Legal casino gambling age in Congo Democratic Republic
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has no single, modern gambling statute. Sports betting shops, casinos, lotteries and online betting operate under a patchwork of ministerial orders, finance laws and a 1984 ordinance that created the state lottery company. For most of the past fifteen years authorisations were issued by the Ministry of Sports and Leisure, while the state-owned Société Nationale de Loterie (SONAL) held the lottery monopoly. Since 2022 the government has moved control of the sector to the Ministry of Finance. A bill setting the fundamental principles of gambling was adopted by the Council of Ministers in April 2025 and, as of September 2026, was still before Parliament. This guide sets out what the sources show about the framework, how it is being enforced, the position of players, taxation and the limited consumer protections in place in DR Congo.
Key points
- There is no gambling act in force. The sector is governed by ministerial and interministerial orders (notably of 2011 and 2019), finance laws and the ordinance establishing SONAL.
- A government bill on gambling (projet de loi relatif aux jeux d’argent et de hasard) was adopted by the Council of Ministers on 11 April 2025 and remained pending in Parliament in September 2026.
- Ordinance No. 25/293 of 15 December 2025 gives the Ministry of Finance responsibility for registering and regulating gambling operators, ending the role of the Ministry of Sports and Leisure, which has contested the change in practice.
- A transitional supervisory unit (CSJA), created on 29 January 2026, is connecting operators and mobile-money providers to a national monitoring platform pending a future regulatory authority (ARJA).
- Operators owe an annual operating authorisation tax and a percentage tax on players’ winnings, reported at 10%, including for online games.
- We found no national self-exclusion scheme, no gambling helpline and no published register of licensed operators.
Last reviewed: 8 October 2026.
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Historical development
The oldest institution in the sector is the Société Nationale de Loterie (SONAL), a state-owned company established by Ordinance No. 84-155 of 4 July 1984 to operate games of chance, lotteries and betting pools and to contribute to social and artistic causes. According to a January 2026 report by iGaming Business, SONAL originally held the legal monopoly on lotteries and sports betting. A monopoly in this sense means that only one designated body may lawfully offer a given type of game.
As private sports betting grew, a second channel developed: the Ministry of Sports and Leisure authorised operators of games other than lotteries, including betting, online betting, eSports and skill games. Arrêté ministériel No. 041/MJS/CAB/2100/2011 of 28 December 2011 set rules on the renewal, withdrawal and lapse of these authorisations. An interministerial order of 1 November 2019 (Nos. 001/CAB/MIN/SL/2019 and CAB/MIN/FINANCES/2019/133), issued jointly by the Sports and Finance ministries, fixed the duties, taxes and fees payable by operators. These texts are summarised in a 2022 analysis by the Congolese law firm YAV & Associates; we were unable to retrieve the original orders from an official legislation portal.
By the early 2020s, betting kiosks and shops showing televised football had spread across Kinshasa and other cities. On 20 May 2022 the 54th meeting of the Council of Ministers, chaired by President Félix Tshisekedi, heard a report by the then Finance Minister, Nicolas Kazadi, on the state of the sector. He described the legal framework as outdated and incomplete and warned that it exposed the financial system to money-laundering risks. The meeting proposed a supervisory commission, a check on revenue owed to the Treasury, a regulatory mechanism and a new legal framework (Actualite.cd, 21 May 2022).
Kazadi later gave a striking estimate of the gap between activity and revenue: a sector turning over more than US$1 billion a year contributed about CDF 1 billion (roughly US$1 million) in tax in 2022. In March 2023 he identified 139 illegal or irregular operators and said no reliable turnover statistics existed (Actualite.cd, 8 November 2024). These figures are ministerial estimates rather than audited statistics, and should be read as such.
Legal framework
Texts currently applied
In the absence of a gambling act, the instruments most often cited by the authorities and by practitioners are:
- Ordinance No. 84-155 of 4 July 1984, establishing SONAL;
- Arrêté ministériel No. 041/MJS/CAB/2100/2011 of 28 December 2011 of the Ministry of Sports, setting rules on the renewal, withdrawal and lapse of authorisations for non-lottery games (YAV & Associates);
- the interministerial order of 1 November 2019, fixing fees and taxes, including a licence fee of US$100,000, excluding administrative fees (YAV & Associates);
- Ordonnance-loi No. 18/003 of 13 March 2018, which sets the nomenclature of central government duties, taxes and fees; its Article 8 provides the sanctions relied on in recent compliance notices (Zoom Eco, 10 March 2026);
- Finance Law No. 23/056 of 10 December 2023 (for the 2024 financial year), which transferred the management of the two main gambling taxes to the Ministry of Finance (Actualite.cd, 3 September 2026; SiGMA refers to its Article 46); and
- Ordinance No. 25/293 of 15 December 2025 on the responsibilities of government ministries, which assigns the registration of operators and the regulation of gambling to the Ministry of Finance (SiGMA, 8 September 2026).
None of these texts sets out a comprehensive regime for online casino games as distinct from betting. The legal framework is therefore best described as fragmented: the rules exist mainly as fiscal and administrative instruments rather than as a body of conduct, licensing and player-protection law.
The pending gambling bill
On 11 April 2025 the 39th meeting of the Council of Ministers adopted a projet de loi portant principes fondamentaux du secteur des jeux d’argent et de hasard, presented by Finance Minister Doudou Fwamba. The government relied on Article 123 of the Constitution, which reserves the fundamental principles of certain matters to Parliament, and stated that the bill “fixe les règles applicables aux jeux d’argent et de hasard”. According to the official summary reported by Actualite.cd, the bill aims to place operators under a strict legal framework, to protect minors and vulnerable players, and to establish a tax regime with specific taxes on winnings and on gross gaming revenue. Gross gaming revenue (GGR) means the total stakes received by an operator minus the winnings paid out.
The bill was tabled in the National Assembly on 23 June 2025, presented in plenary by Vice-Minister of Finance Grâce Yamba Kazadi, and declared admissible on 4 December 2025. It was then sent to the Economic and Financial Commission (Actualite.cd, 30 May 2026). The commission heard the Finance Minister on 1 April 2026 and planned an article-by-article review (Mediacongo, 2 April 2026). In the Assembly’s calendar for the September 2026 ordinary session, adopted on 21 September 2026, the bill appears among texts for which the report of the joint committee of the two chambers is awaited (allAfrica, 22 September 2026). We could not verify the dates of any votes in either chamber, and no law number has been assigned. Some trade press has described the bill as “adopted” in 2025; this refers to its adoption by the government, not by Parliament.
Regulator and licensing model
Regulatory responsibility has been contested. Under the 2011 order, the Ministry of Sports and Leisure granted authorisations for betting and other non-lottery games. YAV & Associates described these authorisations as valid nationwide, non-transferable and of indefinite duration, subject to annual renewal and registration, lapsing at the end of the company’s legal term, and liable to withdrawal for reasons of public order or morals, failure to start operations within a year or breaches of the gambling rules. SONAL, for its part, concludes partnership contracts with private lottery operators. iGaming Business reported in January 2026 that SONAL was acting as an informal regulator by demanding a monthly share of 7% of operators’ GGR; the figure rests on that report and an anonymous operator quoted in it, SONAL did not respond to iGB, and we could not verify it against any official text.
From 2022 the Ministry of Finance took the lead. Council of Ministers decisions of 8 November 2024 and 11 April 2025 entrusted it with the reform (Actualite.cd, 10 July 2026). A ministerial order of 29 January 2026 created the Cellule de Surveillance des Jeux d’Argent et de Hasard (CSJA), a transitional supervisory unit whose members include the Ministry of the Portfolio, SONAL, the Central Bank of Congo (BCC), the Post and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (ARPTC) and the security services. The CSJA is to run the reform until a future Autorité de Régulation des Jeux d’Argent (ARJA) is installed (Bankable, 14 July 2026). As of the latest sources, ARJA had not been established.
The overlap between ministries came into the open in August 2026. On 21 August the Secretary General of the Ministry of Sports and Leisure announced a national inspection of all casino, lottery, betting and prediction-contest operators, stating that his ministry issued operating authorisations and oversaw the tax on players’ winnings (AfricaNews RDC, 22 August 2026). The Ministry of Finance replied in a communiqué that Actualite.cd dates 27 August 2026 (AfricaNews RDC and SiGMA report a communiqué of 3 September 2026) stating that Ordinance No. 25/293 no longer lists gambling and lotteries among the Sports ministry’s responsibilities. It declared that any approval, authorisation or payment notice issued by a service without competence has “no legal effect”, instructed the revenue directorate DGRAD to cancel irregular payment notices, and said files on those responsible could be referred for administrative, disciplinary or criminal sanctions; no sanctions actually imposed were reported (Actualite.cd, 3 September 2026; AfricaNews RDC, 4 September 2026).
No official register of authorised operators has been published, and no official figure for the number of licensees is available. In March 2026 the Ministry of Finance gave unauthorised operators until 31 March to come forward and apply for authorisation (Zoom Eco); Bankable noted in July 2026 that no results of that exercise had been published.
Online gambling: what is permitted and how it is enforced
Online betting is not prohibited as such. YAV & Associates reported that online betting, eSports and skill games fall within the scope of authorisations issued under the 2011 order, and the tax on winnings expressly covers games conducted through telecommunications and information technology channels (SiGMA). We found no specific statutory regime for online casino games, no list of authorised online operators and no published rules on advertising. Whether a remote casino offering is authorisable under the current texts is unclear from the available sources.
The market is shaped by mobile money, meaning payment accounts linked to mobile phone numbers and run by telecoms groups. iGaming Business reported that four mobile money services dominate gambling payments and that data-protection rules, including Law No. 20/017 of 25 November 2020 on telecommunications and Ordinance-Law No. 23/010 of 13 March 2023 (the Digital Code), limit the state’s access to transaction data. An operator quoted by iGB said the tax system largely relied on operators’ own declarations.
The government’s response is technological rather than based on blocking, the practice of ordering internet or payment providers to cut off access to unlicensed sites. In May 2026 the Ministry of Finance announced a centralised platform to control the operations and activities of gambling operators nationwide (Radio Okapi, 31 May 2026). Operators had to identify themselves electronically by 31 July 2026, and the pilot phase was due to end on 30 August 2026, after which operators not connected to the platform could face administrative sanctions (Mediacongo, 12 July 2026). According to the ministry’s July communiqué, the technical integration of most electronic money institutions was complete, while the connection of gambling operators was ongoing (Actualite.cd, 10 July 2026). We found no published report of sanctions actually imposed after 30 August 2026. The ministry has not named the technical partner or disclosed the contract terms, and Bankable noted that two earlier platform projects announced in June 2025 by different ministries were not mentioned in the communiqué. We found no evidence of website or payment blocking against offshore operators.
Position of players
The sources we reviewed describe obligations and sanctions only for operators. We found no provision making it an offence for an adult to bet with an unauthorised operator, and no record of players being prosecuted or fined. Minors under 18 are formally barred from betting, and operators’ advertising says so; however, a May 2025 report found that minors could in practice access betting easily, and a lawyer quoted in it pointed to the absence of an offence for letting minors bet and of a specialised oversight body (Actualite.cd, 19 May 2025).
Players should note the practical consequences of the current framework. With no published register of authorised operators and no regulator with a complaints procedure, a player has no straightforward official way to check whether an operator is authorised or to seek redress in a dispute. The tax on winnings is levied on winnings paid out by operators, as described below.
Taxation
Two taxes are central, both now managed by the Ministry of Finance under Finance Law No. 23/056:
- The tax on the authorisation to operate a gambling or lottery business (taxe sur l’autorisation d’exploitation), payable annually.
- The proportional tax on players’ winnings (taxe sur les gains des joueurs, levied as a percentage of each winning), payable monthly by the 15th of the following month on winnings paid out in the previous month. YAV & Associates and iGaming Business both put the rate at 10%.
The current rates are fixed by a ministerial order of 30 July 2024 on duties, taxes and fees collected by the Ministry of Finance; we were not able to consult that order directly. Payments are made to the Direction de la Réglementation Financière in Kinshasa, and the sanctions in Article 8 of Ordonnance-loi No. 18/003 apply to defaulting operators (Zoom Eco). Under the 2019 framework described by YAV & Associates, operators had to register with the tax administration within 15 days of starting activity, and transactional fines of 50% to 100% of the duties owed applied to breaches.
A GGR-based tax is foreseen in the pending bill but is not yet in force. In its Council of Ministers presentation, the government cited Kazadi’s projection that a single tax on stakes could yield more than US$100 million a year once a regulator with a central monitoring system was in place (Actualite.cd, 14 April 2025). In September 2025 Finance Minister Fwamba cited studies putting the sector’s turnover at about 1.6 to 1.7 billion for the previous budget year, without specifying the currency (DosEco, 30 September 2025). These remain projections and estimates.
Consumer protection and responsible gambling
Consumer protection is the weakest part of the framework. We found:
- No national self-exclusion scheme allowing players to bar themselves from all operators.
- No dedicated gambling helpline or publicly funded treatment service.
- No published advertising code for gambling.
- A minimum age of 18, reported as poorly enforced.
The government presents protection of minors and vulnerable players as a goal of the pending bill. In announcing the monitoring platform in May 2026, the official in charge of gambling information systems cited debt, addiction, money laundering and the participation of minors as reasons for strict oversight (Radio Okapi). Civil-society actors quoted by Actualite.cd in 2025 described harm to concentration, schoolwork and family life among young bettors, including theft at home, and called for vigilance by kiosk operators, parents, youth organisations and schools. The money-laundering dimension is also prominent: Radio Okapi noted in reporting the platform that the DRC is on the FATF “grey list” of jurisdictions under increased monitoring. General guidance on staying in control is available in our responsible gambling guide.
Recent and upcoming developments
- Government bill (April 2025). The Council of Ministers adopted the gambling bill on 11 April 2025; it was tabled in the National Assembly on 23 June 2025 and declared admissible on 4 December 2025.
- Ministerial competence (December 2025). Ordinance No. 25/293 of 15 December 2025 assigned gambling regulation to the Ministry of Finance.
- CSJA (January 2026). The transitional supervisory unit was created on 29 January 2026.
- Compliance deadlines (March to August 2026). Unauthorised operators were told to regularise by 31 March 2026; all operators had to identify themselves by 31 July 2026, and the platform pilot phase was due to close on 30 August 2026, with administrative sanctions possible thereafter; no sanctions had been reported at the time of review.
- Inter-ministerial dispute (August to September 2026). The Ministry of Sports announced its own inspection of operators on 21 August 2026; the Ministry of Finance declared acts by non-competent services to have no legal effect.
- Parliament (September 2026). The bill was listed in the September 2026 session calendar as awaiting a joint committee report. Its final content, including the powers of ARJA and any rules on online casinos, was not public at the time of review.
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The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. They do not show that an operator is authorised in DR Congo, where no official register of authorised gambling operators has been published and no specific regime for online casino games has been identified. The listings must not be read as an indication that an operator is lawfully authorised to serve players in the country.
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Sources and further reading
- YAV & Associates (Légavox), Le régime juridique des jeux du hasard en République Démocratique du Congo (2022).
- Muamba, C. (Actualite.cd), Désordre dans le secteur des paris sportifs en RDC : le gouvernement va réglementer davantage (2022).
- Actualite.cd, RDC : plus d’un milliard de dollars brassés par les jeux d’argent, un million seulement pour l’État (2024).
- Actualite.cd, RDC : adoption du projet de loi portant principes fondamentaux du secteur des jeux d’argent et de hasard (2025).
- Mbuku, B. (Actualite.cd), Kinshasa : paris sportifs, la nouvelle dépendance des jeunes (2025).
- DosEco, Jeux d’argent et de hasard en ligne en RDC : le gouvernement entend mettre en place une autorité de régulation (2025).
- Okpetim, E. (iGaming Business), DR Congo: The billion-dollar iGaming mystery yet to be resolved (2026).
- Zoom Eco, RDC : le Gouvernement resserre l’étau fiscal autour des jeux d’argent (2026).
- Mediacongo, Jeux d’argent et marché boursier en RDC : la commission ECOFIN finalise l’examen de ces deux projets de loi (2026).
- Actualite.cd, Jeux d’argent et de hasard en RDC : le gouvernement franchit une nouvelle étape dans la réforme (2026).
- Radio Okapi, Le ministère des Finances met en place une plateforme de régulation des jeux d’argent en RDC (2026).
- Actualite.cd, RDC : le ministère des Finances fixe l’échéance du 30 août pour la mise en conformité des opérateurs des jeux d’argent (2026).
- Mediacongo, Le ministère des Finances ordonne l’identification des opérateurs du secteur des jeux d’argent et de hasard (2026).
- Bankable, Jeux d’argent en RDC : la plateforme de supervision prend forme, des inconnues persistent (2026).
- AfricaNews RDC, RDC : le ministère des Sports veut reprendre la main sur le secteur des jeux de hasard (2026).
- Actualite.cd, RDC : le ministère des Finances met en garde les opérateurs des jeux d’argent contre les taxes et contrôles irréguliers (2026).
- AfricaNews RDC, RDC : le ministère des Finances rappelle sa compétence exclusive sur la régulation des jeux d’argent et de hasard (2026).
- Seal, R. (SiGMA), DRC Finance Ministry reaffirms authority over gambling regulation (2026).
- allAfrica / Assemblée nationale, Session ordinaire de septembre 2026 : l’Assemblée nationale adopte le calendrier (2026).
