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A huge share of the world’s online casinos have carried a Curaçao licence at some point, from small crypto sites to some of the biggest names in the business. For years those licences came through a handful of private “master licence” holders. Since 24 December 2024 they come from one regulator, the Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA), under a new law known as the LOK.
This review explains what changed, what a Curaçao gambling licence costs, what protection it actually gives you, which countries Curaçao casinos can and can’t serve, and how to check a licence at a time when the CGA’s own verification tools are in flux. Every figure comes from the CGA’s published policies and registers, the LOK text or official statements, checked in October 2026.
Short answer: the LOK is a genuine step up from the old system, with mandatory free dispute resolution, responsible-gambling rules and non-transferable licences. But the regulator is still young, publishes no fines, has most licences still under assessment, and spent 2026 dealing with a breach of its licensing portal. A Curaçao licence today is a baseline, not a seal of quality.
The CGA at a glance (verified October 2026)
What Is the Curaçao Gaming Authority?
The Curaçao Gaming Authority is Curaçao’s gambling regulator. It isn’t a brand-new body: it’s the foundation set up on 19 April 1999 as the Gaming Control Board (GCB), which the LOK designated as the CGA when the law took effect. That’s why you’ll still see the “Curaçao Gambling Control Board” name on many sites, and even the old logo on parts of the CGA’s own website.
The CGA is an independent administrative authority led by a board of directors under a supervisory board. It supervises online gaming, Curaçao’s land-based casinos and the numbers lottery, and has been the anti-money laundering supervisor for the whole gaming sector since 2019. Political responsibility moved from the Minister of Finance to the Minister of Justice in August 2025.
The CGA is based at Scharlooweg 172-174 in Willemstad, and its official website is cga.cw.
From Master Licences to the LOK: What Changed
Under the old National Ordinance on Offshore Games of Hazard from 1993, four private companies held master licences and issued sub-licences to operators. The model was widely criticised for weak oversight: master licensees rarely handled player complaints, ownership was hard to see, and the Netherlands made an independent regulator a condition of its 2020 support package for Curaçao.
The National Ordinance on Games of Chance (Landsverordening op de kansspelen, LOK) replaced that system:
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| Nov 2023 | The CGA begins its phased reform and accepts direct licence applications |
| 24 Dec 2024 | The LOK takes effect; former sub-licensees get provisional licences |
| Jun 2025 | Selected provisional licences extended to 24 December 2025 |
| 15 Oct 2025 | The old "Orange Seal" expires, ending the sub-licence system |
| 24 Dec 2026 | Licensees may only use licensed or registered critical suppliers |
| 1 Apr 2027 | Local substance requirements enforced from this date |
The biggest practical changes: every operator now needs its own licence directly from the CGA, and licences can’t be transferred, rented out or sub-licensed. Applicants are vetted on integrity, ownership and source of funds, must have a responsible-gambling policy and an approved dispute resolution provider, and must register with the financial intelligence unit’s reporting system. If you see an orange seal or a sub-licence number on a casino today, that licence system no longer exists.
Curaçao Gambling Licence: Cost and Requirements
The CGA’s official fee schedule (version 2.0, October 2025) sets these costs:
| Licence | Application fee | Annual fee |
|---|---|---|
| B2C online gaming licence | €4,592 + €150 per beneficial owner | €47,450 (€24,490 to the Treasury + €22,960 to the CGA) |
| B2B critical supplier licence | €4,592 + €150 per beneficial owner | €24,490 |
| Certificate (non-critical services, e.g. test labs, ADR) | €383 | Valid for three years |
| Extra main domain | €250 (one-time) | Not applicable |
The LOK itself contains no gaming tax on revenue, so the Curaçao online gambling licence cost is mainly the fees above plus ordinary Curaçao profit tax, whose rate the CGA doesn’t publish. Annual fees are invoiced from 15 January each year, and a licence isn’t formally granted until the invoices are paid.
The main requirements:
- A Curaçao company (NV or BV) managed by at least one Curaçao resident.
- Local substance: one permanent local key person for the first four years, three from year five, and dedicated business premises in Curaçao. The government postponed enforcement until 1 April 2027.
- A two-phase review: integrity and financial viability first, then everything else. The law gives the CGA eight weeks for each phase once the file is complete, extendable by four, and it can issue a provisional licence of up to six months in between.
- Hard bars: unverified owners, recent enrichment-crime convictions, unproven source of funds, unpaid taxes or links to a revoked licence.
One caveat for anyone applying now: the CGA’s licensing portal has been offline since a security breach, and on 7 October 2026 the CGA said it won’t return. Licensing continues through “alternative arrangements” that hadn’t been published by mid-October.
What a Curaçao Licence Means for Players
For the first time, Curaçao has binding responsible-gambling rules. The CGA’s Responsible Gambling Policy (February 2025) and the LOK require every licensed casino to offer:
| Rule | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Deposit limits | Daily, weekly and monthly limits must be available. Lower limits apply immediately; higher ones only after seven days. |
| Cooling-off | 24 hours, 7 days, 1 month or 3 months, activated in one click with no approval needed. |
| Self-exclusion | At least 12 months and irrevocable, with options up to lifetime, covering all of the operator's brands. Your remaining balance must be refunded within two business days. |
| Age and identity | Under-18s can't play. Your age must be verified before you deposit or bet, with a government ID check under KYC rules. |
| No credit | Licensees may not give players credit to gamble. |
| Complaints and ADR | A reasoned answer within four weeks, then free independent dispute resolution paid for by the casino. |
The gaps are significant, though:
- No rule ring-fencing your money. The LOK allows the CGA to require player-fund segregation and provides for a guarantee fund, but we found no rule in force requiring fiat player funds to be held separately, and no evidence the guarantee fund is operating.
- No national self-exclusion. Self-exclusion works operator by operator, so excluding yourself from one company’s casinos doesn’t block another’s.
- The CGA doesn’t decide disputes. It won’t rule on individual complaints; that’s the ADR provider’s job.
Under the LOK, a Curaçao licence finally comes with real rules. Whether they're enforced is the question the CGA still has to answer.
Curaçao gambling licence countries: who can a Curaçao casino accept?
There’s no official CGA list of countries Curaçao licensees can or can’t serve. Instead, the CGA requires casinos to tell you clearly in their terms where play is permitted and where it’s restricted, and it can revoke a licence if a foreign authority finally rules that the operator broke its gambling law. In practice, many Curaçao casinos exclude the United States and Curaçao itself, as well as markets with their own licensing systems.
The rule of thumb is simple: a Curaçao licence doesn’t override local law. The Netherlands requires a Dutch licence and its regulator has fined Curaçao-based operators. The UK requires a UK Gambling Commission licence for anyone offering gambling to people in Great Britain, so a Curaçao online casino that accepts UK players without one is operating outside UK law. UK players are better protected choosing UKGC-licensed sites, where GAMSTOP, stake limits and UK dispute resolution all apply.
How to Complain About a Curaçao Casino
-
Step 1
Complain to the casino within six months, using its official complaint form. It must acknowledge you in writing within one week.
-
Step 2
Expect a reasoned final decision within four weeks, extendable once by four weeks with notice. Self-exclusion complaints must be handled within days.
-
Step 3
If you're not satisfied, take it to the casino's CGA-certified ADR provider. It's free for you; the casino pays.
-
Step 4
Report malpractice or licence breaches to the CGA at [email protected]. It uses reports for supervision but won't decide your individual case.
-
Step 5
As a last resort, disputes go to the courts of Curaçao under Curaçao law.
The seven ADR providers certified by the CGA (register updated August 2026) are Cadre, ABC-ADR, EGIS-FZCO, Resolvo Curaçao, iGamingADR, ADR Curaçao and IBAS. Check which one your casino uses in its terms. Once one ADR process is completed you can’t start again with another, and whether the outcome binds you depends on the casino’s terms.
How to Check a Curaçao Licence (and Why It's Harder Right Now)
Licensed casinos must show their licence number, company name, registered address and the CGA seal in the footer. To check it:
- Read the licence number. LOK-era numbers look like OGL/2024/1718/0938 or, for newer licences, CGA/2025/2452/1255. Old sub-licence formats are no longer valid.
- Find it in the register. The CGA’s licence register page has PDF lists of online licences, certificates and land-based casinos. Check the company name and number match.
- Check the status. “Indefinite” is a full licence. “Assessment in progress” means a provisional licence still under review. “Expired” or revoked means no licence.
- Check the enforcement register on the same page for revocations and suspensions.
- Check the warnings. The CGA publishes notices about sites falsely using real licensees’ numbers.
Two complications. First, the register lists companies, not casino brands or domains, so it can’t confirm that a particular website belongs to the licensee. Second, the CGA’s digital seal, a green “CGA” box that links to a certificate on cert.cga.cw, has been affected by the portal breach; on 7 October 2026 the CGA said it would introduce an alternative way to show a domain is licensed, but none had been published by mid-October. Until it is, the register check is the most reliable test.
As worked examples, our reviews of Mega Dice, Casino Joy and Hugo Casino list licences in the OGL format, OGL/2024/1718/0938, OGL/2024/112/0974 and OGL/2024/589/0556, which you can look up in the register yourself.
Enforcement, the Portal Breach and Open Questions
The CGA has the powers you’d expect: instructions, penalty orders, administrative fines, suspension and revocation, and referral to the public prosecutor. How it uses them is harder to judge, because it publishes little:
- Revocations without reasons. Its enforcement register (September 2026) lists 31 revoked licences and one not extended, including a batch of ten in November 2025, but gives no reasons. Unpaid fees lead to revocation too, so some may be administrative.
- No published fines. We found no administrative fines against licensees on the CGA’s site, and the annual enforcement report its policy promises hasn’t appeared.
- A criminal case. In July 2025 Curaçao’s public prosecutor settled with 12 companies running online casinos for failing to verify players’ identity, with 11 paying XCG 22,500 per casino.
The regulator itself has been through a turbulent stretch. Its supervisory board resigned in September 2025. Then on 17 September 2026 the CGA confirmed that its licensing portal had been accessed without authorisation, through an account registered under a false identity in December 2025, with access lasting until September 2026. It called the incident a serious breach, took the portal offline and on 7 October said it would not return to service.
Leaked files from that breach underpin investigative reporting by Dutch outlet Follow the Money, which alleges that licences were sometimes granted while questions about ownership were still open. The CGA said it followed robust internal procedures and that conclusions shouldn’t be drawn from isolated documents. These are reported allegations, not regulatory findings, but they matter when you’re deciding how much weight a Curaçao licence deserves.
Pressure from the Netherlands continues too. In July 2025 a Dutch State Secretary said the Dutch regulator had fined casinos using Curaçao licences at least 16 times since 2013, the largest fine €12.6 million, and that the fines were rarely collected.
Curaçao vs Other Licensing Authorities
How a Curaçao licence compares with two regulators often seen on the same casino sites:
| CGA (Curaçao) | MGA (Malta) | UKGC (Great Britain) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Annual B2C fee | €47,450 | €25,000 + compliance contribution | From £7,000 to over £1.45m, by yield |
| Gaming tax | None under the LOK | 15% casino / 10% other, on players in Malta only | 40% of profits (Remote Gaming Duty) |
| Free ADR | Mandatory | Mandatory | Mandatory |
| Player fund protection | No segregation rule found | Segregated, MGA-approved accounts | Disclosed on a three-level rating |
| National self-exclusion | No | No (operator level online) | GAMSTOP |
| Published fines | None found | Yes | Yes |
Curaçao is by far the cheapest of the three and now matches the others on mandatory ADR. It still trails both on player funds and on visible enforcement, which is why we rate it a tier below Malta and Great Britain.
Curaçao Online Casinos: What to Know Before You Play
More than 500 companies held B2C entries in the CGA register in October 2026, many running several casino sites each, so quality varies enormously. When you’re weighing up a Curaçao licensed casino:
- Check the status, not just the logo. A full “Indefinite” licence means the CGA has finished its review; “Assessment in progress” means it hasn’t. Only about a third of register entries had a full licence in October 2026.
- Read the restricted-countries list in the terms, and make sure your country isn’t on it.
- Find the named ADR provider. It must be one of the seven the CGA has certified.
- Test the safer-gambling tools. Deposit limits, cooling-off and self-exclusion must be one click away under the CGA’s policy.
- Be extra careful with a new Curaçao online casino. New licences start on six-month provisional terms while the CGA completes its review.
For a ready-made Curaçao casino list, scroll to the bottom of this page: every casino we’ve reviewed with a Curaçao licence appears there automatically, ranked by FAQsino Trust Score. Our reviews of Hugo Casino, Casino Joy, Mega Dice and Instant Casino show how individual Curaçao casinos measure up. The CGA also supervises Curaçao’s land-based casinos, which appear on a separate list in its register.
Our Verdict on the Curaçao Gaming Authority
The LOK has turned Curaçao from a licensing marketplace into a regulated jurisdiction on paper. One regulator, non-transferable licences, binding responsible-gambling rules and mandatory free ADR are all real improvements on the master-licence era, and the CGA has started revoking licences.
The trouble is everything that can’t yet be seen. Most licences are still under assessment, no fines have been published, revocations come without reasons, and 2026 brought a breach of the licensing portal, reporting that questions ownership checks, and a digital seal that’s currently in limbo. There’s still no rule ring-fencing your money.
A Curaçao licence today tells you the operator has entered a regulated system, not that it has passed a tough one. Check the licence status in the register, read the restricted countries and complaint terms, and judge the casino on its own record.
