Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA) online gaming licence: what it covers and what it means for players

For players in Great BritainA Curaçao licence does not allow an operator to offer gambling to people in Great Britain. Under the Gambling Act 2005 (s.33 read with s.36(3) and (3A)), remote gambling used in Great Britain needs a Gambling Commission operating licence, and s.330 makes advertising unlicensed gambling an offence. A Curaçao licence authorises gaming organised in or from Curaçao under Curaçao law only. How to check a site.

Licence types

Gaming licence (kansspelvergunning) for organising games of chance, including remote/online games
Provisional gaming licence (up to 6 months, extendable by 6) while the second-stage review runs
Supplier licence (leveranciersvergunning) for critical services or goods

What players get

Players can complain free of charge to the licensee within six months of an incident; the licensee must acknowledge within a week and give a reasoned answer within four weeks (extendable once by four weeks) (LOK art. 5.3).
Licensees must offer players access to alternative dispute resolution at the licensee's own cost (LOK art. 5.3(6)-(7)).
A player who asks in writing to be excluded must be excluded for at least 12 months, and the request cannot be withdrawn during that time (LOK art. 5.4(2)).
Licensees may not give credit to players or let minors or people reasonably suspected to be vulnerable play (LOK art. 1.4).
The law provides for a guarantee fund that licensees must join to insure payout of player balances (LOK art. 5.7); the CGA can also attach conditions on segregating or insuring player funds (art. 5.8).
Player contracts are governed by Curaçao law and disputes go to the Curaçao courts (LOK art. 5.5).

How to check a licence

The CGA publishes a licence register at https://www.cga.cw/en/133i348441001 (online gaming licences, certificates and an enforcement register). The LOK (art. 3.1) requires the register to be free, public and to show licence type, holder, Chamber of Commerce number, grant date and status. The CGA itself warns that the overview does not guarantee current validity, so check the date and status.

Recent changes

2024-12-20: National Ordinance on Games of Chance (Landsverordening op de kansspelen, LOK) signed and published (Publicatieblad 2024 no. 157).
2024-12-24: LOK entered into force; the Gaming Control Board became the Curaçao Gaming Authority and direct licensing replaced the old master/sub-licence system. Applications filed before this date are handled under the previous law (LBH).
2026-07-17: CGA published a Compliance and Enforcement Policy for online gaming.
2026-09-17: CGA announced it had found and contained unauthorised access to its online gaming licensing portal; on 22 September it said access had run from December 2025 to September 2026 via an account registered under a false identity.
2026-10-02: CGA said the portal was offline, submission deadlines were postponed, and existing licences remained valid.

Context

Under the pre-2024 system, licensing ran through a small number of master licence holders who issued sub-licences, so the regulator itself had limited direct oversight of operators (secondary: trade press summary). The 2024 law replaced this with direct licensing by the CGA.

In September 2026 the CGA confirmed a data breach of its licensing portal and said it would report the matter to the authorities; it rejected drawing conclusions about its licensing decisions from individual leaked documents.

Not yet verified

Whether the LOK guarantee fund (art. 5.7) has actually been set up and is operating.
Whether ministerial regulations on ADR and self-exclusion detail (arts 5.3(8), 5.4(3)) have been issued.
The CGA 'About us' page gives the LOK date as 24 December 2025, which conflicts with its own online-gaming page and the published ordinance (2024); treated as a typo.
Master-licence expiry dates and the 30 April 2024 sub-licence application deadline come from trade press only, so they were left out.

We could not confirm these from a primary source, so we have not stated them as fact.