Legal casino gambling age in IcelandIceland does not license commercial gambling. The General Penal Code makes it an offence to run gambling or betting as a business, and the only lawful exceptions are a small number of operators created by individual Acts of the Althingi (parliament): the national lottery company Íslensk getspá, the sports pools operator Íslenskar getraunir, the University of Iceland Lottery (Happdrætti Háskóla Íslands, HHÍ) and the charity gaming-machine operator Íslandsspil, together with a few smaller charity lotteries. No licence exists for online casinos or for private bookmakers, and foreign gambling websites therefore operate without any Icelandic authorisation. Unlike many European states, Iceland also has no system for blocking those websites or the payments made to them. This guide covers the history, statutes and ministerial supervision, the European Economic Area (EEA) context, players’ position, taxation, responsible gambling and the 2024–2026 reform debate.
Key points
- Article 183 of the General Penal Code (No. 19/1940) makes it a criminal offence to make gambling or betting one’s business or to draw others into it. Gambling is lawful only where a specific statute authorises it.
- Four statutory operators dominate the legal market: Íslensk getspá (number lotteries, Act No. 26/1986), Íslenskar getraunir (sports pools and betting, Act No. 59/1972), HHÍ (money lottery and gaming machines, Act No. 13/1973) and Íslandsspil (charity gaming machines, Act No. 73/1994).
- Lottery policy belongs to the Minister of Justice. Small charity lotteries are licensed by district commissioners (sýslumenn) under the Lotteries Act No. 38/2005.
- There is no licence for online casinos and no website or payment blocking. Advertising unlicensed lotteries, domestic or foreign, is an offence under the Lotteries Act.
- Winnings from the statutory operators are exempt from all public charges. Other gambling winnings are taxable income under the Income Tax Act.
- As of 6 October 2026, no bill to license online gambling or to block foreign sites had been found before the Althingi, although the Minister of Justice said in 2025 that the current position was a problem.
Last reviewed: 6 October 2026.
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Historical development
Iceland’s approach has always been to forbid commercial gambling in general and to create exceptions by statute, each for a named beneficiary. The oldest of the current exceptions is the University of Iceland Lottery. Its present Act, No. 13/1973, gives the university the exclusive right to run a money lottery (peningahappdrætti) and states that while it operates, no other money lottery may be established in the country (Act No. 13/1973). Its profits fund the university’s buildings and maintenance, according to Slysavarnafélagið Landsbjörg.
Further exceptions followed. The Act on Pools (getraunir) No. 59/1972 gave Íslenskar getraunir the sole right to run sports pools, run by a board drawn from sports and youth organisations (Act No. 59/1972). The Act on Number Lotteries (talnagetraunir) No. 26/1986 allowed a company owned by the National Olympic and Sports Association (ÍSÍ), the Organisation of Disabled in Iceland (ÖBÍ) and the Icelandic Youth Association (UMFÍ) to run number lotteries such as Lottó; the proceeds support sport and housing for disabled people (Act No. 26/1986). The Act on Collection Boxes (söfnunarkassar) No. 73/1994 allowed a society of humanitarian organisations to run coin-operated gaming machines for charity (Act No. 73/1994). Two smaller lotteries, for the sailors’ association DAS and the health charity SÍBS, rest on their own Acts of 1973 and 1959, according to a 2022 government working group report.
The general Lotteries Act No. 38/2005 brought the remaining lotteries, such as charity raffles, bingo and tombolas, under a common licensing regime (Act No. 38/2005). The consolidated texts show that the sector statutes have hardly changed since. Most were last amended in 2011, when references to the responsible ministry were updated, and in 2015, when Act No. 126/2015 extended the licences of HHÍ and Íslensk getspá to 1 January 2034. Internet gambling developed outside this structure, and by the 2020s foreign online betting had become the main subject of public debate.
Legal framework
The framework has three layers: a general criminal prohibition, a general lotteries Act and a set of operator-specific Acts.
- The General Penal Code (Almenn hegningarlög) No. 19/1940. Article 183 provides that a person who makes gambling or betting his or her business, or who makes it a business to bring others to take part in them, is liable to punishment. Article 184 penalises anyone who earns income, directly or indirectly, by letting gambling or betting take place on premises under his or her control. Both provisions are quoted by the Science Web.
- The Lotteries Act (Lög um happdrætti) No. 38/2005. It covers every lottery open to the public in which winnings depend on chance or on the outcome of a competition. It requires a licence for any lottery not authorised by special statute, and it makes it an offence to advertise, promote or communicate information about an unlicensed lottery intentionally or through gross negligence, “regardless of whether its operations are run in Iceland or abroad”. The penalty is a fine or imprisonment of up to six months, or up to one year for large-scale or repeated breaches.
- The operator Acts: No. 13/1973 (HHÍ), No. 59/1972 (Íslenskar getraunir), No. 26/1986 (Íslensk getspá) and No. 73/1994 (collection boxes). Each grants an exclusive right and exempts the operator’s prizes from public charges.
Article 183 is aimed at those who organise gambling as a business, and the operator Acts work as exceptions to it. The 2022 working group report described Article 183 as the general prohibition and recommended that it be amended to fit any new licensing system.
EEA context
Iceland is not a member of the European Union, but it belongs to the European Economic Area, which extends the EU internal market, including the freedom to provide services, to Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Compliance is monitored by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA), which “monitors compliance with European Economic Area (EEA) rules in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway”, and disputes go to the EFTA Court rather than the Court of Justice of the EU.
The leading EEA cases on gambling concern Norway, whose system resembles Iceland’s. In Case E-1/06, judgment of 14 March 2007, ESA challenged Norway’s transfer of gaming machines to a state-owned monopoly. A European Commission staff working document of 2012 summarises the outcome: the EFTA Court accepted the monopoly as justified, reasoning that a monopoly operator under effective public control would tend to address gambling addiction better than a commercial operator. In Ladbrokes (Case E-3/06, 30 May 2007) the court held that EEA states need not recognise each other’s gambling authorisations, although national measures must not be excessive in relation to their aims. EEA law therefore allows Iceland to keep exclusive rights pursued consistently, and a licence from another EEA state does not authorise an operator to serve Icelandic residents. We found no ESA case or EFTA Court judgment on Iceland’s gambling legislation.
Regulator and licensing model
Iceland uses a statutory exclusive-rights model. In a licensing model, any company meeting set conditions can obtain a licence. In Iceland, by contrast, each lawful form of gambling is reserved by statute to a named operator, usually controlled by public-interest organisations, and no application route exists for anyone else. There is no independent gambling regulator.
Responsibility rests with the Minister of Justice. Under the Lotteries Act, the minister issues regulations and may concentrate licensing in a single district commissioner. The consolidated HHÍ Act records that the Ministry of Justice is responsible for it. In practice, according to Ísland.is, the District Commissioner of South Iceland (Sýslumaðurinn á Suðurlandi) issues nationwide permits for charity lotteries with ticket sales above ISK 2,000,000, and local district commissioners handle smaller ones. Only associations or institutions registered in the EEA may apply. The lottery must serve a public cause such as charity, culture or sport, an organisation may receive no more than three permits in 12 months, and prizes must be worth at least 16.67% of ticket sales.
The statutory operators and their exclusive rights are:
| Operator | Statute | Activities | Beneficiaries |
|---|---|---|---|
| Íslensk getspá | Act No. 26/1986 | Number lotteries (Lottó, Vikinglotto, EuroJackpot, Jóker) | ÍSÍ, ÖBÍ and UMFÍ |
| Íslenskar getraunir | Act No. 59/1972 | Sports pools and fixed-odds betting (1X2, Lengjan) | Sports and youth organisations |
| Happdrætti Háskóla Íslands | Act No. 13/1973 | Money lottery, scratch cards (Happaþrennan), gaming machines (Gullnáman) | University of Iceland |
| Íslandsspil | Act No. 73/1994 | Charity gaming machines | Icelandic Red Cross and Slysavarnafélagið Landsbjörg |
Íslensk getspá and Íslenskar getraunir share a website, through which both lotteries and sports betting are sold (Íslensk getspá). HHÍ sells lottery tickets and scratch cards and runs the Gullnáman gaming machines in a limited number of venues (HHÍ). Íslandsspil describes itself as jointly owned by the Icelandic Red Cross (68.75%) and Slysavarnafélagið Landsbjörg, the search-and-rescue association (31.25%); the addiction treatment association SÁÁ left the ownership in 2021. According to Landsbjörg, in 2018 Íslandsspil had 390 machines at 75 locations and HHÍ about 500 machines at 27 locations, with HHÍ taking 64% of gaming-machine revenue.
The 2022 working group report gives the scale of the legal sector in 2020: Íslensk getspá had revenue of ISK 6.17 billion and profit of ISK 2.12 billion, HHÍ revenue of ISK 2.14 billion, and Íslenskar getraunir revenue of ISK 1.36 billion. Íslandsspil had revenue of ISK 1.00 billion in 2019.
Online gambling: what is permitted and how it is enforced
Online gambling is permitted only through the statutory operators, within the products their Acts allow. Íslensk getspá and Íslenskar getraunir sell lotteries and sports betting online for players aged 18 and over (Íslensk getspá). No Icelandic statute authorises online casino games such as slots, roulette or live dealer tables, and no private operator can obtain a licence for them.
Foreign websites nonetheless take a large share of Icelanders’ gambling. Estimates vary with method and source:
- The 2022 working group report put spending on foreign betting sites at ISK 10.5–12 billion a year.
- The Iceland Chamber of Commerce estimated annual betting at ISK 20 billion in 2023 and lost tax revenue at about ISK 4.8 billion, as reported by Vísir in September 2024.
- A November 2025 report commissioned by HHÍ estimated that ISK 36–39 billion a year flows to unlicensed foreign operators and that the state forgoes ISK 10–11 billion in revenue (Vísir). Earlier that month SBC News cited about ISK 36 billion (€250 million).
These are estimates, several from interested parties, not official statistics.
Enforcement. The main legal tools are Article 183 of the Penal Code against organisers and the Lotteries Act’s ban on promoting unlicensed lotteries. Iceland has no administrative blocklist of gambling domains, no duty on internet service providers to block them and no rule requiring payment providers to refuse transactions. SBC News summarised the Lotteries Act as lacking enforcement mechanisms against media outlets that promote unlicensed sites and against payment processors that handle offshore transactions. In July 2024 the president of ÍSÍ, Lárus Blöndal, called for websites to be closed and payment routes blocked (Vísir). We found no published prosecution of a foreign online operator under Article 183.
Advertising. The Lotteries Act prohibits advertising or promoting any unlicensed lottery, wherever it is operated, and the Act defines a lottery to include games in which winnings depend on the outcome of a competition. Reform advocates complain that the ban is not enforced against media outlets carrying promotion for unlicensed sites (SBC News).
Position of players
No Icelandic statute makes it an offence for an individual to gamble with a foreign operator. Article 183 targets those who make gambling a business or who bring others into it. According to the Science Web (2009), casual participation falls outside the provision; criminal liability would require something closer to habitual, profit-oriented activity. We found no reported prosecution or fine of a player for using a foreign gambling website.
The operators themselves, however, have no authorisation. The Minister of Justice, Þorbjörg Sigríður Gunnlaugsdóttir, described foreign betting operations as unlawful in the Althingi debate of 25 September 2025 (Vísir) and a July 2026 radio interview was headlined as her being unequivocal on the point (Vísir). Players who use these sites have no Icelandic regulator to complain to and no Icelandic protection if an operator refuses to pay.
Taxation
Operators
Iceland has no general gambling tax, because there is no market of commercial licensees to tax. The statutory operators return their profits to their beneficiaries under their Acts. HHÍ pays the state a licence fee of 20% of its net annual profit, capped at ISK 150,000,000 (Act No. 13/1973). Foreign online operators pay nothing in Iceland. In the September 2025 debate the Minister of Justice referred to foreign models in which licensed operators are taxed on net revenue and the market funds supervision and prevention (Vísir).
Players
Article 7(A)(4) of the Income Tax Act No. 90/2003 lists “prizes and honoraria, winnings in a lottery, bet or competition” as taxable income. Each operator Act overrides this for its own prizes: winnings from HHÍ, Íslensk getspá, Íslenskar getraunir and the collection boxes are “exempt from all public charges” (Act No. 13/1973; Act No. 26/1986; Act No. 59/1972; Act No. 73/1994). The Science Web answer concluded that winnings from foreign gambling websites, which have no such exemption, are taxable income that should be declared. We did not find a current guidance page from the Icelandic tax authority on this point.
Consumer protection and responsible gambling
Protection rests mainly on the statutory operators’ own rules, not on a legal framework. The minimum age for Íslandsspil machines and the online products of Íslensk getspá is 18 (Íslandsspil; Íslensk getspá). The HHÍ Act sets a minimum of 16 for its gaming machines, as does the Collection Boxes Act, although Íslandsspil applies 18 in practice. Íslensk getspá and Íslenskar getraunir state that they offer daily, weekly and monthly spending limits and self-exclusion, and that they do not use welcome bonuses; this was set out by the operator’s communications officer in Vísir in July 2024.
Iceland has no national self-exclusion register covering all operators, and none of the sources we reviewed referred to one. Íslandsspil has long proposed a Nordic-style player card (spilakort) for gaming machines, but according to Landsbjörg talks between the operators made little progress. A 2025 opinion article in Vísir cited a 2021 University of Iceland task force as finding that player cards would cause a collapse in gaming-machine revenue.
Research cited in the 2022 working group report found that in 2017 about 2.1% of the population had significant gambling problems and 0.3% probable pathological gambling. About 68% of problem gamblers used gaming machines, and men were affected about three times as often as women. In the September 2025 debate, MPs cited research that about a third or more of 18-year-old men had used foreign betting sites (Vísir).
Help and support. The Red Cross helpline and web chat 1717 is open 24 hours a day and is listed on Ábyrg spilun, a responsible gambling information site run by Íslandsspil with HHÍ; Íslandsspil also funds the helpline. SÁÁ, the national addiction treatment association, offers free individual counselling, group programmes and cognitive behavioural therapy for gambling problems, and support for families (telephone 530-7600). In December 2025 the Icelandic Health Insurance and SÁÁ signed a four-year agreement that, for the first time, funds gambling addiction treatment from public health insurance (Vísir). Our responsible gambling guide sets out general steps for keeping gambling under control.
Recent and upcoming developments
- 2022 working group (report delivered). A working group appointed by the Minister of Justice reported on 1 December 2022. It recommended a single gambling Act, supervision by the Central Bank’s Financial Supervisory Authority, Nordic-style player cards, licensing and taxation of online betting, a prevention fund financed by operators and an amendment of Article 183. Its members did not reach consensus, and only the chair and secretary endorsed the full report (working group report). We found no bill implementing it.
- Pressure from sport and business (2024). In July 2024 ÍSÍ called for foreign sites to be blocked (Vísir). In September 2024 the Iceland Chamber of Commerce called for operating licences instead, arguing that the ban had not worked (Vísir).
- Althingi debate (25 September 2025). In a debate opened by Sigurþóra Steinunn Bergsdóttir MP, the Minister of Justice set out three options: keep the current prohibition, open the market fully, or adopt a licensing system in which operators apply to a supervisory authority and are taxed on net revenue (Vísir).
- Minister’s position (October 2025). On 21 October 2025 the minister said that “this activity is here to stay”, that the current position was a problem and that she was not attracted to unnecessary bans, which indicates a preference for regulated access over blocking (Vísir).
- Health policy (November–December 2025). The Minister of Health, Alma D. Möller, called gambling addiction a major public health problem. She supported a single national supervisory authority and enforcement of advertising rules against unlicensed operators (SBC News), and public funding of treatment followed in December 2025.
- Status (pending, no bill found). A July 2026 radio interview with the Minister of Justice was headlined as her being unequivocal that foreign betting sites are unlawful (Vísir). As of 6 October 2026 we found no government bill before the Althingi to license online gambling, to create a regulator or to block foreign websites or payments. Reform should therefore be treated as under discussion, not as adopted or scheduled.
Casino listings for players in Iceland
The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. They do not show that an operator is authorised in Iceland, and none can be: Icelandic law provides no licence for online casino games, and the only lawful gambling operators are the statutory bodies named in this guide. The listings must not be read as an indication that an operator is lawful in Iceland or that Icelandic consumer protection applies. Readers who want to play with an authorised operator can check the Íslensk getspá and HHÍ websites.
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Sources and further reading
- Althingi, Almenn hegningarlög nr. 19/1940 (General Penal Code), consolidated text (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Althingi, Lög um happdrætti nr. 38/2005 (Lotteries Act), consolidated text (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Althingi, Lög um Happdrætti Háskóla Íslands nr. 13/1973, consolidated text (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Althingi, Lög um talnagetraunir nr. 26/1986, consolidated text (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Althingi, Lög um getraunir nr. 59/1972, consolidated text (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Althingi, Lög um söfnunarkassa nr. 73/1994, consolidated text (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Althingi, Lög um tekjuskatt nr. 90/2003 (Income Tax Act), consolidated text (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Ministry of Justice working group (chair Sigurður Kári Kristjánsson), Skýrsla starfshóps um happdrættismál (2022).
- Ísland.is, Umsókn um happdrættisleyfi (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Árni Helgason, Vísindavefurinn (University of Iceland), Er löglegt að spila fjárhættuspil á Netinu og ef svo er, þarf maður þá að borga skatt af gróðanum? (2009).
- EFTA Surveillance Authority, EFTA Surveillance Authority (accessed 6 October 2026).
- EFTA Court, Case E-1/06, EFTA Surveillance Authority v Kingdom of Norway (2007).
- European Commission, Commission Staff Working Document SWD(2012) 345 on online gambling in the Internal Market (2012).
- Íslensk getspá / Íslenskar getraunir, Lottó, Lengjan and 1X2 (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Happdrætti Háskóla Íslands, Happdrætti Háskóla Íslands (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Íslandsspil, Íslandsspil (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Slysavarnafélagið Landsbjörg, Íslandsspil: staðreyndir og framtíðarsýn (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Ábyrg spilun, Ábyrg spilun (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Ábyrg spilun, SÁÁ: úrræði vegna spilavanda (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Vísir, Stjórnvöld verði að stöðva erlendu veðmálasíðurnar (2024).
- Vísir, Íslenskar getraunir og ólögleg veðmálafyrirtæki (2024).
- Vísir, Dragi úr virðingu fyrir lögunum (2024).
- Vísir, Þingmenn ræða stjórnlausa veðmálastarfsemi: Íslendingar Evrópumeistarar (2025).
- Vísir, „Þessi starfsemi er komin til að vera“ (2025).
- Vísir, Lögleiða þurfi netspilun til að ná stjórn á ástandinu (2025).
- Vísir, Meðferð við spilafíkn loks niðurgreidd af Sjúkratryggingum (2025).
- Vísir, Menntastofnun eða spilavíti? (2025).
- Vísir, Dómsmálaráðherra afdráttarlaus um ólögmæti erlendra veðmálasíða á Íslandi (2026).
- SBC News, Iceland calls for new gambling supervision against unlicensed websites (2025).
