Curaçao Gaming License 2026 — What Changed Under the LOK and Who Still Holds One

• Curaçao gaming licences are now issued directly by the Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA) under the National Ordinance on Games of Chance (LOK), in force since 24 December 2024.
• A B2C licence costs a one-off €4,592 application fee plus €47,450 a year — €24,490 to the National Treasury and €22,960 to the CGA. A B2B licence costs €24,490 a year.
• The CGA must decide within 8 weeks of a complete file at each of the two application phases, extendable by up to 4 weeks.
• The local key-person requirement is postponed until 1 April 2027.
• From 24 December 2026 licensees may only use registered suppliers.
• The CGA's old licensing portal was retired after a breach disclosed in September 2026; an interim portal with the licence register and digital seal launched on 19 October 2026, and existing licences remain valid.

Planning an application? See our Curaçao gaming licence application support.

On 17 September 2026 the Curaçao Gaming Authority disclosed unauthorised access to its online gaming portal. Its update of 22 September said the access ran from December 2025 to September 2026 through an account registered under a false identity.

On 7 October 2026 the CGA said the old portal would not return to service and that the digital seal would be affected. An interim portal launched on 19 October 2026, with the licence register and digital seal returning through it. The CGA stated that closing the previous portal does not invalidate existing licences.

For players and partners, the practical lesson is simple: check a licence against the CGA register rather than trusting a seal image on its own.

On 24 June 2026 the CGA announced how suppliers will be brought under the LOK. Curaçao-established suppliers of critical services or goods need a CGA supplier licence plus registration. Suppliers established outside Curaçao need registration only.

Both are mandatory from 24 December 2026, the end of the two-year transitional period. From then, licence holders may only buy critical services or goods from registered suppliers (Art. 5.16(4) LOK). The CGA decides on supplier licence applications within 8 weeks, extendable by up to 8 weeks (Art. 5.14).

For nearly 30 years — from 1996 until the LOK took effect in December 2024 — the Curaçao iGaming licensing model operated through four private master license holders who issued sub-licenses to operators. This structure was never designed as a serious regulatory framework. It was a commercially convenient arrangement: operators could obtain a Curaçao sub-license quickly, cheaply, and with minimal compliance scrutiny. The four master license holders — including Antillephone N.V. and Gaming Services Provider N.V. — effectively ran a private licensing market. The Curaçao Gaming Control Board had minimal direct oversight over actual casino operations. Costs were low, compliance requirements were minimal, and criticism from European and North American regulators mounted steadily through the 2010s.

The trigger for reform was financial, not regulatory. The Dutch government required a complete overhaul of Curaçao's gaming licensing framework as a condition of pandemic financial aid provided to the island — aid that Curaçao, as an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, needed to navigate the COVID-19 economic crisis. The reform was not optional. The Curaçao government established the Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA) as an independent supervisory and licensing body, developed the LOK framework, and committed to a transition timeline. The ordinance is dated 20 December 2024 and entered into force on 24 December 2024.

The transition timeline created significant market confusion. Existing operators were given deadlines to apply for direct CGA licenses — with orange transitional seals indicating in-process applications. The green seal of a direct CGA licence became the only valid operating credential. Under the LOK, a B2C licence costs €47,450 a year — a €24,490 licence fee to the Treasury and a €22,960 supervisory fee to the CGA — and a B2B licence €24,490 a year. The old system's single fee of ANG 120,000 no longer applies. The CGA has been deliberately measured in its enforcement approach, prioritizing orderly transition management over mass shutdowns — but its enforcement powers are real and its posture has hardened in 2026.

The CGA publishes a licence register. It carries its own warning that the overview does not guarantee a licence's current validity, and many B2C entries in the 4 November 2026 edition show an expired date with the status 'Assessment in progress'. Two of the best-known names:

Always check the register directly — and check the status column, not just the licence number.

The LOK is not a minor update — it is a structural overhaul. Here is what materially changed:

The industry consensus on the LOK-era Curaçao license is nuanced. Legal analysts and licensing specialists broadly agree that the LOK brings Curaçao significantly closer to modern regulatory standards — the structural changes are real, the enforcement powers are genuine, and the compliance requirements are materially higher than the old sublicense model. For serious operators who were already running AML/CFT compliance, the transition was relatively manageable. For operators who relied on Curaçao's historical leniency, the LOK created an existential compliance challenge.

Banking and payment processor perception is improving — but slowly. European and North American acquiring banks that previously refused to process transactions for Curaçao-licensed operators have not universally reversed that position. The reputational legacy of the old sublicense system is long. Visa and Mastercard still treat Curaçao gaming merchants as high-risk. The improvement is at the margin — some crypto-friendly payment processors and EMIs are more willing to onboard LOK-compliant operators than they were under the old system. But operators expecting the LOK to unlock mainstream European banking relationships are likely to be disappointed in the short term.

The competitive landscape of Curaçao-licensed crypto casinos has consolidated. The barriers to entry under the LOK — physical presence, mandatory compliance officer, AML framework, CGA direct application fees — are materially higher than the $5,000–$15,000 cost of obtaining a sublicense under the old system. This is commercially positive for established operators who have already invested in compliance infrastructure. For the long tail of small operators who relied on cheap sublicenses, the LOK has effectively closed the market.