Gambling in Equatorial Guinea: Laws and Online Casinos

Published by Casino News Daily editorial teamReviewed byFilip RadulovicOur editorial approach

Equatorial Guinea regulates gambling under a short and little-publicised body of national law. The key instruments, as identified by the government itself in 2025, are Law 02/1995 of 3 January on the authorisation, operation and control of recreational games and games of chance, and Ministerial Order 04/2015 of 18 May on the same subject. There is no dedicated gambling regulator with a public website, no published register of licensed operators, and no statute that provides for online gambling licences. In August 2025 a private company announced that it had received an online gaming “master licence” from the Ministry of Tourism, and several trade outlets reported the launch of an online licensing framework. Within days, the government issued an official communiqué stating that the licence had no legal effect because the existing law does not contemplate that type of licence. This guide sets out what the sources show about the legal framework, land-based gambling, online gambling, the position of players, taxation, anti-money-laundering supervision and responsible gambling.

Key points

Gambling is governed by Law 02/1995 of 3 January on recreational games and games of chance, and by Ministerial Order 04/2015 of 18 May; neither text is published on an accessible official legislation portal.
No law in force provides for online gambling licences. On 8 August 2025 the government declared that a reported online gaming master licence was entirely without legal effect and that it “no reconoce su validez” (does not recognise its validity).
There is no publicly identifiable gambling regulator, licensing register, website-blocking list or national self-exclusion scheme.
A 2024 mutual evaluation by the regional anti-money-laundering body GABAC found that casinos are supervised administratively by ministries, but that no authority supervises them for anti-money-laundering purposes.
We found no provision or reported case that makes it an offence for an individual to play with a foreign online operator, and no published gaming tax rates.

Last reviewed: 13 October 2026.

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Historical development

Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony on the Gulf of Guinea, became independent on 12 October 1968. It consists of a mainland region (Río Muni) and islands including Bioko, where Malabo, the long-standing capital, is located. In early January 2026 President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo issued a decree naming Ciudad de la Paz, on the mainland, as the national capital in place of Malabo, citing the need to deconcentrate state functions (Australian Associated Press, January 2026). Spanish is the main official language, alongside French and Portuguese, and the country uses the Central African CFA franc as a member of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC). Obiang has been president since 1979 (general country overview).

Because the legal system grew out of the Spanish colonial administration, gambling terminology follows Spanish usage. The phrase juegos de recreo y azar (“recreational games and games of chance”) is the category used in Spanish administrative law for casinos, gaming machines, bingo, betting and similar activities in which prizes depend wholly or mainly on chance. A game of chance in this sense is one whose outcome depends predominantly on luck rather than skill, and in which money or something of value is staked.

Public information about the country’s gambling sector is very limited. The most specific trade report we found on land-based gaming concerns the opening of a casino in Malabo in June 2013 by a Dubai-based operator. According to Intergame, the venue had six tables (three roulette and three card games) and 44 slot and poker machines, together with a bar and restaurant. The report did not mention which authority licensed the casino. We found no official list of casinos or betting outlets, and no official statistics on the size of the market.

Equatorial Guinea should not be confused with the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, which has its own national lottery and separate legislation. That country is covered in our Guinea guide.

Legal framework

Checking gambling legislation and licensing

The clearest official statement of the legal framework is the government’s official communiqué of 8 August 2025, issued under the heading of the Presidency of the Government in Malabo and reproduced on the website of the governing Partido Democrático de Guinea Ecuatorial (PDGE). In it the government identified the rules in force as:

Law 02/1995 of 3 January, which regulates “las modalidades de autorización, explotación y control de juegos de recreo y azar”, that is, the forms of authorisation, operation and control of recreational games and games of chance;
Ministerial Order 04/2015 of 18 May “sobre juegos de recreo y de azar”, a ministerial regulation on recreational games and games of chance; and
Law 01/2014 of 28 July on Administrative Procedure, which the communiqué said must be followed for any licence to be legally recognised.

The full texts of Law 02/1995 and Ministerial Order 04/2015 are not available on any official online legislation portal that we could locate, and we were unable to review them directly. The description of their content in this guide is therefore limited to what the government stated in its communiqué. In particular, we could not confirm from primary sources which ministry issues land-based gambling authorisations, what licence categories exist, what fees apply, or whether the 1995 law contains rules on minimum age, advertising or penalties.

Some trade reports published in August 2025 said that the online licensing announcement relied on Law 2/1995 “as reformed by” Law 10/2017, which they described as containing tax and regulatory reforms (AGB; NEXT.io). The government’s communiqué did not mention Law 10/2017. A legal bulletin by the law firm Miranda & Associados describes a Law No. 10/2017 of 20 November 2017 as setting the fees for state services and for most permits, licences and authorisations issued by ministries; it does not mention gambling. We found no official text, and readers should treat the reported link between Law 10/2017 and gambling as unverified.

Anti-money-laundering law

As a CEMAC member, Equatorial Guinea applies regional anti-money-laundering rules adopted as CEMAC regulations. The 2024 mutual evaluation of the country by the Action Group against Money Laundering in Central Africa (GABAC) assessed it against CEMAC Regulation No. 01/CEMAC/UMAC/CM of 11 April 2016 on the prevention and repression of money laundering, terrorist financing and proliferation financing (GABAC, Mutual Evaluation Report, November 2024). According to a legal commentary by Droit Medias Finance, Regulation No. 02/24/CEMAC/UMAC/CM of 20 December 2024 repeals and replaces the 2016 regulation; the board of the regional central bank, BEAC, had given its required opinion on the draft proposed by GABAC on 19 December 2024 (BEAC press release). Casinos and other gaming establishments fall within the category of designated non-financial businesses and professions (DNFBPs), meaning non-bank businesses that must carry out customer due diligence and report suspicious transactions.

Regulator and licensing model

Equatorial Guinea does not have an independent gambling regulator of the kind found in licensing jurisdictions, and no public authority publishes a register of licensed gambling operators. The available evidence points to a model in which land-based gambling is authorised and overseen administratively by government ministries under the 1995 law and the 2015 order, rather than by a specialist agency.

GABAC’s mutual evaluation, adopted by its Technical Committee on 22 November 2024 and published by the Financial Action Task Force in March 2025, supports this picture. It describes casinos as being “under the control of Ministries” and notes that the administrative supervisors of relatively large DNFBPs such as casinos carry out some licensing and good-repute checks. It also states that “there is no authority responsible for AML/CFT supervision of DNFBPs”, that ministries do not extend their controls to anti-money-laundering matters, and that figures on the number of casinos and other games of chance are not available. The national risk assessment summarised in the report classifies the DNFBP sector as highly vulnerable to money laundering and notes that “several DNFBPs operate without authorization and are not subject to supervision”.

The report does not identify by name the ministry that oversees casinos. In August 2025 the online licensing announcement was made by the Minister of Tourism and Tourism Infrastructure, but the government’s subsequent communiqué rejected that licence, so the announcement cannot be taken as evidence that the tourism ministry is the competent licensing authority for gambling generally.

The model in summary

Land-based gambling: permitted subject to government authorisation under Law 02/1995 and Ministerial Order 04/2015; licensing details are not published.
Lotteries and betting: we found no official source describing a national lottery or a licensed sports-betting operator, and could not confirm that either exists.
Online gambling: no licensing regime is provided for in the law in force, according to the government.

Online gambling

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The 2025 master licence announcement

In the first half of August 2025, several international trade outlets reported that Equatorial Guinea had launched its first legal framework for online gambling. According to iGaming Expert and iGamingFuture, the Ministry for Tourism and Tourism Infrastructure had granted an online gaming, online betting and online casino master licence to a private licence-management company. Under a master licence model, a single licence holder is authorised to issue sub-licences to other operators, typically through its own application platform. The reports said that international operators would have to apply through that company’s platform and apply anti-money-laundering procedures, including identifying users and reporting suspicious transactions; individual reports added periodic audits, age verification (SiGMA), reserves to protect player funds and responsible gambling information on operators’ websites (iGamingFuture; Yogonet). The minister, Antonio-Pedro Oliveira Burupu, was quoted as calling the launch “one of the most significant measures taken by gaming regulators in the country’s history” (NEXT.io; iGaming Expert; Spanish version in SiGMA). The reports presented the scheme as an offshore alternative to licences issued in Curaçao and Anjouan. Apart from references to Law 2/1995 and Law 10/2017, none of them cited a decree number, licence fees or tax rates, or linked to an official gazette.

The government’s rejection

The government’s position was different. Its communiqué, dated 8 August 2025 and therefore issued before several of the trade reports were published, responded to press reports of a master licence for online games, remote betting and online casino granted to the company as an “online betting house”. It stated that the legal framework in force, Law 02/1995 and Ministerial Order 04/2015, does not provide for this type of licence, that any legally recognised licence must follow the procedure in Law 01/2014, and that the licence was entirely without legal effect: in the communiqué’s words, “el Gobierno no reconoce su validez” (the government does not recognise its validity). It added that the government had begun actions to establish the facts. LCB reported the communiqué on 12 August 2025.

We found no later official statement reporting the outcome of those inquiries, no decree creating an online licensing regime, and no official register of online licences. As of the date of review, therefore, the only official position is that Equatorial Guinean law does not provide for online gambling licences and that the 2025 master licence is not recognised. Online gambling sites that claim to hold an “Equatorial Guinea licence” should be regarded with caution.

Offshore operators and enforcement

Because no online licence can lawfully be issued under the current framework, no online casino or betting site is licensed in Equatorial Guinea. Residents nonetheless have internet access, and foreign-licensed online casinos and sportsbooks can be reached from the country. We found no published list of blocked gambling websites, no instruction to internet service providers or mobile network operators to block gambling sites, no restrictions on payments to gambling operators, and no specific rules on gambling advertising. We also found no reported enforcement action against offshore operators. The absence of published enforcement should not be read as legal authorisation.

Position of players

The sources we reviewed do not state whether an individual commits an offence by gambling with an unlicensed operator, whether online or land-based. The government’s communiqué addressed the validity of a licence, not the conduct of players. We found no reported prosecution or fine of a player for online gambling. Because the texts of Law 02/1995 and Ministerial Order 04/2015 could not be reviewed, it is not possible to rule out provisions concerning participants, and this point should be treated as unsettled.

Players who use foreign sites have no local recourse. There is no Equatorial Guinean regulator to receive complaints about an offshore operator, no local dispute-resolution body for gambling, and no national scheme that would oblige a foreign site to honour a self-exclusion. Any protection depends entirely on the rules of the jurisdiction in which the operator is licensed, if it is licensed at all.

Taxation

We found no published gambling tax rates for Equatorial Guinea. No official source we could access sets out a tax on casino gross gaming revenue (GGR, meaning stakes received minus winnings paid out), a betting duty, a levy on gaming machines or a lottery tax. The 2025 trade reports said that the online framework would streamline taxation and generate revenue for public services, but they gave no rates, and the government has since declared the related licence invalid.

The tax treatment of individual players’ winnings is likewise not addressed in any source we reviewed. Readers with tax questions should consult the Ministry of Finance or a locally qualified adviser rather than relying on general statements in trade press.

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

Equatorial Guinea has no national self-exclusion register, no published minimum gambling age that we could verify, and no dedicated gambling helpline or problem-gambling support organisation that we could identify. Consumer protection in the land-based sector therefore depends on whatever conditions are attached to individual authorisations under the 1995 law and the 2015 order, which are not public.

GABAC’s 2024 findings are also relevant to consumer protection. The evaluation rated the country “non-compliant” with the FATF recommendation on the regulation and supervision of DNFBPs (Recommendation 28) and “partially compliant” with the recommendations on DNFBPs’ customer due diligence and other preventive measures (Recommendations 22 and 23). It recommended that the authorities designate a body to supervise DNFBPs, including casinos, for anti-money-laundering purposes. In practical terms, the report indicates that checks on customers and on the source of funds in the gambling sector are not yet supervised systematically.

Players who want to keep their gambling under control can set their own limits on deposits, time and losses, and use the self-exclusion and blocking tools offered by operators and by device-level software. General guidance is available in our responsible gambling guide.

Recent and upcoming developments

GABAC mutual evaluation (2024–2025). The on-site visit took place from 15 to 26 April 2024, the report was adopted on 22 November 2024 and the FATF published it on 12 March 2025 (FATF country page). Its recommendations include designating an anti-money-laundering supervisor for DNFBPs such as casinos. We found no confirmation that such a supervisor had been designated by October 2026.
New CEMAC anti-money-laundering regulation (December 2024). CEMAC Regulation No. 02/24 of 20 December 2024 replaced the 2016 regulation. According to Droit Medias Finance, the regulation appears to leave compliance deadlines for covered businesses to the competent supervisory authorities.
Online master licence and government rejection (August 2025). An online gaming master licence reported in trade press as granted by the Ministry of Tourism was declared legally void by the government on 8 August 2025. The government said it was investigating; no outcome had been published by the date of review.
No reform legislation identified. We found no bill or decree, published or announced between 2024 and October 2026, to create an online gambling licensing regime, to establish a gambling regulator or to change gambling taxation.

Because official publication is limited, developments may occur without appearing in accessible online sources. Readers who need certainty about the current position should seek confirmation from the government or from a law firm practising in Malabo.

Casino listings for players in Equatorial Guinea

The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. They do not show that any operator is licensed in Equatorial Guinea: the government has stated that the law in force does not provide for online gambling licences, and no online operator holds a recognised local licence. The listings must not be read as an indication that offering or playing online casino games is lawful in Equatorial Guinea. See the government communiqué of 8 August 2025 for the official position.

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Key points

Top Rated Online Casinos for Equatorial Guinea

Historical development

Legal framework

Anti-money-laundering law

Regulator and licensing model

The model in summary

Online gambling

The 2025 master licence announcement

The government’s rejection

Offshore operators and enforcement

Position of players

Taxation

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

Recent and upcoming developments

Casino listings for players in Equatorial Guinea

Related country guides

Sources and further reading

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