Legal casino gambling age in Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia prohibits gambling in all its forms. There are no casinos, no national lottery, no licensed betting and no licensing route for online gambling. The prohibition rests on Islamic law (Sharia), which the Basic Law of Governance makes the foundation of the legal system, and is reinforced by modern statutes, most importantly the Anti-Cyber Crime Law of 2007, which makes it an offence to prepare, publish or promote material for gambling websites. The Communications, Space and Technology Commission (CST), formerly the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), operates a national website-filtering system through which gambling sites are blocked. This guide explains the legal basis of the ban, how it is enforced, the position of players, and the narrow areas, such as promotional prize draws and horse racing without betting, that are lawful.
Key points
- Gambling is prohibited under Sharia, which Saudi courts are required to apply under Article 48 of the Basic Law of Governance (1992). There is no codified penal code; most gambling offences are punished at the judge’s discretion (ta’zir).
- The Anti-Cyber Crime Law (Royal Decree No. M/17 of 2007) punishes the preparation, publication and promotion of material for gambling sites with up to five years’ imprisonment, a fine of up to SAR 3 million, or both.
- No regulator issues gambling licences, and no operator, online or land-based, is authorised to offer casino games or betting to people in Saudi Arabia.
- Gambling websites are blocked through the national filtering system run by the CST in collaboration with the Permanent Internet Security Committee.
- Lawful exceptions are narrow: licensed commercial prize competitions that require no purchase, and horse racing organised by the Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia, at which betting is banned.
Last reviewed: 7 October 2026.
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Historical development
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was unified in 1932 as a state governed according to Islamic law, and gambling has never been lawful there. In Islamic jurisprudence the relevant term is maysir, usually translated as gambling or games of chance, together with qimar, wagering in which one party’s gain is another’s loss. The Qur’an groups gambling with intoxicants, idols and drawing lots for decisions as “evil of Satan’s handiwork” and instructs believers to “shun them” (Qur’an 5:90, Quran.com). Because the prohibition is treated as a matter of religious law rather than social policy, Saudi Arabia has not followed the path of states that first banned gambling and later created a licensing system.
For most of the twentieth century there was no separate gambling statute: the ban was applied by the Sharia courts. Modern legislation began to address gambling indirectly as new technologies arrived. When public internet access was introduced, a Council of Ministers resolution of 2001 set out categories of prohibited online content, including material “breaching public decency” and content “infringing the sanctity of Islam”, and the state built a central filtering system that blocked, among other things, gambling sites (OpenNet Initiative, 2007). The Anti-Cyber Crime Law followed in 2007 and is the first statute to name gambling websites expressly.
Enforcement against land-based gambling has, in the cases reported in the press, concerned small private card games. In September 2018 police in Makkah raided a house where 16 Bangladeshi expatriates were playing cards for money, seized SAR 16,000 and referred the suspects to court (Gulf News, 2018). In July 2020 Riyadh Police arrested 17 expatriates for gambling with cards in an apartment and referred them to the Public Prosecution (Gulf News, 2020).
Legal framework
Sharia and the Basic Law of Governance
Saudi Arabia has no written constitution in the Western sense. The Basic Law of Governance of 1992 states in Article 7 that the regime “derives its power from the Holy Qur’an and the Prophet’s Sunnah”, which “rule over this and all other State Laws”. Article 23 requires the state to protect the Islamic creed and “cater to the application of Shari’ah”, and Article 48 requires the courts to apply “the provisions of Islamic Shari’ah to cases brought before them”. Article 38 provides that no crime or punishment may be established except “under a judicial or law provision”.
Islamic criminal law distinguishes three kinds of punishment. Hudud are fixed penalties for offences specified in the Qur’an or Sunnah, such as theft, adultery and highway robbery. Qisas is retribution for homicide and bodily harm. Ta’zir covers every other offence for which no fixed punishment is defined; for these, the judge has broad discretion to impose imprisonment, fines, forfeiture of assets or travel bans (Hamad in association with Youssry Saleh & Partners, 2025). Gambling is not listed among the hudud offences in that briefing and is generally treated as a ta’zir offence. The same briefing notes that flogging has been abolished in ta’zir cases, with courts now imposing imprisonment or fines instead for most discretionary crimes; it does not give a date for this change. Because sentences are discretionary, there is no published tariff of penalties for taking part in gambling.
The Anti-Cyber Crime Law 2007
The Anti-Cyber Crime Law, issued by Royal Decree No. M/17 of 8 Rabi I 1428H (26 March 2007) and published in English by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, is the main statute directed at online gambling. Article 6 imposes imprisonment of up to five years, a fine of up to SAR 3 million, or both, on any person who commits one of four offences. The third is the “preparation, publication, and promotion of material for pornographic or gambling sites which violates public morals”. The first paragraph of the same article separately penalises producing, transmitting or storing material that impinges on “public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy”. The UNODC’s SHERLOC database records that courts may also order a summary of the judgment to be published.
Other provisions extend the reach of Article 6:
- Article 9 punishes anyone who incites, assists or collaborates in an offence, up to the maximum penalty if the offence is committed and up to half of it if it is not.
- Article 10 punishes attempts with up to half the maximum penalty.
- Article 13 allows confiscation of the equipment, software and proceeds used in an offence, and the temporary or permanent closure of a website or service venue that is the source of an offence, if its owner knew of the criminal activity.
The law assigns investigation and prosecution to the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution. In more recent official statements the prosecuting body is referred to as the Public Prosecution. The wording of Article 6 targets those who build, publish or promote gambling sites. It does not expressly make it an offence merely to visit or play on such a site; that question is addressed under the Position of players section below.
Commercial prize competitions
Saudi law distinguishes gambling from licensed promotional competitions. According to the Ministry of Commerce (September 2025), a business must obtain an electronic licence through the Chamber of Commerce before holding a commercial competition. It may not require a purchase as a condition of entering a draw, raise prices during the competition, or allow the organiser, its staff or their relatives to take part. Draws take place under Ministry supervision, prizes must be delivered within seven days of the draw, and the whole competition may last no more than sixty days. Breaches are punishable under the Anti-Commercial Fraud Law with imprisonment of up to three years, fines of up to SAR 1 million and public naming of the offender. The purchase requirement is the dividing line: an entry that must be bought becomes a stake, which is what makes a draw a lottery. In March 2024, for example, the Ministry referred six perfume retailers to the competent authorities for running Ramadan draws, with prizes including cars and camels, that required customers to buy goods in order to enter (Gulf News, 2024).
Regulator and licensing model
Saudi Arabia follows a prohibition model: rather than licensing gambling under a monopoly or a competitive market, the state forbids it entirely. Accordingly, there is no gambling regulator, no licensing authority and no register of permitted operators. Responsibility for the ban is divided among general state bodies:
- the courts, which apply Sharia and statute and set ta’zir penalties;
- the police and the Public Prosecution, which investigate and prosecute offences, including those under the Anti-Cyber Crime Law;
- the Communications, Space and Technology Commission, which administers the website-filtering service; and
- the Ministry of Commerce, which supervises lawful commercial competitions and acts against unlicensed or purchase-based draws.
The CST was established in 2001 (1422H) as the Saudi Communications Commission and renamed the Communications and Information Technology Commission in 2003 (1424H). In 2022, by Council of Ministers decision No. 235 dated 7/4/1444H, the government transferred responsibility for space regulation to the commission and renamed it the Communications, Space & Technology Commission (CST, Who we are). Many older sources still refer to it as the CITC.
Online gambling: what is permitted and how it is enforced
No form of online gambling is permitted. No Saudi authority licenses online casinos, sportsbooks, poker rooms or lotteries, and a foreign licence offers an operator no protection under Saudi law. Websites that offer gambling to people in Saudi Arabia, and anyone who prepares, publishes or promotes material for them, fall within Article 6 of the Anti-Cyber Crime Law.
Website blocking
The main enforcement tool is blocking: requiring internet service providers to prevent access to listed websites. The CST’s website filtering service is operated “in collaboration with the Permanent Internet Security Committee” and allows users to submit requests to block or unblock sites. In 2010 the then CITC told the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that it received between 700 and 1,000 blocking requests a day. Gambling websites were one of the named categories blocked, although more than 93% of blocked sites were pornographic. The commission explained that it combined commercial filtering lists, updated daily and covering more than 50 categories, with a local list built from public submissions and requests from a committee of government bodies (Asharq Al-Awsat, 2010). Testing by the OpenNet Initiative in the mid-2000s found that most gambling sites it checked were blocked. We found no more recent official statistics on how many gambling sites are blocked.
Promotion and payments
Because Article 6 covers the “promotion” of material for gambling sites, advertising an online casino or betting site to a Saudi audience, including through social media, falls within the offence. Article 9 extends liability to people who assist an offence. We found no published Saudi Central Bank rule specifically requiring banks to block gambling transactions. Whether domestic banks systematically block payments to gambling sites could not be verified from an official source.
Evidence of demand
Blocking does not eliminate demand. Trade press reported in August 2026, using search-interest data from the analytics firm Blask, that interest in online gambling brands among users in Saudi Arabia rose by about 79% in 2025, peaking in December 2025 (SiGMA, 2026). Another report based on the same data said interest had fallen back substantially by July 2026 (WN Hub, 2026). These are estimates by private analysts, not official figures. They indicate that some residents reach offshore sites, typically by using virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around the filter. Such access remains unlawful.
Position of players
Saudi law does not separate “operators” from “players” as clearly as licensing systems do. Taking part in gambling is itself prohibited under Sharia, and the reported cases show that participants, not only organisers, are arrested and referred for prosecution. The 16 card players in Makkah (2018) and the 17 in Riyadh (2020) were all players in private games, and in each case the police seized money found at the scene. We could not find published judgments or official statistics showing the sentences imposed in such cases. Because ta’zir penalties are discretionary, sentences may vary.
For online play, the position is less specific. The Anti-Cyber Crime Law expressly penalises preparing, publishing and promoting material for gambling sites; it does not contain a separate offence of placing bets online. However, a person who gambles online is still engaging in conduct that is prohibited under Sharia and may be prosecuted on that basis. We found no reported prosecution of an individual solely for playing at an offshore online casino. Readers should not take this to mean that such play is tolerated: no lawful route exists, and winnings from gambling would have no legal protection.
Foreign residents and visitors are subject to the same law. The arrests reported in the press have frequently involved expatriate workers.
Taxation
Because no form of gambling is lawful, Saudi Arabia has no gambling tax, no gaming duty and no system for taxing players’ winnings. We found no provision of Saudi tax law that treats gambling income as taxable. Money staked or won in unlawful gambling may instead be seized as the proceeds or instruments of an offence. The Anti-Cyber Crime Law (Article 13) expressly allows confiscation of proceeds, and police seized money in the reported card-game raids. By contrast, the prizes in licensed commercial competitions and the purses in horse racing are lawful because the participant stakes nothing.
Consumer protection and responsible gambling
Responsible gambling measures in licensed markets, such as deposit limits, self-exclusion registers and operator duties of care, presuppose a lawful market. Saudi Arabia has none of these. There is no national self-exclusion scheme, and we found no helpline or treatment service in the Kingdom dedicated specifically to gambling problems. The state’s approach to harm is prevention through prohibition and blocking.
People in Saudi Arabia who are concerned about their own or a relative’s gambling can seek help through general mental health services. The National Center for Mental Health Promotion publishes awareness material and a directory of mental health services. Players who use offshore sites have no consumer recourse in Saudi Arabia if an operator withholds funds or acts unfairly, since the contract is itself unlawful. General guidance on recognising problem gambling and on international support services is available in our responsible gambling guide.
Horse racing and other lawful competitions
Horse racing is the clearest example of a sport that flourishes in Saudi Arabia without betting. The Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1965 as the Equestrian Club. In 2020 King Salman approved its renaming as the Jockey Club. It organises thoroughbred racing at King Abdulaziz Racecourse in Riyadh during the winter season and at King Khalid Racecourse in Taif in the summer (Asian Racing Federation). An AFP report from Riyadh in 2016 noted that “betting is banned” at the track. Instead, race fans could make online picks before each race day, with a few winners receiving prizes of SAR 3,000 to 10,000 (AFP via Ahram Online, 2016).
Since 2020 the Jockey Club has staged the Saudi Cup, which opened with a purse of US$20 million and was then the world’s most valuable horse race. Total prize money for Saudi Cup night has since exceeded US$30 million (Saudi Cup overview). No betting on the race is lawful inside Saudi Arabia. The same principle underlies other prize events: competitions are lawful where prizes are funded by the organiser or sponsors and entrants pay no stake.
Recent and upcoming developments
- No legalisation announced (status at October 2026). Trade press reporting in August 2026 noted that government policy under Vision 2030 continues to focus on video games, esports and digital entertainment, “with no announced framework for casino licences, online sportsbooks or a regulated gambling market” (SiGMA, 2026). We found no bill, decree or official consultation on legalising gambling.
- “Gaming” means video games and esports. Saudi Arabia’s large investment in gaming refers to video games. The Esports World Cup was first held in Riyadh in 2024, organised by a non-profit foundation funded by the Public Investment Fund; its 2026 edition, with a reported prize pool of US$75 million, is reported to have been moved to Paris because of regional instability (this relocation could not be confirmed from an official source) (Esports World Cup overview). Media reports that describe Saudi Arabia as “betting on gaming” should not be read as references to gambling.
- Tourism projects. Large tourism developments under Vision 2030 have prompted speculation about relaxing social restrictions. We found no official statement that casinos or gambling will be permitted at any of these projects, and readers should treat such reports with caution unless they are confirmed by a Saudi authority.
- Commercial competition enforcement (2024–2025). The Ministry of Commerce acted in March 2024 against retailers running purchase-based Ramadan draws and in September 2025 restated the licensing rules for competitions, including the ban on requiring a purchase to enter.
- Offshore demand (2025–2026). Private analytics data reported in August 2026 suggested that online gambling interest rose sharply in 2025 before easing in 2026. No corresponding official enforcement statistics have been published.
Casino listings for players in Saudi Arabia
The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database and do not mean that any operator is licensed or permitted in Saudi Arabia. No Saudi authority licenses online gambling, and there is no official register of lawful operators. Gambling is prohibited under Saudi law, and promoting gambling websites is a criminal offence under the Anti-Cyber Crime Law. The listings must not be read as an indication that playing is lawful for people in Saudi Arabia.
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Sources and further reading
- Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Anti-Cyber Crime Law, Royal Decree No. M/17 of 8/3/1428H (English translation) (2007; accessed 7 October 2026).
- UNODC, SHERLOC, Saudi Arabia, Anti-Cyber Crime Law, Article 6 (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Constitute Project, Saudi Arabia’s Constitution of 1992 with Amendments through 2013 (Basic Law of Governance) (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Quran.com, Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:90–91 (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Hamad in association with Youssry Saleh & Partners, via Mondaq, Saudi Arabia Laws and Punishments (11 July 2025).
- Communications, Space & Technology Commission, Who we are (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Communications, Space & Technology Commission, Website Filtering (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Asharq Al-Awsat, Saudi Arabia: 300,000 Requests to Block Websites Annually (15 January 2010).
- OpenNet Initiative, Internet Filtering in Saudi Arabia (2007).
- Gulf News, 16 arrested for gambling in Makkah (September 2018).
- Gulf News, 17 expats held over gambling in Riyadh (12 July 2020).
- Ministry of Commerce, Requirements for organising commercial competitions (21 September 2025).
- Gulf News, Saudi Arabia: Businesses that offered private jets, luxury cars, camels as prizes in the dock (27 March 2024).
- Saudipedia, Jockey Club (JCSA) (accessed 7 October 2026).
- Asian Racing Federation, Member profile: Saudi Arabia (accessed 7 October 2026).
- AFP, via Ahram Online, Saudi passion for horseracing on show in Riyadh (12 December 2016).
- Wikipedia, Saudi Cup (accessed 7 October 2026).
- SiGMA, Data points to growing online gambling interest in Saudi Arabia (8 August 2026).
- WN Hub, In 2025, interest in online gambling in Saudi Arabia nearly doubled (10 August 2026).
- Wikipedia, Esports World Cup (accessed 7 October 2026).
- National Center for Mental Health Promotion, Official website (accessed 7 October 2026).
