Legal casino gambling age in MoldovaThe Republic of Moldova regulates gambling through a state monopoly with one exception. Under Law No. 291 of 16 December 2016 on the organisation and operation of games of chance, every form of gambling except casinos is reserved to the state. The monopoly is exercised by a wholly state-owned company, S.A. Loteria Națională a Moldovei (LNM). It covers lotteries, sports betting, gaming machines and gambling offered through electronic communications networks, which in practice means online gambling. A monopoly, in this sense, is a legal arrangement under which only one designated operator may lawfully offer a product. Land-based casinos are the only segment open to private companies, which need a licence from the Public Services Agency (Agenția Servicii Publice, ASP). Since 2018 LNM has run much of its business through two public-private partnerships (PPPs) with foreign gaming groups. They remain in place and have attracted a criminal investigation, a critical state audit and parliamentary debate. Private online casinos and bookmakers cannot obtain a Moldovan licence, and the ASP keeps a public blocklist of unauthorised gambling websites.
Key points
- Law No. 291/2016, published on 6 January 2017, replaced the 1999 Law on Games of Chance (No. 285-XIV). Article 3(1) makes all gambling other than casinos a state monopoly, and Article 47(1) expressly includes gambling organised through electronic communications networks.
- The monopoly operator is S.A. Loteria Națională a Moldovei, 100% state-owned. In 2025 it reported sales revenue of 13.26 billion lei and net profit of 290.7 million lei.
- In 2018 the state entered two 15-year PPPs: one with a consortium linked to Bulgaria’s National Lottery AD for lotteries and sports betting, and one with Novo Gaming M Technologies, part of Austria’s Novomatic group, for gaming machines. As of October 2026 we found no evidence that either contract has been terminated.
- Article 50¹ of Law No. 291/2016 underpins website blocking. The ASP publishes a list of unauthorised gambling sites, which contained 7,940 entries on 1 October 2026, and internet providers must block them on instruction from the communications regulator ARCOM.
- Players must be 21 for high-risk games (casinos and gaming machines) and 18 for lotteries and sports betting. A 6% “vice tax” on money deposited into gaming accounts and on lottery ticket prices is proposed for 2027 and was approved by Parliament in first reading on 10 September 2026.
Last reviewed: 6 October 2026.
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Historical development
Before 2017 gambling in Moldova was governed by Law No. 285-XIV of 18 February 1999 on games of chance, which allowed licensed private operators across several segments. According to the CIS Legislation database, that law ceased to be in force on 6 January 2017, when it was replaced by Law No. 291/2016.
The move to a monopoly followed a political campaign against illegal gambling halls. In June 2016 Vlad Plahotniuc, then leader of the governing Democratic Party, announced a crackdown on illegal casinos and gaming addiction, and police closures of gambling venues followed later that year, as summarised in a Casino News Daily report of May 2018. Law No. 291 was adopted on 16 December 2016 and published in Monitorul Oficial No. 2-8 on 6 January 2017 (official text on legis.md). Its Article 3(1) declares that the organisation and operation of gambling in Moldova, “with the exception of the operation of casinos”, constitutes a state monopoly.
The 2018 public-private partnerships
In May 2018 the Public Property Agency selected two foreign partners. According to Ziarul Financiar (9 May 2018), NGM SPC Limited, a consortium associated with Bulgaria’s National Lottery AD, won the contract for lotteries and sports betting, and Novo Gaming M Technologies GmbH, part of the Novomatic group, won the contract for gaming machines. The contracts provided that the state side would receive 75% of lottery revenue, 90% of sports betting revenue and 51% of gaming-machine revenue. The Court of Accounts later described the lottery and betting partnership as a 15-year arrangement running from 2018 to 2033, with NGM Company SRL as the operating private partner (Ziarul Național, 18 December 2023).
On 22 October 2020 the then Prosecutor General, Alexandr Stoianoglo, announced a criminal case into abuse of office by officials of the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure and the Public Property Agency. He alleged that the tender conditions had excluded domestic companies, that the state budget had lost about 400 million lei over 2017 to 2019, and that VAT exemptions alone had cost 36 million lei between November 2018 and September 2019 (Adevărul; NewsMaker). The prosecutors also claimed that, in practice, the state side had received only about 11.4% of the proceeds, against the 75% share promised in the contract. These were allegations, and we found no reported court outcome. NGM Company rejected what it called speculation (Jurnal.md).
The partnerships were not cancelled. The Court of Accounts audited them in Decision No. 52 of 15 December 2023. As reported by Ziarul Național, the audit found that LNM had paid around 553.7 million lei in taxes, duties and dividends over almost five years, far more than in 2012 to 2017. It also found that the dividends originally projected, about 140 million euros, had been achieved to only about 15%, that the public partner lacked full information on the online lottery and betting products in circulation, and that no single state database existed to supervise gambling and its cash flows. Reporting on 1 October 2026, Logos Press referred to both 2018 contracts and to MPs questioning a monopoly run with private partners; we found no report that either contract had been terminated.
Legal framework
Law No. 291/2016
The principal statute is Law No. 291 of 16 December 2016 on the organisation and operation of games of chance (Legea nr. 291/2016 cu privire la organizarea și desfășurarea jocurilor de noroc). Versions of the text on the official legislation portal record amending laws including Law No. 26 of 11 March 2019, Law No. 195 of 25 November 2021 (in force from 1 January 2022) and Law No. 302 of 19 December 2024. The provisions most relevant here are:
- Article 3 sets state policy objectives, including protecting “the life and health of citizens”, and in paragraph (1) establishes the monopoly.
- Article 5 names the Ministry of Finance and the Public Services Agency as the competent authorities. The Agency licenses casinos, keeps the registers of gambling rules and certified equipment and administers the unified state electronic monitoring system.
- Article 6(2) distinguishes games with “increased social risk”, such as casino games and gaming machines, from games with “low social risk”, such as lotteries and sports betting. The distinction drives the age limits and the advertising rules.
- Article 13(3) sets the age limits and bars certain other people from playing (see below).
- Articles 19, 40, 43 and 47 place lotteries, gaming machines, betting and gambling through electronic communications networks within the monopoly, according to an analysis of the law by Stati and Botnarenco (2021).
- Article 50¹ is the legal basis for blocking unauthorised gambling websites, as cited by the communications regulator ARCOM.
- Article 53 governs advertising and Article 54 lists breaches of the law.
Criminal and contravention law
Law No. 257 of 16 December 2020 added Article 242³ to the Criminal Code. It criminalises organising or operating, without authorisation, gambling that constitutes a state monopoly. According to Stati and Botnarenco, the basic offence carries a fine of 2,000 to 4,000 conventional units, and the most serious form, involving exceptionally large profits, an organised criminal group or money laundering, carries up to five years’ imprisonment. Legal entities face fines of up to 10,000 conventional units and a ban on certain activities. Law No. 302/2024 also amended Article 277¹ of the Contravention Code, which penalises unauthorised gambling promotion.
Regulator and licensing model
Moldova has no independent gambling regulator. Responsibilities are split as follows:
- Ministry of Finance: a competent authority under Article 5, responsible for tax policy, including the 2027 gambling tax proposal.
- Public Services Agency (ASP): issues casino licences, keeps the gambling registers and the state monitoring system, and compiles the list of unauthorised gambling websites (ASP, June 2022).
- Public Property Agency: exercises the state’s ownership rights over LNM and is the public partner in the PPP contracts (Public Property Agency).
- ARCOM: the electronic communications regulator, which instructs internet providers to block listed sites.
The monopoly operator
S.A. Loteria Națională a Moldovei was created in 2011 under Government Decision No. 371/2011 and describes itself as responsible for “ensuring the state monopoly” (LNM). According to the Public Property Agency, the company is 100% state-owned, employed 162 people in 2025, and in 2025 recorded sales revenue of 13.26 billion lei and net profit of 290.69 million lei; dividends of 232.56 million lei (80% of that profit) were paid to the state in 2026. Logos Press reports that its sales revenue rose from 4.46 billion lei in 2021. Sales revenue includes stakes, so it is not the same as gross gaming revenue (GGR), which is stakes minus winnings paid. LNM offers instant, classic and number lotteries, sports betting, gaming halls and two online platforms, Slot.md and 7777.md.
Casino licences
Casinos are the only gambling segment open to private operators. Licences are issued by the ASP under Law No. 291/2016 and Law No. 160/2011 on the regulation of entrepreneurial activity by permits. The ASP service page and the Public Services Portal list the main conditions:
- minimum share capital of 5,000,000 lei, at least 70% of it in cash;
- at least five years’ experience organising gambling in Moldova or in an EU member state;
- insurance or a guarantee covering players’ winnings for at least the amount of the share capital;
- gaming equipment connected to the state monitoring system, and staff who are at least 21 and have no criminal record;
- a licence tax of 600,000 lei per gaming table and 130,000 lei per roulette unit, with a processing time of ten working days.
We did not find an official published count of licensed casinos at the time of review.
Online gambling: what is permitted and how it is enforced
Because Article 47(1) of Law No. 291/2016 places gambling organised through electronic communications networks within the state monopoly, only LNM may offer online gambling to people in Moldova. LNM sells lottery and betting products online and runs Slot.md, which its website calls “the first legal online slots platform in Moldova, created in partnership with the National Lottery” and which requires players to be at least 21 (LNM). Private companies, whether based in Moldova or abroad, cannot obtain a licence to offer online casino games or online betting. Any such offer to Moldovan residents is unauthorised.
Blocking of unauthorised websites
Moldova uses domain blocking: internet providers prevent users in the country from reaching listed websites. The system has two steps:
- The ASP identifies web pages, platforms and applications offering unauthorised gambling and publishes them as open data. The list contained 7,940 entries when last updated on 1 October 2026, up from 1,072 in June 2022 (ASP).
- Under Article 50¹ of Law No. 291/2016 and the regulator’s Decision No. 1 of 21 January 2021, providers of electronic communications services must ensure the “immediate blocking of access” to listed sites (ARCOM; Orange Moldova).
Radio Europa Liberă reported on 14 August 2026 that 149 of the roughly 7,600 domains then on the list used Moldova’s own .md extension, that operators quickly create mirror sites and advertise through social media, and that a major provider acknowledged users circumvent blocks through VPNs, proxies and alternative DNS services. According to the association’s own website, from November 2022 an association of former law-enforcement officers also searched for illegal sites under a cooperation agreement with LNM, and by August 2023 it had reported 500 to the authorities (Ordine și Lege). We found no statutory scheme for blocking payments to unauthorised operators.
Advertising
Article 53 has long restricted gambling promotion. A 2020 Government opinion on a legislative proposal noted, for example, that Article 53(2) prohibited promotional actions in casinos. Moldova then had a near-total ban on gambling advertising, with promotion allowed only inside gambling venues, according to a summary by Play Responsibly. Law No. 302 of 19 December 2024, published in Monitorul Oficial on 10 January 2025, relaxed the ban for low-risk games. Its new paragraphs (23) to (28) of Article 53 allow:
- sponsorship and charitable activity by organisers of low-risk games;
- advertising between 22:00 and 07:00, with a warning on the harms of gambling taking up at least 20% of the time or space;
- display of an official sponsor’s brand during sports events;
- advertising in periodicals, limited to 15% of an edition’s volume and also carrying the 20% warning;
- A4-size lottery materials at authorised points of sale, while publishing results online is not treated as advertising.
The bill was introduced by two MPs and passed in second reading with 57 votes. Its sponsors argued that the total ban could not be enforced during live broadcasts of international sport (Unimedia, 19 December 2024). The same law aligned the Audiovisual Media Services Code with these rules and added new advertising breaches to Article 54. The new exceptions are framed around games with low social risk, not casino games or gaming machines.
Position of players
Moldovan law focuses its criminal sanctions on operators. Article 242³ of the Criminal Code applies to those who organise or operate monopoly games without authorisation. The position of players is less clear. Stati and Botnarenco note that Article 54(2)(b³) of Law No. 291/2016 lists participation in Moldova in gambling organised through electronic communications networks without authorisation as a breach of the law. They treat this as a breach of the gambling law, not a crime, while suggesting that some forms of participation could in theory amount to complicity (Juridice Moldova, 2021). That complicity argument is an academic view. We could not confirm from the full statute or the Contravention Code what penalty, if any, applies to an individual player, and we found no reported case of a player being fined or prosecuted for using an offshore site.
A person playing on an unauthorised website has no Moldovan licence holder to complain to, no protection of funds and no access to LNM’s self-exclusion scheme.
Taxation
The tax position could only be partly verified from primary sources:
- Casinos pay a licence tax of 600,000 lei per gaming table and 130,000 lei per roulette unit (ASP).
- LNM pays taxes and dividends to the state. 80% of its 2025 profit, 232.56 million lei, was paid to the state as dividends in 2026 (Public Property Agency). The 2020 criminal investigation referred to VAT exemptions on gambling services (Adevărul).
- The private PPP partner pays corporate income tax at 12%, according to NGM Company’s own statement (Jurnal.md).
The main change ahead is a new tax on players. The Government approved its fiscal and customs policy for 2027 on 8 September 2026. It includes “a vice tax of 6% on participation in games of chance and lotteries”, charged on money deposited to fund gaming accounts and on the price of lottery tickets (Ministry of Finance; Cotidianul). Parliament approved the package in first reading on 10 September 2026 with 54 votes, and the opposition announced amendments for the second reading (Vocea Basarabiei). The tax is not yet law. We could not verify from a primary source how gambling winnings are currently treated under the Fiscal Code, so readers should check the position with the State Fiscal Service.
Consumer protection and responsible gambling
Article 13(3) of Law No. 291/2016 prohibits participation by people under 21 in games with increased social risk and by people under 18 in games with low social risk. It also bars people placed under judicial guardianship and people whom a “competent authority” has reported as unable to take part in gambling. Casino staff in direct contact with gaming must be at least 21.
We found no national, cross-operator self-exclusion register established by statute. LNM runs its own scheme. A player can ask to be excluded from all platforms the company operates, including Slot.md, 7777.md and its gaming halls, by submitting a form by email or at a gaming hall or the head office, and can later ask for the exclusion to be revoked using a separate form (LNM self-exclusion procedure). LNM’s responsible gaming pages offer a self-assessment test, counselling and a telephone line, 078875555, listed on its home page. It does not cover casinos or unauthorised websites. See also our responsible gambling guide.
In August 2026 Moldovan media reported a figure cited by the Prime Minister that residents spent about 10 billion lei on gambling in 2025, and an addiction specialist estimated that only about 15% of people with a gambling problem seek help (Zugo.md, 10 August 2026). We did not find a national gambling prevalence survey.
Recent and upcoming developments
- Advertising reform (2024 to 2025). Law No. 302/2024, adopted on 19 December 2024 and published on 10 January 2025, introduced limited exceptions to the advertising ban for low-risk games.
- Parliamentary scrutiny of LNM (2026). On 1 October 2026 Logos Press reported MPs’ questions about LNM’s rapidly rising profits and the logic of a monopoly operated through private partners. We found no published bill to end the monopoly or the PPPs.
- 6% vice tax (2026 to 2027). Proposed in the 2027 fiscal policy, approved by the Government on 8 September 2026 and by Parliament in first reading on 10 September 2026. As of 6 October 2026 we had not found a report of the final vote.
Casino listings for players in Moldova
The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. They do not show that an operator is authorised in Moldova. Under Law No. 291/2016 only the state-owned Loteria Națională a Moldovei may offer online gambling, so no private online casino can hold a Moldovan licence, and the listings must not be read as an indication that playing with these operators is lawful. Readers can check the ASP list of unauthorised gambling sites.
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Sources and further reading
- Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, Law No. 291 of 16 December 2016 on the organisation and operation of games of chance (consolidated text, legis.md) (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, Law No. 291/2016, PDF version, Monitorul Oficial No. 2-8, art. 3 (2017; accessed 6 October 2026).
- Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, Law No. 302 of 19 December 2024 amending certain normative acts (2024).
- CIS Legislation, Law of the Republic of Moldova No. 285-XIV “About gamblings” (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Stati, V. and Botnarenco, M. (Juridice Moldova), Încălcarea legislației privind organizarea și desfășurarea jocurilor de noroc care constituie monopol de stat: analiză de drept penal (2021).
- Government of the Republic of Moldova, Draft decision approving the opinion on a legislative proposal on gambling advertising (2020).
- Public Services Agency, Casino maintenance activity (licensing service page) (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Public Services Portal, Licence for casino maintenance activity (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Public Services Agency, List of web pages/platforms/applications through which unauthorised games of chance are accessed (updated 1 October 2026).
- Public Services Agency, Agenția Servicii Publice a identificat 1072 pagini web și platforme de jocuri de noroc neautorizate (2022).
- ARCOM, În atenția furnizorilor de servicii de comunicații electronice accesibile publicului (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Orange Moldova, Furnizorii de Internet, obligați să blocheze accesul la platformele neautorizate de jocuri de noroc (2021).
- Court of Accounts of the Republic of Moldova, Decision No. 52 of 15 December 2023 on the compliance audit of the public-private partnerships of S.A. Loteria Națională a Moldovei (2023).
- Ziarul Național, Verdictul dat de Curtea de Conturi: Loteria Națională a Moldovei, o adevărată mină de aur pentru bugetul R. Moldova (2023).
- Public Property Agency, Loteria Națională a Moldovei (company profile) (accessed 6 October 2026).
- S.A. Loteria Națională a Moldovei, About LNM (accessed 6 October 2026).
- S.A. Loteria Națională a Moldovei, Slot.md (accessed 6 October 2026).
- S.A. Loteria Națională a Moldovei, Self-exclusion procedure (accessed 6 October 2026).
- S.A. Loteria Națională a Moldovei, Responsible gaming (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Ministry of Finance, Politica fiscală și vamală pentru anul 2027, aprobată de Guvern (2026).
- Cotidianul, Politica fiscală pentru 2027: jocurile de noroc vor avea o taxă de 6% (2026).
- Vocea Basarabiei, Politica fiscală pentru 2027, votată în primă lectură de Parlament (2026).
- Ziarul Financiar, Republica Moldova cedează unor companii europene controlul industriei jocurilor de noroc (2018).
- Casino News Daily, Moldova Swaps Gambling Monopoly for Partnership with Two Foreign Companies (2018).
- Adevărul, Dosar penal în cazul afacerii Loteria Națională a Moldovei (2020).
- NewsMaker, Sute de milioane de lei ratate la buget, prin Loteria Națională? Schema prin care s-a pus monopol pe jocurile de noroc (2020).
- Jurnal.md, Partenerul privat al Loteriei Naționale a Moldovei vine cu precizări referitor la activitatea NGM Company (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Logos Press, Moldova National Lottery profit surge raises questions (2026).
- Radio Europa Liberă Moldova, Caracatița sloturilor online din Moldova (2026).
- Zugo.md, Loteria Națională și-a triplat veniturile în cinci ani. Moldovenii cheltuie miliarde pe jocuri de noroc (2026).
- Unimedia, Publicitatea pentru jocurile de noroc nu va mai fi interzisă în Moldova (2024).
- Play Responsibly (Romania), Republica Moldova interzice publicitatea la toate tipurile de jocuri de noroc (accessed 6 October 2026).
- Ordine și Lege, Loteria Moldovei (2023).
