Gambling in the Marshall Islands: Laws and Online Play

Published by Casino News Daily editorial teamReviewed byFilip RadulovicOur editorial approach

The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is one of the few states in the Pacific that prohibits gambling almost entirely. The Gaming and Recreation Prohibition Act 1998, now codified as Chapter 4 of Title 31 of the Marshall Islands Revised Code (31 MIRC Ch.4), provides that no person, natural or corporate, “shall engage in any form of gaming or gambling activities within the Republic”. There are no licensed casinos, no national lottery, no licensed betting shops and no system for licensing online gambling. The only lawful exception is fundraising bingo, raffles and cakewalks run by nonprofit organisations under a permit from the local government council. In October 2025 the Nitijela, the national parliament, raised the main gambling offence from a misdemeanour to a third-degree felony. This guide explains how the prohibition developed, what the statute says, how it applies to online gambling and to individual players, and what changed in 2025.

Key points

The Gaming and Recreation Prohibition Act 1998 (P.L. 1998-64) bans all forms of gaming and gambling in the Marshall Islands and the possession, use, sale or purchase of gambling machines and devices.
The only exemption covers bingo, raffles and cakewalks held by nonprofit organisations to raise funds for their stated purposes, with a permit for each occasion from the local government council at a fee of no more than US$20.
The Gaming and Recreation Prohibition (Amendment) Act 2025 (P.L. 2025-50), passed on 1 October 2025, made a breach of the prohibition a third-degree felony punishable by a fine of up to US$5,000, imprisonment of up to 35 months, or both, plus a civil penalty of US$1,000 for each day the violation continues.
There is no regulator, licensing body or legal online gambling product. The prohibition is written in general terms and is not limited to land-based premises; no separate internet gambling statute was found.
The prohibition applies to “any person”, so it is not confined to operators. No reported prosecution of an individual for gambling online was found.

Last reviewed: 13 October 2026.

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Historical development

Since the 1980s gambling has been debated in the Nitijela several times, and in each case the result has been prohibition rather than regulated legalisation. The most accessible record of these debates is the Marshall Islands Journal, the country’s weekly newspaper, whose “Back in the Day” column reprints items from its archive.

In January 1987 the Journal reported that a bill introduced by President Amata Kabua would legalise gambling for foreign visitors and certain Marshallese, permitting “gaming houses” and giving the Cabinet authority to license and control casinos. A public hearing followed (Marshall Islands Journal, archive item from 16 January 1987). No record was found showing that this bill was enacted. In February 1996 the Journal reported that the President, opening a Nitijela session, had broadly supported legislation “to enable the national government to provide conditions whereby gambling will be permitted” (Marshall Islands Journal, archive item from 23 February 1996).

By early 1998 gambling was taking place openly in Majuro, and the President had established a commission to regulate it. In March 1998 the Journal described gambling as an “unregulated mishmash” and predicted “a confrontation of monumental proportions” in the Nitijela over legislation “geared to stifle ongoing gambling activity”. It reported that the industry had supporters in the executive and among senior politicians, some of whom were themselves involved in gambling businesses. Opponents, led mainly by church groups, argued that gambling was “pulling food off family tables” and causing “serious marriage strife” (Marshall Islands Journal, archive item from 13 March 1998). A special committee held public hearings in Majuro and on Ebeye, Kwajalein Atoll. Its chairman reported that “no one spoke in favor of gambling” at either set of hearings, and a bill to void the existing gambling law was expected to come to a vote that week (Marshall Islands Journal, archive item from 20 March 1998).

The result was Public Law 1998-64, the Gaming and Recreation Prohibition Act 1998, which commenced on 9 April 1998 according to the official text published by the Nitijela. Enforcement followed within months. In July 1998 the Journal reported that national and local police, acting on High Court search warrants, had shut down and locked up gambling machines at four businesses in Majuro, with warrants authorising the seizure of 28 poker-style machines (Marshall Islands Journal, archive item from 24 July 1998). The Act has stayed in force since then. It was carried into the 2014 consolidation of the Revised Code, and no amendment before 2025 was found.

Legal framework

Checking gambling legislation and licensing

The Gaming and Recreation Prohibition Act 1998

The Act is short, with five sections, and sits in Title 31 (Crimes and Punishments) of the Revised Code. Its text is available from the Pacific Islands Legal Information Institute (PacLII, 31 MIRC Ch.4) and, as originally enacted, from the Nitijela website. Its main provisions are as follows.

General prohibition (§402(1)). “No person, natural or corporate, shall engage in any form of gaming or gambling activities within the Republic.” The prohibition is not limited to organisers, operators or particular games.
Devices (§402(2)). No person may possess, use, sell or buy, directly or indirectly, gaming or gambling machines, appliances or devices used to conduct or promote gaming or gambling.
Definition (§402(3)). “Gaming” or “gambling” means staking or wagering money or another thing of value on a game of chance or on an uncertain event. The definition expressly includes operating a slot machine or similar device on which value is staked and won or lost.
Exemption (§403). The Act does not prohibit nonprofit organisations from holding bingo, raffles and cakewalks to raise funds, provided the activities further the organisation’s stated purposes. A permit is required for each occasion from the appropriate local government council, and the permit fee may not exceed US$20.
Penalties (§404). As originally enacted, a breach of §402 was a misdemeanour punishable by a fine of up to US$1,000, imprisonment of up to one year, or both. A civil penalty of US$1,000 also applied for each day the violation continued.
Police powers (§405). Where national or local police suspect an offence, they may enter premises (by force if necessary), close premises, detain suspects, remove or impound suspected equipment and confiscate suspected profits.

Because the definition covers both games of chance and wagers on uncertain events, the prohibition extends to casino games, gaming machines, sports and event betting, and lotteries. Lotteries are not named separately, but a lottery involves staking money on a chance outcome and therefore falls within the definition. The Act contains no exception for state-run lotteries, and no national lottery operates in the Marshall Islands.

The 2025 amendment

The Gaming and Recreation Prohibition (Amendment) Act 2025 (Bill No. 63ND1) was passed by the Nitijela on 1 October 2025, during its 46th Constitution Regular Session, and is catalogued by PacLII as Public Law 2025-50. It took effect on certification in October 2025; the exact day is illegible in the published scan. Its long title states its purpose: to raise the offence from a misdemeanour to a third-degree felony, increase the maximum fine and extend the term of imprisonment. The amended §404 provides that any person, natural or corporate, who breaches §402 commits a felony of the third degree, punishable by a fine of up to US$5,000, imprisonment of up to 35 months, or both. The civil penalty of US$1,000 per day of continuing violation is retained. The amended §403 restates the nonprofit exemption for fundraising “solely in furtherance of the stated purposes” of the organisation, and keeps the per-occasion permit and the US$20 fee cap.

Relationship with the Criminal Code

The Criminal Code 2011 (P.L. 2011-59) supplies the general grading scheme into which the amended offence fits. Under the Code, a crime is a felony if it is so designated or if its maximum sentence exceeds one year. A third-degree felony carries a maximum of 35 months’ imprisonment (§6.06) and a maximum fine of US$5,000 for an individual or US$25,000 for a corporation or unincorporated association (§6.03). A misdemeanour carries a maximum of one year. The 2025 amendment therefore aligned the gambling offence with the Code’s third-degree felony band. The amendment itself states a single fine ceiling of US$5,000 for “any person, natural or corporate”; how courts would reconcile that figure with the Code’s higher general ceiling for corporations has not been tested in any reported decision found. The gambling prohibition itself remains in Title 31, Chapter 4, rather than in the Criminal Code.

The Compact of Free Association

The Marshall Islands is a sovereign state in free association with the United States. The Compact of Free Association, as amended in 2003 and again in 2023, governs defence arrangements and US economic assistance. The 2023 amendments were approved in the United States by Public Law 118-42 of 9 March 2024 and given domestic force in the RMI by the 2023 Compact of Free Association, as Amended (Implementation) Act, 2024 (P.L. 2024-03), passed by the Nitijela on 10 April 2024. The implementing Act deals with funding, trust arrangements and appointments, and contains nothing on gambling. Gambling policy remains a matter for the Nitijela, and US federal or state gambling laws are not part of RMI domestic law.

Regulator and licensing model

The Marshall Islands follows a prohibition model: rather than licensing gambling (as most countries do) or reserving it to a state monopoly, a single operator chosen by law, it bans gambling outright. As a result there is no gambling regulator, no gaming commission, no licence categories, no licensing fees and no register of authorised operators.

The only authorisation the law provides is the per-occasion permit for nonprofit bingo, raffles and cakewalks. A cakewalk is a traditional fundraising game in which participants walk around a marked circle and a cake is awarded to the person standing on a chosen spot when the music stops. Permits are issued by the local government council for the atoll concerned, such as the Majuro Atoll Local Government, not by a national authority. The statutory fee cap of US$20 shows that these permits are intended as a light check on community fundraising rather than as a source of revenue. Commercial or for-profit gambling cannot be authorised under the Act.

Enforcement belongs to the national and local police under §405, and prosecutions go before the courts in the ordinary way. No published enforcement statistics were found for the period after 1998.

Online gambling

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The Marshall Islands has no law that licenses or specifically regulates online gambling, and no online gambling product is lawfully available there. The 1998 Act does not mention the internet, but its terms are not tied to physical premises. It forbids any person “to engage in any form of gaming or gambling activities within the Republic”, and its definition of gambling turns on staking money on chance or an uncertain event, not on the place or means by which this is done. On a plain reading, therefore, a person in the Marshall Islands who stakes money with an online casino or betting site is engaging in gambling within the Republic. No court decision applying the Act to online gambling was found, so this reading has not been judicially confirmed.

Several practical points follow:

No licensing route. An operator cannot obtain a Marshallese licence to offer online gambling, either to local residents or as an offshore licensing base. The 1987 and 1996 legislative initiatives described above concerned gambling in general, and no later proposal for internet gaming licences was found in parliamentary or press sources.
No blocking regime. No statute or published order was found requiring internet service providers to block gambling websites, or requiring banks to block gambling payments. Enforcement relies on the general police powers in §405, which were designed for premises and physical machines.
Devices. Section 402(2) prohibits machines and devices “used to conduct or promote” gambling. It is aimed at slot and poker machines; whether it would be applied to a phone or computer used for online gambling has not been tested in any reported case found.

In short, offshore online casinos accessible from the Marshall Islands operate without any local authorisation, and the law gives residents no lawful way to use them.

Position of players

The Marshall Islands is one of the jurisdictions in which the law applies to players as well as operators. Section 402(1) applies to “any person, natural or corporate” who engages in gaming or gambling, and §402(3) defines gambling by reference to the act of staking or wagering. A player who places a stake is therefore within the prohibition on its face. Since the 2025 amendment, a breach is a third-degree felony with a maximum penalty of a US$5,000 fine, 35 months’ imprisonment, or both, in addition to any civil penalty.

Some points should not be overstated. The sources reviewed record enforcement against gambling machines and the businesses running them, notably the 1998 seizures in Majuro, but no reported prosecution of an individual player, and none relating to online gambling, was found. Whether, and how often, the police or the Attorney General pursue individual players is a matter of enforcement practice on which no public data was found. Taking part in a permitted nonprofit bingo, raffle or cakewalk is lawful, since the activity falls within the §403 exemption. No statutory minimum gambling age exists, as there is no lawful commercial gambling to which one could apply.

Players should also note that a licence issued to an online operator in another country does not create an exception under Marshallese law, and that disputes with an unlicensed offshore operator could not be brought to any local regulator.

Taxation

Because no commercial gambling is lawful, the Marshall Islands has no gambling tax, no levy on gross gaming revenue (GGR, meaning stakes less winnings paid out) and no licence fees beyond the nominal permit fee of up to US$20 for nonprofit fundraising events. The fines and the civil penalty of US$1,000 per day under §404 are sanctions, not taxes. No provision dealing specifically with the tax treatment of gambling winnings was found in the sources reviewed; given that gambling is unlawful, the question rarely arises in practice. Anyone with a specific query should seek advice from the RMI tax authorities.

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

The country’s main protection against gambling harm is the prohibition itself. The 1998 debates show that the ban was adopted for social reasons: opponents argued that gambling was taking money away from household food budgets and harming marriages, and church groups led the campaign. The 2025 amendment, which almost tripled the maximum prison term and quintupled the maximum fine, suggests that the Nitijela continues to see prohibition as the appropriate response.

Because there is no licensed market, the tools found in regulated jurisdictions do not exist in the Marshall Islands: there is no national self-exclusion register, no operator duty of care, no deposit or loss limits, and no regulator handling player complaints. No gambling-specific helpline or treatment service was found. General mental health and substance use services fall within the remit of the Ministry of Health and Human Services, whose website reported the inaugural meeting of the Pacific Behavioral Health Collaborating Council in Majuro in March 2024 (RMI Ministry of Health and Human Services). People affected by gambling, including through offshore online sites, may need to approach these general services or online support organisations based abroad. General guidance is available in our responsible gambling guide.

Residents who use offshore online sites have no local recourse if winnings are withheld or accounts are closed. They are also exposed to the risks associated with unlicensed operators generally, including weak identity checks, unclear terms and limited protection of funds.

Recent and upcoming developments

Penalties raised (October 2025). The Nitijela passed the Gaming and Recreation Prohibition (Amendment) Act 2025 on 1 October 2025. It took effect on certification in October 2025, turning the gambling offence into a third-degree felony with a maximum fine of US$5,000 and up to 35 months’ imprisonment. This is the first substantive change to the 1998 Act since its enactment.
Exemption restated (October 2025). The same Act re-enacted the nonprofit exemption for bingo, raffles and cakewalks, keeping the per-occasion permit and the US$20 permit fee cap.
Compact implementation (2024). The amended Compact of Free Association was given domestic force by P.L. 2024-03 in April 2024. It does not affect gambling law, but it shapes the public finances against which any future proposal to raise revenue from gambling would be weighed (Compact Implementation Act 2024).
No liberalisation proposals found. No bill to license casinos, a lottery or online gambling was found before the Nitijela in 2023–2026, and no reported proposal for internet gaming licences was found. The direction of recent legislation has been towards stricter enforcement.

Readers should check the Nitijela’s list of bills and acts for later changes, since amendments are published there and on PacLII some time after enactment.

Casino listings for players in the Marshall Islands

The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database and do not show that any operator is licensed in the Marshall Islands. No operator can be licensed there: the Gaming and Recreation Prohibition Act 1998 prohibits all forms of gambling except permitted nonprofit bingo, raffles and cakewalks, and since October 2025 a breach is a felony. The listings must not be read as an indication that playing online casino games from the Marshall Islands is lawful.

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Key points

Top Rated Online Casinos for Marshall Islands

Historical development

Legal framework

The Gaming and Recreation Prohibition Act 1998

The 2025 amendment

Relationship with the Criminal Code

The Compact of Free Association

Regulator and licensing model

Online gambling

Position of players

Taxation

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

Recent and upcoming developments

Casino listings for players in the Marshall Islands

Related country guides

Sources and further reading

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