Legal casino gambling age in Algeria
Algeria is one of the most restrictive gambling jurisdictions in North Africa. Its legal order starts from a general prohibition of gaming and betting in the Civil Code, backed by criminal offences in the Penal Code of 1966 for anyone who runs an unauthorised gaming house or lottery. The exceptions are narrow and held by the state: sports pools and lotteries run by the Pari Sportif Algérien (PSA), a public body created in 1966, and pari-mutuel betting on horse racing organised by the Société des courses hippiques et du pari mutuel. There is no gambling regulator, no licensing route for private operators and no casino sector. Since 2018 the law on electronic commerce has expressly prohibited any transaction by electronic means that concerns gambling, betting or lotteries. Offshore betting and casino sites are nonetheless used in Algeria, typically through local intermediaries, and the authorities have treated such networks as matters for the police. This guide sets out what we could verify from official texts and reputable secondary sources, and states plainly where we could not.
Key points
- Article 612 of the Civil Code lays down a general prohibition of gaming and betting, with exceptions for horse-race betting and sports betting, according to the CMS guide to gambling laws in Algeria (2023).
- Articles 165 to 168 of the Penal Code (Ordinance No. 66-156 of 8 June 1966) punish the keeping of an unauthorised gaming house, the organisation of unauthorised lotteries and the sale of their tickets.
- Law No. 18-05 of 10 May 2018 on electronic commerce prohibits any electronic transaction concerning gambling, betting and lotteries (article 3); breaches carry a fine of DZD 200,000 to 1,000,000 and possible closure of the website (article 37).
- Lawful gambling is limited to state bodies: the Pari Sportif Algérien, created by Ordinance No. 66-314 of 14 October 1966, and the state horse-racing and pari-mutuel company.
- There is no gambling regulator, no licensing framework, no national self-exclusion scheme and no dedicated gambling helpline that we could identify.
Last reviewed: 7 October 2026.
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Historical development
Algeria’s gambling law took shape in the first years after independence in 1962. In June 1966 the new state adopted its Penal Code by Ordinance No. 66-156 of 8 June 1966, published in the Journal officiel No. 49 of 11 June 1966. A separate section of the Code, headed “Infractions à la réglementation des maisons de jeux, des loteries et des maisons de prêts sur gages” (offences against the rules on gaming houses, lotteries and pawnshops), made it a crime to run gambling or lotteries without authorisation. A few months later the state created its own lawful outlet for betting: an executive decree of 1998 recites “l’ordonnance n° 66-314 du 14 octobre 1966 portant création du pari sportif algérien”, amended by decrees No. 83-320 of 7 May 1983 and No. 87-80 of 7 April 1987 (Executive Decree No. 98-316, via FAOLEX). The PSA has since been supervised by the ministry responsible for youth and sport; the official gazette of 13 April 1988, for example, carries an order of the Minister of Youth and Sport dated 28 February 1988 appointing the members of its board of directors (Journal officiel No. 15 of 1988).
Casinos had existed in Algeria during the colonial period, and press and secondary accounts commonly state that the remaining establishments were closed in the 1970s. We could not find an official text or a reliable dated source for those closures, so this guide does not give a date or a legal basis for them. What can be said with confidence is that no casino currently operates lawfully in Algeria and that, as described below, there is no regulatory framework under which one could be licensed.
Horse racing survived as a state activity. A 2018 report by the Moroccan news site Le360 described a sector in long decline: nine active racecourses, a state company, the Société des courses hippiques et du pari mutuel (SCHPM), whose revenue barely covered its costs, and annual pari-mutuel turnover of about DZD 1 billion, a figure it said had not moved in twenty years. The same report linked the decline to the 1990s civil conflict and to growing religious disapproval of betting, which Islam prohibits.
From the late 2000s the question shifted to telecommunications and the internet. In April 2010 the daily Echorouk reported on premium-rate SMS “prize draws” run by shell companies, which it described as illegal gambling because betting was reserved to the public sector and limited to sports betting. In May 2018 the legislature closed the electronic channel explicitly with the law on electronic commerce, discussed below.
Legal framework
Civil Code: a general prohibition
The starting point in private law is article 612 of the Civil Code. According to the CMS Expert Guide to gambling laws in Algeria (Mourad Nabil Abdessemed, October 2023), the Civil Code “establishes a general prohibition on gambling and betting”, from which horse-race betting and sports betting are exempted, and “in no case may betting be taken on races taking place abroad”. In principle, this means that gaming and betting debts outside the exempted categories cannot be enforced in the civil courts. CMS also states that lotteries and raffles “are subject to very strict regulations which only authorize their organization under certain conditions”.
Penal Code: articles 165 to 169
The criminal provisions are in Section VI of the Penal Code’s provisions on offences, headed “Infractions à la réglementation des maisons de jeux, des loteries et des maisons de prêts sur gages”. As published in the 1966 Official Journal:
- Article 165 punishes those who, without authorisation, keep a gaming house (maison de jeux de hasard) and admit the public to it, as well as its bankers, administrators and agents. The penalties as originally enacted were imprisonment of three months to one year and a fine of DZD 500 to 20,000, and the court could also impose deprivation of certain civic rights for one to five years and a prohibition of residence. Confiscation of the stakes, the gaming equipment and the furnishings is mandatory.
- Article 166 applies the same penalties to the organisers and agents of unauthorised lotteries. Where immovable property has been put up as a lottery prize, confiscation is replaced by a fine of up to the property’s estimated value.
- Article 167 defines lotteries broadly as all operations offered to the public, under whatever name, that create the hope of a gain to be obtained by chance.
- Article 168 punishes the sale or distribution of tickets for unauthorised lotteries with imprisonment of one to three months and a fine of DZD 500 to 5,000, and the proceeds of ticket sales are confiscated.
- Article 169 concerns unlicensed pawnshops and is not a gambling offence.
The Penal Code has been amended many times since 1966; WIPO Lex lists a consolidated version as amended in 2011. General revisions of the Code’s fines since 1966 mean that the amounts above, which are taken from the original text, may no longer be current. We were not able to read the consolidated text of these articles and readers should check the current version before relying on the figures. The structure of the offences, however, is clear: the Code targets those who keep, bank, organise or sell gambling, and it does not contain a separate offence of simply placing a bet.
Law No. 18-05 on electronic commerce
The most important modern text for online gambling is Law No. 18-05 of 24 Shaabane 1439 (10 May 2018) on electronic commerce, published in the Journal officiel No. 28 of 2018. Article 3 provides that electronic commerce is carried on within the framework of the legislation in force, but that any transaction made by means of electronic communications is prohibited if it concerns, among other things, games of chance, betting and lotteries, alcoholic drinks, pharmaceutical products and any good or service prohibited by law.
The penalty is in article 37. Without prejudice to heavier penalties under other legislation, anyone who offers or sells goods or services by electronic communications in breach of article 3 is liable to a fine of DZD 200,000 to 1,000,000, and the court may order the closure of the website for one to six months. Article 36 empowers the judicial police and the inspectors of the commerce administration to investigate breaches. The law also provides for the suspension of domain names in certain cases, which in the text we read is tied to failures to register with the national commercial register rather than specifically to gambling.
Finance laws
Some secondary sources state that an Algerian Finance Law also bans online gambling and sets prison terms. We checked the Finance Law for 2020 (Law No. 19-14 of 11 December 2019, Official Journal No. 81 of 30 December 2019) and did not find a gambling provision in the portion of the text available to us; the online text was incomplete, so we cannot rule one out. We have therefore not attributed an online gambling ban or penalty to any Finance Law. The verified statutory prohibition of online gambling transactions is article 3 of Law No. 18-05, which a 2018 report by Le360 also identified as the law that “prohibited online betting”.
Regulator and licensing model
Algeria operates a state monopoly model, meaning that the only lawful gambling is provided by public bodies, combined with a general prohibition on everything else. There is no independent regulator. The CMS guide answers “no” to the questions whether there is a dedicated gambling regulator and whether online gambling is regulated as a distinct activity, and records no licensing framework for betting, casinos, card games, skill games or arcades.
The lawful channels are:
- Pari Sportif Algérien (PSA): the state sports-betting and lottery body created by Ordinance No. 66-314 of 1966 and supervised by the ministry responsible for youth and sport. Its activity, as described in the commercial-register nomenclature reproduced by Upgrowth, is organising betting competitions on national and international sporting events other than horse racing, with profits used for sports equipment, youth facilities and subsidies to sports associations. A 2022 overview by Algérie360 lists its products as scratch cards and two draw games, a 6/49 lotto and a 7/35 lotto; we could not check these product details against PSA’s own website, which was unreachable.
- Société des courses hippiques et du pari mutuel (SCHPM): the state company that organises horse races and pari-mutuel betting on them. According to Le360 (2018), 65% of stakes are returned to winners and 35% finances the racing industry, and the number of regular bettors had fallen to about 10,000. Algérie360 (2022) states that bets are accepted only at racecourses.
No licence is available to private operators, whether land-based or online, and no casino licence exists. The phrase “without authorisation” in articles 165 and 166 of the Penal Code assumes that the state could in principle authorise gaming houses or lotteries, but we found no current framework or authority that issues such authorisations to private parties.
Online gambling and enforcement
No online casino, online sportsbook or online poker operator is authorised in Algeria. Law No. 18-05 prohibits electronic transactions concerning gambling, betting and lotteries in general terms, without an exception for the state bodies, and we found no official source showing that the PSA or the SCHPM sells its products online. Offshore operators that accept Algerian customers therefore act outside the law, and so do the local agents who take deposits and pay out on their behalf.
Enforcement relies mainly on the police and on financial offences rather than on a regulator. In May 2025 Observ’Algérie reported that the judicial police of the Taskriout district (Darguina daïra, Béjaïa province) had arrested two men aged 24 and 30 after an anonymous call to the police hotline 1548. Officers seized DZD 750,000 and €8,825 in cash and a phone containing sports-betting and online-casino applications and material used to recruit participants. The reported charges were illegal online betting, breaches of exchange-control rules and money laundering; the report cited article 389 of the Penal Code and the anti-money-laundering legislation as setting the applicable penalties.
Other reporting points to the size of the grey market. An August 2025 article by APA News described an “uncontrolled explosion” of online betting run through tobacconists, internet cafés and individuals who earn commissions as local agents, operating “outside all fiscal or banking control”, and criticised what it called the inaction of the authorities. The article did not cite official figures, and we found none.
Blocking. We found no official list of blocked gambling websites, no published blocking procedure aimed at gambling and no rules on payment blocking specific to gambling. Algérie360 (2022) states that internet filtering in Algeria has made many websites inaccessible and that players use VPNs to reach offshore sites; we could not verify these statements against an official source. Payments abroad are also constrained by Algeria’s strict exchange-control regime administered by the central bank, as noted by CMS, which is one reason why informal local agents and cash play a large role.
Advertising. We did not find a specific statutory ban on gambling advertising. Promotion of unlawful gambling would, however, sit uneasily with the Penal Code offences against organisers and their agents and with the general prohibition in Law No. 18-05.
Position of players
The legal position of individual players needs to be stated carefully. The Penal Code offences in articles 165 to 168 are aimed at those who keep gaming houses, act as bankers, administrators or agents, organise lotteries or sell tickets. Article 37 of Law No. 18-05 punishes anyone who “offers or sells” prohibited goods or services by electronic means. Neither text, in the versions we read, contains a separate offence of placing a bet or playing an online casino game, and we found no report of a player being prosecuted solely for gambling online.
That does not make online gambling lawful or risk-free for players. Bets with unauthorised operators are not enforceable in civil law under the general prohibition in the Civil Code, so a player has no legal remedy against an operator that refuses to pay. Funding an offshore account may raise exchange-control issues, and people who collect stakes or pay out winnings for others, even informally, risk being treated as agents or organisers, as the Béjaïa case shows. Lawful betting is limited to the products of the PSA and the SCHPM.
Taxation
Because private gambling is unlawful, there is no gambling tax regime for operators in the sense found in licensing jurisdictions. The surplus of the state bodies is applied to public purposes: the PSA’s profits support sport and youth facilities, and the SCHPM’s retained share of stakes (35%, according to Le360) finances racing.
On players’ winnings, Algérie360 (2022) states that lottery and horse-racing winnings are taxed at 40% and that losses cannot be deducted. We could not confirm this rate against the current Code of Direct Taxes, and readers should check the position with the Directorate General of Taxes. Winnings from unlawful offshore gambling are not a recognised category, and we found no official guidance on them.
Consumer protection and responsible gambling
Algeria has no national self-exclusion register, no statutory deposit or loss limits and no dedicated public helpline for gambling problems that we could identify. Protection rests on prohibition itself, on the state’s control of the lawful products and on general consumer and criminal law. Law No. 18-05 contains general consumer-protection duties for online sellers, but they do not address gambling because gambling transactions are excluded from lawful electronic commerce altogether.
Concern about harm has been voiced mainly in the press. The 2025 APA News article described families affected by debts and theft linked to online betting, without official statistics. People affected by gambling can seek help through general health and addiction services. General guidance on warning signs and limit-setting is available in our responsible gambling guide.
Recent and upcoming developments
- Policing of online betting networks (2025). The Béjaïa case reported in May 2025 shows police treating local online betting agents under gambling, exchange-control and money-laundering law (Observ’Algérie).
- Public debate (2025). Press reporting in August 2025 criticised the growth of offshore betting through local agents and the lack of a regulatory response (APA News).
- No reform bill identified. As of 7 October 2026 we found no government bill, parliamentary proposal or regulator project to license or otherwise regulate online gambling in Algeria, and no announcement that the PSA will offer its products online. This contrasts with neighbouring Tunisia and Morocco, where online betting was the subject of legislative initiatives or court cases in 2025 and 2026.
- Points to watch. Any revision of Law No. 18-05, new finance-law measures on gambling, and consolidated publication of the current Penal Code penalties should be checked as they appear.
Casino listings for players in Algeria
The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. They do not show that any operator is licensed or authorised in Algeria: no such licence exists, and electronic transactions concerning gambling, betting and lotteries are prohibited by Law No. 18-05 of 2018. The listings must not be read as an indication that offering or playing online casino games in Algeria is lawful.
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Sources and further reading
- République algérienne démocratique et populaire, Journal officiel No. 49 (11 June 1966), Ordonnance n° 66-156 du 8 juin 1966 portant code pénal (1966).
- WIPO Lex, Code pénal (Algeria), consolidated version as amended by Law No. 11-14 of 2 August 2011 (accessed 7 October 2026).
- République algérienne démocratique et populaire, Journal officiel No. 28 (2018), Loi n° 18-05 du 10 mai 2018 relative au commerce électronique (2018).
- République algérienne démocratique et populaire, Journal officiel No. 81 (30 December 2019), Loi n° 19-14 du 11 décembre 2019 portant loi de finances pour 2020 (2019).
- Abdessemed, M. N. (CMS), Gambling laws in Algeria, CMS Expert Guide to gambling laws in Africa (2023).
- FAOLEX, Décret exécutif n° 98-316 du 3 octobre 1998 (1998, accessed 7 October 2026).
- République algérienne démocratique et populaire, Journal officiel No. 15 (13 April 1988), Arrêté du 28 février 1988 portant désignation des membres du conseil d’administration du pari sportif algérien (1988).
- Le360, Algérie. L’inexorable déclin du hippisme, appauvri et mal vu (2018).
- Nedjma, D. (Algérie360), Un aperçu du statut légal des jeux d’argent en ligne en Algérie (2022).
- Observ’Algérie, Paris en ligne et blanchiment : 8 825 euros saisis à Béjaïa (2025).
- APA News, Algérie : l’explosion incontrôlée des jeux en ligne met en lumière l’inaction des autorités (2025).
- Echorouk, Report on illegal premium-SMS prize draws (in Arabic) (2010).
- Upgrowth, Pari sportif algérien: activity code 615062 (accessed 7 October 2026).
