or payment institution, and the MGA has to approve the setup.
- Each player’s balance must be separately identifiable, and the MGA has viewing rights over the account.
- The account, plus money in transit, must always add up to at least the total of all player balances, with at least 90% held in the account itself. Any shortfall has to be made good from the company’s own money immediately.
- Licensees file a player-funds report with the MGA every month (1,757 were submitted in 2025), backed by an annual review from their auditor.
Segregation isn’t a deposit guarantee. If an operator breaks the rules and the money was never ring-fenced, getting it back is harder. But it’s a real legal safeguard: under Maltese law, player funds form a separate pool of assets that the operator’s creditors can’t touch.
Scam warning: if anyone asks you to pay a “release fee”, “tax” or “verification deposit” into a Malta Gaming Authority bank account before you can withdraw, it’s fraud. The MGA doesn’t collect money from players.
An MGA licence tells you how a casino has to treat your money. It doesn't tell you whether that casino is allowed to serve your country.
Where the protection stops
Three limits are worth knowing before you lean on the MGA logo:
- It isn’t an EU passport. There’s no EU-wide gambling licence. Countries that license gambling locally, including the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, require their own licence. On 16 April 2026 the EU Court of Justice confirmed (case C-440/23) that member states may ban online casino games offered under another member state’s licence and may let players reclaim losses. If your country runs its own system, an MGA-only casino serving you sits outside it, and so do your local self-exclusion scheme and complaint routes.
- There’s no central online self-exclusion register. The MGA runs a unified self-barring scheme for land-based venues in Malta. Online, self-exclusion works casino by casino, so excluding yourself at one MGA site doesn’t block you at the next.
- The MGA doesn’t decide your payout dispute. Its Player Support Unit can look into whether a licensee broke the rules, but the merits of a disputed withdrawal or bonus decision go to the casino’s ADR provider.
MGA Licence Types: B2C, B2B and the Four Game Types
Since August 2018 the MGA has issued two kinds of licence. A B2C Gaming Service Licence covers anyone offering gambling to players: online casinos, sportsbooks, poker rooms and bingo sites. A B2B Critical Gaming Supply Licence covers the businesses behind them, such as game studios and platform providers that supply or manage key parts of a game or its regulatory records. Both run for ten years, and a new licensee has to go live within 90 days of approval.
Every licence also lists the game types the holder may offer, as defined in the Gaming Authorisations Regulations. If you’ve seen “Class 1 to Class 4 licences” mentioned elsewhere, that’s the pre-2018 system, and it no longer applies.
| Game type | What it covers | Where you'll see it |
|---|---|---|
| Type 1 | Games of chance played against the house, with the result decided by a random generator | Online slots, roulette, blackjack, baccarat, lotteries, virtual sports |
| Type 2 | Games against the house decided by a real-world event, where the operator manages the odds | Sportsbooks and live betting, the licence MGA betting sites need |
| Type 3 | Games not played against the house, where the operator takes a commission | Player-versus-player poker, bingo, betting exchanges |
| Type 4 | Controlled skill games | Skill-based games covered by the MGA's Controlled Skill Games Ruling |
Why this matters to you: the licence seal shows which game types a site is approved for. A sportsbook running on a Type 1-only licence isn’t covered for betting, and that kind of mismatch is a reason to walk away.
Licensees pay a lot for the privilege. A B2C licence costs a €5,000 application fee and €25,000 a year, plus a monthly compliance contribution on gaming revenue that starts at 1.25% for casino games and 4% for betting. The full fee breakdown and the application steps are in the licensing section further down this page.
One change from 1 October 2026 that many guides haven’t caught: Malta’s gaming tax is no longer a flat 5%. Under Legal Notice 84 of 2026, revenue from players based in Malta is taxed at 15% for Type 1 casino games and 10% for Types 2 to 4. The tax only applies to players in Malta; the compliance contribution applies to all of an operator’s revenue.
How to Run a Malta Gaming Authority License Check
Fake MGA badges are common. In 2025 the MGA reviewed 109 websites reported to it and found 42 carrying false references to the authority or its licensees. Checking a licence properly takes about two minutes:
- Find the licence number. MGA casinos have to display it, usually in the footer. B2C numbers follow the format MGA/B2C/1112/2025 (category, sequence number, year). Some long-established groups carry an MGA/CRP/ number instead, such as Betsson’s MGA/CRP/1117/2025.
- Click the seal. A genuine MGA seal is dynamic: clicking it opens a page on https://authorisation.mga.org.mt that shows the company, licence status, approved game types, its ADR provider and every approved website address. A static image, or a seal that opens on any other domain, is a red flag.
- Search the register. Look up the company or licence number on the MGA licensee register. The status should read Licensed. Suspended, Voluntary Suspended, Cancelled, Surrendered or Expired means that licence isn’t active.
- Match the domain. One licence can cover many websites, but only the ones listed on it. Check that the exact address you’re on appears on the seal page, or paste it into the MGA’s URL checker.
- Scan the warning list. The MGA names websites that falsely claim its licence on its unauthorised URLs page, updated every month.
A real example of step 4: Caxino, Wildz, Wheelz and Spinz all display the same licence number, MGA/B2C/1079/2025. That’s normal, because brand families often share one licence. What matters is that the domain you’re playing on is listed under it.
How to Complain About an MGA Casino
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Step 1
Complain to the casino in writing and ask for a reference number. MGA rules give it 10 days to reply, plus another 10 if it tells you it needs them.
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Step 2
Take it to the casino's ADR provider, named on its MGA seal page. ADR is free for players, and a decision reached by adjudication binds both sides.
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Step 3
If the ADR rules in your favour, the casino has 20 days to comply. If it doesn't, report it to the MGA, which can take enforcement action.
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Step 4
For rule breaches such as KYC delays, unfair bonus terms or account closures, file a complaint with the MGA Player Support Unit through its online form.
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Step 5
Keep your other options open. Going to ADR doesn't remove your right to take the casino to court.
Keep your MGA complaint tight: the form allows 400 characters, so lead with the amount, the date and exactly what the casino did. The MGA resolved 3,718 player requests for assistance in 2025, but it publishes no target response time, so if your problem is money owed to you, start with ADR.
Enforcement Record: How Hard Does the MGA Bite?
The MGA publishes every licence suspension and cancellation in its enforcement register and reports its fines in its annual reports. Here are the last three years, taken from the MGA’s own 2023, 2024 and 2025 annual reports (the 2024 total includes €61,522 in regulatory settlements):
| Year | Warnings | Fines issued | Total fines | Suspensions | Cancellations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 28 | 19 | €172,900 | 9 | 11 |
| 2024 | 35 | 25 + 3 settlements | €367,772 | 2 | 8 |
| 2025 | 22 | 30 | €162,520 | 1 | 2 |
The numbers tell two stories. The MGA does pull licences, and when it does, it looks after players’ money. When it cancelled Winzon Group’s licence in 2026, it ordered the company to notify players for 30 days, refund legitimate balances and prove the refunds with bank statements, on top of €147,080 in penalties. In September 2026 it suspended Condor Malta, and in 2025 it cancelled GoldWin after first suspending it over a threat to players’ interests.
The fines, though, are small. Under the Gaming Act the MGA can fine up to €25,000 per breach, plus €500 for every day a breach continues. Its largest penalty on record is a €2.34 million settlement with Blackrock Media in 2020 for running an unauthorised gaming service. Compare that with single fines of £2 million from the UK Gambling Commission in 2025, or the €19.7 million the Dutch regulator imposed on MGA-licensed Gammix in December 2025 over illegal online gambling in the Netherlands.
The record isn’t spotless either. In 2017 the MGA suspended CenturionBet after an Italian anti-mafia investigation, and Maltese media criticised how long it took to act. For balance, several high-profile Italian prosecutions of Malta-based betting firms later ended in acquittals. Malta also spent June 2021 to June 2022 on the FATF “grey list”, although the action plan targeted company ownership data and tax-related money laundering, not the gaming sector.
Article 56A: the controversy players should know about
In June 2023 Malta added Article 56A to its Gaming Act, the change known as Bill 55. It tells Maltese courts to refuse to enforce foreign judgments against MGA licensees where the claim challenges activity that’s legal under their Maltese licence. In practice it hit players in Germany and Austria who had won court orders for refunds of losses at Malta-licensed casinos.
The European Commission opened infringement proceedings against Malta in June 2025, arguing the law breaches EU rules on recognising court judgments. Malta’s position is that it simply writes down existing public policy. In April 2026 an Advocate General at the EU Court of Justice recommended that the case before him be declared inadmissible, but said that if the Court did rule on it, the provision would be contrary to EU law. No judgment has followed yet, and as of October 2026 Article 56A remains in force.
For most players this changes nothing day to day. It matters if you live in a country that requires a local licence and you’re thinking about reclaiming losses from an MGA-only casino.
MGA vs Other Licensing Authorities
How does a Malta licence compare with the other names you’ll see in casino footers? This table sticks to fees, taxes and rules each regulator or government has published:
| MGA (Malta) | UKGC (Great Britain) | CGA (Curaçao) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Location | EU member state | Outside the EU | Outside the EU (Kingdom of the Netherlands) |
| Annual B2C licence fee | €25,000 + compliance contribution | Scales with gross gambling yield | €47,450 (licence + supervisory fee) |
| Operator tax | 15% casino / 10% other, on players in Malta only | Remote Gaming Duty of 40% of profits (from April 2026) | No single official rate published |
| Free ADR for players | Mandatory | Mandatory | Required under the LOK law |
| Published sanctions | Enforcement register + annual figures | Public enforcement list | No public register found |
The short version: the UK Gambling Commission is stricter and fines harder, but its licence only matters if you’re in Great Britain. Curaçao has rebuilt its regime under the National Ordinance on Games of Chance (LOK), in force since December 2024 with a transition period running to December 2026, and is still building a track record. Among regulators that license casinos for an international audience, the MGA’s mix of segregated player funds, mandatory ADR and public enforcement is hard to beat.
MGA Casinos and Betting Sites: What to Look For
Because so many international brands hold a Maltese licence, “MGA casino” covers everything from 20-year-old household names to sites that launched last month. A few checks help you separate the strongest MGA casino sites from the merely licensed ones:
- Licence age and history. A number ending in /2006 or /2014 means the operator has come through years of MGA audits; Mr Green’s MGA/CRP/121/2006 is one example. A new MGA casino with a /2025 number isn’t worse, just less proven, so its other signals matter more.
- The right game types. MGA betting sites need Type 2 approval, and poker rooms and betting exchanges need Type 3. The seal page lists them.
- A named ADR provider. It’s shown on the seal page. If you can’t find one, ask support before you deposit.
- Easy-to-find safer gambling tools. MGA rules put the responsible gambling page one click away. If deposit limits and self-exclusion are buried, the casino is doing the bare minimum.
- Fair withdrawal terms. MGA rules set a €250 monthly floor on withdrawal limits and expect payouts within five working days where practicable. Terms that look worse than that deserve a closer read.
For a ready-made MGA casino list, scroll to the bottom of this page: every casino we’ve reviewed under an MGA licence appears there automatically, ranked by FAQsino Trust Score, with the best MGA casinos by real player rating just above the FAQ. Our full reviews of Betsson, Mr Green and Caxino show how individual MGA online casinos measure up.
Playing at an online casino in Malta
If you live in Malta, MGA-licensed sites are the legal route to an online casino. The minimum age is 18, and since 1 October 2026 operators pay 15% gaming tax on casino revenue from players in Malta and 10% on betting, poker and bingo.
For land-based play, the MGA’s unified self-barring scheme lets you exclude yourself from Malta’s casinos, gaming parlours and bingo halls for 6 months, 12 months, or 12 months with automatic renewal. You can register through the MGA or the Responsible Gaming Foundation. If gambling stops being fun, the MGA’s safer gambling page has a nine-question self-assessment and links to the Responsible Gaming Foundation, SEDQA, Caritas, Oasi and the free blocking tool BetBlocker.
Our Verdict on the Malta Gaming Authority
The Malta Gaming Authority earns its Tier 1 place where it counts most for players. Your money is legally ring-fenced, you get free and independent dispute resolution, and its verification tools (the register, the URL checker and the dynamic seal) are among the best any gambling regulator offers. It also acts: licences do get suspended and cancelled, and refunds get ordered when they are.
Where it loses points is deterrence. €162,520 in fines across all of 2025 won’t worry a large operator, and Article 56A has put Malta at odds with the European Commission and with players trying to enforce foreign judgments. An MGA licence also says nothing about whether a casino may legally serve your country.
Treat an MGA licence as a strong baseline, then confirm three things before you deposit: the seal opens on authorisation.mga.org.mt, the register shows Licensed, and the casino is allowed to accept players where you live.
