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Spain was one of the first big European markets to license online casino as well as betting, and it has spent the years since tightening the rules around it. The regulator behind that is the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ), Spain’s national gambling authority, which licenses every state-wide online casino, betting and poker site, runs the national self-exclusion register and publishes the names of the operators it fines.
This review explains how a DGOJ licence works and what it costs, Spain’s 20% gambling tax, the deposit limits and safer-gambling rules every licensed site must follow, which advertising rules survived the 2024 Supreme Court rulings, how to self-exclude or complain, and the DGOJ’s enforcement record. Facts come from Ley 13/2011 and the royal decrees in the BOE, the DGOJ’s own pages, operator list, sanction register and market data, checked on 16 October 2026.
Short answer: a DGOJ licence is one of the stronger safety signals in Europe. Licensed sites have built-in deposit limits, check the national RGIAJ register, must flag risky play, and the DGOJ handles player complaints itself. Its weak spots are an advertising regime partly struck down in court and huge fines on offshore operators that may never be paid.
The DGOJ at a glance (verified 16 October 2026)
What Is the Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego?
The DGOJ is a directorate general of the Spanish government, not an independent agency. It sits in the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumer Affairs and Agenda 2030, under the General Secretariat for Consumer Affairs and Gambling, and has been led by Mikel Arana since 2020. Its offices are at Calle Atocha 3 in Madrid.
Its legal basis is Ley 13/2011, the Gambling Act that regulated online gambling in Spain for the first time. The first licences were issued in June 2012, under a short-lived National Gambling Commission whose powers passed to the DGOJ in 2013. The DGOJ was part of the Finance Ministry until it moved to the consumer affairs ministry in 2020.
The split of powers matters if you’re in Spain:
- DGOJ (national): online gambling offered across Spain, including casino, slots, poker, bingo and sports and horse betting, plus the national RGIAJ self-exclusion register.
- Regions (comunidades autónomas): land-based casinos, bingo halls and arcades, regional online gambling and their own exclusion registers.
- State lotteries: reserved to SELAE (Loterías y Apuestas del Estado) and ONCE.
How a DGOJ Gambling License Works
A DGOJ licence comes in two layers. A general licence covers a broad modality (betting, contests or “other games”) and lasts ten years, renewable. On top of it, a singular licence is needed for each game type, such as slots, roulette, blackjack, poker, bingo or a type of sports or horse bet. Singular licences last one to five years, and losing the general licence means losing them all.
New general licences are only granted in application windows (convocatorias). There have been three since 2011, and the last closed on 17 December 2018; recent activity has been extensions and transfers of existing licences. The requirements:
- A public limited company in the European Economic Area whose only business is gambling, with at least €100,000 paid-up capital (€60,000 for contests only), and a permanent representative in Spain if it has no Spanish office.
- A .es website, with every Spanish visitor redirected there from the operator’s other domains.
- A certified technical system with a data store located in Spain that DGOJ inspectors can access.
- Financial guarantees: €2 million per general licence in the first period, then €1 million. From 1 January 2027 these rise to €2.6 million and €1.3 million.
The DGOJ must decide within six months, and unusually, silence counts as approval. Here are the fees set in Article 49 of the Gambling Act:
| Fee | Amount |
|---|---|
| Licence application | €10,000 per licence |
| Technical conformity assessment | From €38,000 |
| Registry inscription | €2,500 |
| Inspection and technical checks | From €5,000 |
| Annual regulatory fee | Up to 0.75 per thousand of stakes |
Spain Gambling Tax: 20% of Net Revenue
Online operators pay the gambling activities tax (impuesto sobre actividades de juego) at 20% of net revenue, meaning stakes minus prizes paid, on betting, casino and other games. Several guides claim Spain cut the rate from 25%; the 20% rate has in fact been in the law since 2011.
- Ceuta and Melilla: operators genuinely based in Spain’s two North African cities pay half, 10%. That’s why several big brands, including bwin, William Hill and Tombola, hold their Spanish licences through Ceuta companies.
- Regional surcharge: regions may raise the rate by up to a fifth for operators based there, applied to their own residents’ play.
- Regulatory fee: a separate annual fee of up to 0.75 per thousand of stakes funds the regulator, a quarter of it earmarked for fighting fraud and for safer-gambling research.
Deposit Limits and Safer-Gambling Rules
Spain is one of the few markets where deposit limits are switched on by default. Today they apply per operator; from March 2027 a second, cross-operator limit run by the DGOJ is added on top:
| Period | Per operator (current) | Across all operators (from 25 March 2027) |
|---|---|---|
| Day | €600 | €700 |
| Week | €1,500 | €1,750 |
| Month / four weeks | €3,000 | €3,300 |
You can lower your limits at any time. Raising them requires passing the DGOJ’s safer-gambling test with no risky behaviour in the past three months; increases take effect after three days and can’t be repeated within three months. Gambling on credit is banned. The new joint limits, set by Royal Decree 520/2026, target the roughly 31% of players who use more than one operator.
Royal Decree 176/2023 on safer gambling environments added a layer of rules that now apply at every licensed site:
- Young players (25 and under): no VIP treatment, no promotions unrelated to gambling such as match tickets or trips, and specific risk warnings.
- “Intensive” players: anyone losing more than €600 a week for three weeks in a row (€200 for young players) gets warnings and monthly activity summaries and can’t deposit by credit card.
- Risk detection: operators must spot risky play and contact the player within 24 hours, stop all promotions to them and limit their payment methods. The DGOJ has built its own detection algorithm, which it plans to make compulsory.
- Casino games: you set a time and loss limit before each session, see hourly reminders of time and money spent, and “near miss” messages are banned.
The need is real. Spain’s 2024 EDADES drug and addiction survey found possible problem gambling in 1.4% of adults aged 15 to 64, and in 18.4% of people who had gambled online in the past year, against 4.3% of in-person gamblers.
How to Register With the RGIAJ Self-Exclusion Register
-
Step 1
Apply online through the DGOJ's electronic office with a digital certificate. Online registration takes effect immediately.
-
Step 2
No certificate? Fill in the RGIAJ paper form and hand it in at any public registry, post office, police station, Spanish consulate or gambling venue reception.
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Step 3
You can also use the DGOJ's mobile registration options, which work with Cl@ve or an electronic DNI.
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Step 4
Registration is indefinite and blocks you from every state-licensed online gambling site, and is shared with the regional registers.
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Step 5
You can ask to cancel it only after six months, through the DGOJ itself.
New registrations have climbed from 1,271 in 2012 to 24,591 in 2024, and almost one in five 2024 registrations came from people re-joining.
Spanish Gambling Advertising Rules After the Supreme Court
Royal Decree 958/2020 brought in some of Europe’s toughest gambling advertising rules in 2020. In April 2024 Spain’s Supreme Court annulled several of them, ruling that restrictions on business of that kind need a basis in law, not just a decree. Here’s where things stand:
| Rule | Status |
|---|---|
| TV and radio gambling ads only between 1:00 and 5:00 | In force |
| No gambling sponsorship on team shirts or kits | In force |
| No promotions to self-excluded or at-risk players | In force |
| No postal advertising; email only with consent | In force |
| Ban on welcome bonuses for new customers | Annulled (April 2024) |
| Ban on celebrities in gambling ads | Annulled (April 2024) |
| Restrictions on social media and online advertising | Partly annulled (April 2024) |
The government’s attempt to restore the welcome-bonus and celebrity bans through an amendment to another law was removed in the Senate in December 2025. In May 2026 the DGOJ opened a consultation on reforming the Gambling Act itself, covering influencers, customer-acquisition offers and search advertising; no draft has been published yet. Meanwhile a DGOJ resolution published in October 2026 replaces the familiar “play responsibly” line with tobacco-style warnings, such as “the probability of being a player who loses money is 75%”, from around December 2026.
How to Complain About a Spanish Online Casino
Unlike many regulators, the DGOJ handles individual player complaints (reclamaciones) against licensed operators:
- Complain to the operator’s customer service first, and keep a copy of your complaint and its reply.
- If you’re unhappy with the answer, or get none within a month, file a complaint with the DGOJ through its electronic office, or on paper addressed to Calle Atocha 3, Madrid, attaching proof of your complaint to the operator.
- The DGOJ commits to handling it within 55 days of learning of the operator’s reply.
Complaints about adverts can also go to Autocontrol’s advertising jury, which is free for individuals. The DGOJ doesn’t publish complaint statistics, and it can’t help with unlicensed sites.
How to Check DGOJ Licensed Operators
Checking a Spanish licence takes a minute:
- Search the DGOJ’s list of licensed operators. It shows every operator with the .es domains it’s licensed for.
- Check the address bar. Licensed Spanish sites must use a .es domain; a .com version of the same brand isn’t licensed in Spain.
- Look for the DGOJ’s “Juego Autorizado” logo, alongside the +18, self-exclusion and safer-gambling logos.
- Remember that foreign licences don’t count. The DGOJ states that licences from other countries, including Malta, aren’t valid in Spain.
DGOJ Enforcement: Big Fines, Open Questions
The DGOJ publishes its final sanctions, naming the operators. Since July 2021 it has published 221 sanctions worth more than €506 million. Most of that money comes from a standard pattern: unlicensed offshore operators fined €5 million each, banned for two years and blocked. Recent batches:
| Published | Total | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| May 2025 | €77.4 million | 14 offshore operators fined €5–10 million; 11 licensed operators fined €2.4 million in total |
| November 2025 | €33.5 million | 6 offshore operators at €5 million; licensed brands incl. bwin's operator €512,000, 888 €250,000, Betfair €100,000 |
| April 2026 | €10.3 million | 2 offshore operators at €5 million; first fine on an affiliate, the Zona Gemelos streaming channel |
The open question is collection: we found no evidence that the €5 million fines on offshore companies are ever paid. Blocking is the more tangible tool, with 2,383 illegal brands and 19,137 URLs blocked between 2013 and 2024. In May 2026 the DGOJ ordered the prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi blocked and opened sanction proceedings against them.
How big is the illegal market? The only estimate comes from a 2025 study by EY for Jdigital, the licensed operators’ association: 23.4% of players surveyed had used unlicensed sites, and the study put the black market at about €231 million in 2024, roughly 16% of the legal market. Treat it as an industry figure. The DGOJ’s own data point to a related problem: over 7,600 people on the self-exclusion register may have played using someone else’s identity.
Spain names the licensed operators it fines, publishes its market data every quarter and turns deposit limits on by default. Few regulators are this open.
Spanish Online Casino Sites and Casinos
Online casino is the biggest part of Spain’s legal market. In 2025 casino games, mostly slots, brought in about €891 million, around 52% of the market’s roughly €1.7 billion in gross gaming revenue, ahead of sports betting at about €698 million. Spanish online casino sites licensed by the DGOJ include:
- Spanish brands: Codere, Sportium, Luckia, Casino Barcelona, Casino Gran Madrid, Casino Gran Vía, Kirolbet, Retabet, Marca Apuestas and Marca Casino.
- International brands: bet365, bwin, PokerStars, 888, William Hill, Betfair, LeoVegas, Mr Green, Casumo, Betsson, Betway, Winamax and Paf.
Every one of them must offer the default deposit limits, RGIAJ checks and risk detection described above, under a .es address. A Spanish casino online that isn’t on the DGOJ list, however professional it looks, is operating illegally in Spain. As we review casinos holding a DGOJ licence, they appear automatically in the list at the bottom of this page, ranked by FAQsino Trust Score.
Land-based casinos, such as Casino Gran Madrid and Casino Barcelona, are licensed by the regions, not the DGOJ. Several of the best-known have their own DGOJ-licensed online sites.
Spain vs France, Germany and the UK
How Spain’s online gambling regulation compares with other big European markets:
| Spain (DGOJ) | France (ANJ) | Germany (GGL) | UK (UKGC) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Online casino legal? | Yes | No | Slots yes; table games only where a state allows | Yes |
| Online tax | 20% of net revenue | 59.3% of GGR on sports betting | 5.3% of stakes | 40% of profits |
| Deposit limits | €600/day per operator by default | Player sets weekly limits | €1,000/month across operators | No national cap |
| National self-exclusion | RGIAJ | National gambling ban | OASIS | GAMSTOP |
| Regulator handles complaints? | Yes | Free mediator | No | No (ADR providers) |
Our Verdict on the DGOJ
The DGOJ runs one of Europe’s more complete regulatory regimes. Default deposit limits, a national self-exclusion register, compulsory risk detection, special rules for young players and a regulator that handles complaints itself add up to strong protection, and its practice of naming fined operators and publishing quarterly market data is genuinely transparent.
Its limits are political and legal. The Supreme Court struck down key advertising rules in 2024 and the government hasn’t managed to restore them, the headline fines on offshore operators may never be collected, and no new general licences have been offered since 2018.
For players in Spain, the rule is simple: play only on .es sites from the DGOJ’s list, and use the RGIAJ if you need a break.
