Legal casino gambling age in Honduras
Honduras has a narrow and ageing legal framework for gambling. Land-based casinos are governed by the Ley de Casinos de Juegos de Envite o Azar (Law on Casinos and Games of Chance), Decree No. 488 of 8 July 1977, which allows licensed casinos only in first-category tourist establishments and, in its amended text, reserves them for foreign visitors. The traditional national lottery is run by the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia (PANI, National Child Welfare Board), while electronic lottery games are operated under a 30-year cooperation agreement with the Government of Canada approved in 2011. There is no statute that licenses or expressly regulates online casinos or online sports betting. A bill to regulate online casinos was announced in 2024 but had not been enacted when this guide was reviewed. Unauthorised slot machines and clandestine lotteries remain the main enforcement concern.
Key points
- The core statute is Decree No. 488 of 1977, amended by Decrees 100-88, 101-88 and 76-90 and supplemented by Executive Decree 70-92, which bans gaming operations, including slot machines, without executive permission.
- Casino licences may be granted only to Honduran nationals or Honduran companies operating in a first-category tourist establishment; the amended Article 6 prohibits admitting players who cannot prove foreign nationality by passport.
- PANI sells the traditional Lotería Mayor and Lotería Menor; electronic lotteries are operated under Decree 183-2011, a 30-year agreement with the Canadian Commercial Corporation running from 1 January 2012.
- Casinos, slot machines, bingos and lotteries, “traditional or electronic”, are designated non-financial businesses under the anti-money-laundering regime of Decrees 131-2014 and 144-2014, supervised by the National Banking and Insurance Commission (CNBS).
- No law licenses online gambling. A draft online casino law announced in October 2024 and a player protection bill presented in September 2026 were both at an early stage in October 2026.
Last reviewed: 7 October 2026.
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Historical development
Modern casino regulation in Honduras dates from the late 1970s, when casinos were regulated as an adjunct to tourism. Decree No. 488, dated 8 July 1977 and published in the official gazette La Gaceta No. 22,247 on 16 July 1977, set the rules for natural and legal persons operating casinos and placed them under the Secretariat of Culture, Tourism and Information. The law tied every casino to a first-category tourist establishment with a fixed investment of more than one million lempiras, the national currency (abbreviated L), and originally limited admission to foreigners.
The law was amended several times in the following years, according to the consolidated text published by the Tribunal Superior de Cuentas (Superior Court of Accounts) in its virtual legal library. Decree 100-88 of 12 September 1988 rewrote Article 6 to bar anyone under 21, whether national or foreign, while Decree 101-88 of the same date restated the casino tax. Less than two years later, Decree 76-90 of 24 July 1990 reinstated the rule that only foreigners may play and introduced a fine of L50,000 for a first breach and cancellation of the licence for a repeat breach. Finally, Executive Decree 70-92 of 30 December 1992, published on 20 April 1993, prohibited all casinos and gaming operations, expressly including slot machines (máquinas tragamonedas), that did not hold executive permission and ordered the authorities to close them.
Lotteries developed separately. PANI has long sold the national lottery to finance child welfare. In 2011 Congress approved Decree 183-2011, a cooperation agreement between the Governments of Honduras and Canada under which the Canadian Commercial Corporation, a Canadian state-owned company, obtained the exclusive right to operate electronic lottery games through an operator it appoints. The decree revoked an earlier contract approved by Decree 173-2000.
Since the 2010s, debate has focused on two issues the 1977 law did not anticipate: the spread of slot machines in shops and bars outside licensed casinos, and the growth of online betting offered from abroad. In 2021 an international online sportsbook acquired the naming rights to the Honduran first-division football league, as reported by SBC Noticias, even though no Honduran law provided a licence for online betting.
Legal framework
The Casino Law (Decree No. 488 of 1977)
Under the consolidated text of the Ley de Casinos de Juegos de Envite o Azar, the main rules are as follows:
- Scope: Article 2 covers roulette, dice, card games, punto y banca, baccarat, slot machines and similar games.
- Who may hold a licence: Article 3 limits licences to Honduran nationals by birth and legally constituted Honduran entities that operate in a first-category tourist establishment with a fixed investment above L1 million, have no criminal convictions, can show economic solvency and are up to date with their taxes.
- Admission of players: Article 6, as amended by Decree 76-90, “strictly prohibits” admitting as players people who cannot show by passport that they are foreigners. Decree 100-88 had separately set 21 as the minimum age.
- Duration: licences may be granted for up to 25 years and renewed for periods of five years.
- Tax: Article 8, as amended by Decree 101-88, charges each casino the greater of L700,000 a year or 20% of gross income after prizes, with a lower minimum of L300,000 in island zones (see Taxation below).
- Sanctions: fines of L1,000 to L25,000 for breaches of the law, doubled for repeat offenders, and cancellation of the licence for serious breaches, in addition to the specific fine for admitting nationals.
The law therefore follows a restrictive licensing model, meaning that casino gambling is lawful only where the state has granted an individual permit, and in Honduras those permits are tied to tourism. The statute does not mention the internet, remote gambling or sports betting, which reflects its date.
Lotteries
Lotteries are not governed by the Casino Law. PANI’s lotteries rest on its own founding legislation, and electronic lotteries on Decree 183-2011, which excludes traditional lotteries, sports betting and authorised slot machines from the Canadian concession. Selling unauthorised lotteries is prosecuted as a criminal matter: in October 2021 Focus Gaming News reported that a woman arrested in December 2020 had been sentenced to one year and six months’ imprisonment for selling an illegal lottery and a further six months for misuse of registered trademarks, together with a fine. The report did not identify the article of the Penal Code applied.
Anti-money-laundering legislation
Two statutes published together in La Gaceta No. 33,718 on 30 April 2015 bring the gambling sector into the anti-money-laundering (AML) system. The Ley Especial contra el Lavado de Activos (Special Law against Money Laundering, Decree 144-2014) lists in Article 18(3), among “designated non-financial activities and professions” (APNFD, the Spanish equivalent of the international term DNFBPs), “operations habitually engaged in the exploitation of games of chance, such as casinos, slot machines, bingos and lotteries”. The Ley para la Regulación de Actividades y Profesiones No Financieras Designadas (Decree 131-2014 of 9 December 2014) repeats the list in Article 3. Both statutes add that the activity may be carried out “in a traditional or electronic manner”; they are the only Honduran statutes located for this guide that refer expressly to electronic gambling.
Regulator and licensing model
Honduras has no independent gambling regulator. The 1977 law gives the power to license casinos to the Executive, acting through the Secretariat of Culture, Tourism and Information, which also appoints game inspectors. That secretariat has since been reorganised, and no official source located for this guide states which body currently processes casino licence applications or publishes a list of licensed casinos. Readers should treat the question of the competent authority as unverified. When Deputy Dunia Jiménez presented her online casino project in 2024, Focus Gaming News reported that regulatory standards would be handled by the Ministry of Governance and Justice, but that described a proposal, not the current law.
Supervision is in practice divided among several bodies:
- The Executive (tourism authorities): licensing of casinos under Decree 488 and authorisation of gaming operations under Executive Decree 70-92.
- PANI: operation of the traditional national lottery. According to El Heraldo (August 2023), PANI runs both the Lotería Menor, known as la Chica, and the Lotería Mayor, la Grande; in the Central District (Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela) alone, combined sales were about L1.35 billion between 2010 and mid-2023, 93% of them from la Chica. National figures were not located.
- The Canadian Commercial Corporation and its appointed operator: electronic lottery games under Decree 183-2011, for 30 years from 1 January 2012. During the first five years the corporation was to pay the greater of 50% of net profits or the amounts due under the existing fee formulas plus an additional L2 million a month (L24 million a year); from the sixth year it pays 50% of net profits or the fee tables, whichever applies.
- The CNBS: AML supervision of casinos, slot machine operators, bingos and lotteries through its registration and monitoring unit, URMOPRELAFT. Covered businesses must register, adopt a compliance programme, report suspicious transactions and keep records, and face fines graded in multiples of the minimum wage under Article 25 of Decree 131-2014. A bank guidance note from Ficohsa lists proof of registration with URMOPRELAFT among the documents such businesses must provide to open banking relationships.
- The Public Ministry and police: criminal enforcement against clandestine lotteries, unauthorised slot machines and fraudulent games.
PANI’s lottery revenue is partly earmarked by executive decree. Executive Decree PCM-046-2019, published in August 2019, amended an earlier decree to require PANI to transfer up to L212 million a year to the trust fund Fondo de Solidaridad y Protección Social para la Reducción de la Pobreza Extrema, including up to L69 million a year for the National Directorate of Childhood, Adolescence and Family (DINAF).
Online gambling
No Honduran statute creates a licence for online casinos, online poker or online sports betting, and no official register of online operators exists. An El Heraldo report of April 2025 described Honduras as one of the few countries that do not regulate online casinos and betting sites. A separate El Heraldo explainer of March 2025 stated that online gaming remains at an early normative stage, that many international betting sites accept Honduran users without a local licence, and that the Central Bank of Honduras does not regulate online betting houses. The same explainer argued that betting platforms could in principle operate with Executive authorisation under Decree 488; the statute itself, however, is drafted around physical casinos in tourist establishments.
The practical result is a grey market: offshore operators licensed elsewhere accept Honduran customers, while the state neither licenses them nor, so far as the sources located show, takes systematic action against them. No evidence was found of internet service provider (ISP) blocking of gambling websites, of payment blocking aimed at gambling transactions, or of specific rules on gambling advertising. Executive Decree 70-92, which prohibits gaming operations without executive permission, is phrased generally, but no case was found in which it had been applied to an online operator.
The state’s own digital offer is limited. In September 2022 PANI signed an agreement with the state telecommunications company Hondutel to launch a digital lottery as a pilot. According to an El Heraldo investigation of February 2025, the pilot generated sales of about L2.3 million between August 2023 and December 2024 but paid prizes of about L20.5 million, a loss of roughly L18 million.
Unauthorised slot machines
The most visible enforcement problem concerns slot machines installed outside casinos. In February 2020 Focus Gaming News reported that about 5,000 unregulated machines were operating in San Pedro Sula, often in front of shops, and that the Public Ministry had carried out operations against unauthorised gaming in Danlí. In May 2026 El Heraldo reported joint operations by the National Police and Municipal Police in several neighbourhoods of Tegucigalpa and Comayagüela, in which unauthorised machines were targeted, although the authorities did not say how many were seized, and officers stated that minors were found gambling. The report noted that, under the Casino Law, the only authorised place for such machines is a legally constituted casino.
Enforcement also targets fraudulent games. In mid-2024 the Special Prosecutor’s Office for the Protection of Consumers and Older Persons and the Technical Criminal Investigation Agency (ATIC) searched two gaming businesses in a Tegucigalpa shopping centre after complaints from players who reported losses of L10,000 to L320,000, according to Focus Gaming News. Clandestine lotteries have been linked by the authorities to criminal gangs, named as Barrio 18 and MS-13; a June 2021 operation in San Pedro Sula led by the Public Ministry’s intellectual property prosecutors searched three businesses and seized cash, terminals and records.
Position of players
The players’ position differs sharply between land-based and online gambling. For land-based casinos, the restriction in Article 6 of Decree 488 is addressed to the casino: it is the operator that is prohibited from admitting Honduran nationals and that is fined or loses its licence. The law does not create an offence for the player. No source located for this guide describes how strictly the nationality rule is enforced in practice today.
For online gambling, no Honduran law located for this guide makes it an offence for an individual to place bets with a foreign-licensed website, and no recorded prosecution or fine of a player was found. The El Heraldo explainer states that betting on unregulated international platforms is not expressly prohibited but gives players no local legal protection if a dispute arises. Because no Honduran authority licenses online operators, a player has no domestic regulator to complain to; any claim would depend on the operator’s foreign licensing authority or on ordinary civil remedies. Buying tickets from clandestine lotteries also carries risk, since, as Focus Gaming News noted in 2020, illegal lotteries do not guarantee payment of prizes.
Taxation
The only gambling-specific tax located for this guide is the casino levy in Article 8 of Decree 488, as amended by Decree 101-88. Each casino must pay the greater of L700,000 a year or 20% of its gross income after deduction of prizes paid; casinos in island zones pay the greater of L300,000 or the same 20%. Casinos are also subject to the general corporate tax system, which is beyond the scope of this guide.
Lottery proceeds are distributed rather than taxed in the usual sense: PANI’s surplus finances child welfare programmes, Decree 183-2011 allocates 50% of the net profits of electronic lotteries to the state, and PCM-046-2019 earmarks up to L212 million a year of PANI funds for social programmes. The 2024 online casino proposal envisaged a tax of 10% on operators’ earnings, with the revenue directed to health care, particularly medical supplies and cardiovascular equipment, according to Focus Gaming News and El Heraldo. That rate has no legal force.
The tax treatment of players’ winnings could not be verified from a primary source. PwC’s Worldwide Tax Summaries note that capital gains in Honduras are taxed at 10% and that a 10% withholding tax applies to income paid to non-residents not otherwise listed (PwC, withholding taxes), but neither page refers specifically to lottery or gambling prizes. Winners of significant prizes should seek advice from the Servicio de Administración de Rentas (SAR, the tax administration) or a local tax adviser.
Consumer protection and responsible gambling
Honduras has no national self-exclusion register, no statutory deposit or loss limits and no regulator-funded problem gambling helpline that could be located for this guide. The protections in force are those of the 1977 Casino Law: the minimum age of 21, the exclusion of Honduran nationals from casinos, and the confinement of slot machines to licensed casinos. Police operations in 2026 that found minors playing unauthorised machines suggest that these rules are not consistently observed outside casinos.
The first proposal to fill this gap was presented in September 2026. According to Focus Gaming News, Deputy Carlos Umaña introduced a Ley de Protección al Jugador y Juego Responsable (Law on Player Protection and Responsible Gambling) that would allow compulsive gamblers to be excluded from gambling venues either voluntarily or by court order, address the use of credit cards for wagering, and seek to prevent families from losing their property through gambling. The bill focuses on physical establishments such as casinos and slot machine halls and does not directly address online gambling.
The AML regime offers indirect consumer protection by requiring gambling businesses to identify customers and report suspicious transactions. General advice on recognising and managing gambling problems is available in our responsible gambling guide.
Recent and upcoming developments
- Online casino bill (2024, not enacted). On 1 October 2024 SBC Noticias and Focus Gaming News reported that Deputy Dunia Jiménez had spent about two months drafting a law to regulate online casinos, open to players in Honduras and abroad, with interest from German business representatives. In December 2024 La Tribuna reported that the deputy expected the law to make Honduras a hub for online gaming companies, with licence fees and taxes but no tax exemptions; it described the bill as pending. The two outlets attribute the deputy to different parties. No source located shows that the bill was approved, and El Heraldo still described online casinos as unregulated in April 2025.
- Player protection bill (September 2026). The bill presented by Deputy Carlos Umaña on self-exclusion and responsible gambling was at an early stage and required approval by the National Congress (Focus Gaming News, 25 September 2026).
- Slot machine enforcement (2026). Police operations against unauthorised machines in the Central District continued in May 2026 (El Heraldo).
- PANI digital lottery (2023–2025). The pilot run with Hondutel recorded losses of about L18 million to December 2024, raising questions over its future (El Heraldo, February 2025).
Casino listings for players in Honduras
The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. They do not show that an operator is licensed in Honduras: no Honduran authority licenses online casinos, and no official register of online operators exists. The listings must not be read as an indication that any operator is authorised by the Honduran state, and readers should check the licensing authority named by each operator and the legal points set out above.
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Sources and further reading
- Tribunal Superior de Cuentas, Biblioteca Virtual, Ley de Casinos de Juegos de Envite o Azar, Decreto No. 488 (1977), with Decrees 100-88, 101-88, 76-90 and Executive Decree 70-92 (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Tribunal Superior de Cuentas, Biblioteca Virtual, Ley de Casinos, Juegos de Envite o Azar (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Comisión Nacional de Bancos y Seguros, Ley para la Regulación de Actividades y Profesiones No Financieras Designadas, Decreto 131-2014 (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Text republished at bcv.hn, Ley Especial contra el Lavado de Activos, Decreto 144-2014 (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Ficohsa, Preguntas frecuentes: Actividades y Profesiones No Financieras Designadas (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Instituto de Acceso a la Información Pública, Portal Único, Decreto 183-2011, approving the lottery cooperation agreement with the Canadian Commercial Corporation (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Instituto de Acceso a la Información Pública, Portal Único, La Gaceta, Decreto Ejecutivo PCM-046-2019 (accessed 7 October 2026).
- El Heraldo, La Chica cautiva a capitalinos: 1,271 millones vendidos en 13 años (8 August 2023).
- El Heraldo, Lotería digital ha dejado más de 18 millones de lempiras en pérdidas en el Pani (26 February 2025).
- El Heraldo, Cómo identificar una casa de apuestas segura y legal en Honduras (24 March 2025).
- El Heraldo, Cuál es el potencial económico de la regulación de casinos en línea en Honduras (1 April 2025).
- El Heraldo, Detectan menores apostando en tragamonedas ilegales instaladas en barrios capitalinos (31 May 2026).
- Focus Gaming News, Regulación del juego online: en Honduras preparan un nuevo proyecto de ley (1 October 2024).
- SBC Noticias, Juego online en Honduras: proponen regular el sector (1 October 2024).
- La Tribuna, Diputada con ley de juegos on line: el Estado tendrá nueva fuente de ingresos (22 December 2024).
- Focus Gaming News, Honduras impulsa una ley de protección al jugador (25 September 2026).
- Focus Gaming News, Advierten por las tragamonedas en Honduras (19 February 2020).
- Focus Gaming News, Honduras: la Fiscalía del Consumidor inspecciona negocios de juegos de azar vinculados a estafas (1 August 2024).
- Focus Gaming News, Dos años de prisión para una mujer que vendía lotería ilegal en Honduras (21 October 2021).
- PwC, Honduras: Individual – Income determination; and Corporate – Withholding taxes (accessed 7 October 2026).
