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Syria Online Casino Guide

Published by Casino News Daily editorial teamReviewed byFilip RadulovicOur editorial approach

Syria has no lawful gambling market. Games of chance are prohibited under the Penal Code of 1949, there is no gambling regulator and no licensing system, and no operator is authorised to offer casino games, sports betting or online gambling to people in Syria. The only significant legal exception for decades, the state lottery linked to the Damascus International Fair, has not held a draw since the fall of the former government in December 2024. In June 2026 the authorities began blocking online gambling and betting websites. This guide sets out the history, the law as far as it can be verified, the position of players and the sanctions context.

Key points

The Penal Code (Legislative Decree No. 148 of 1949) criminalises running gambling premises and taking part in games of chance; press summaries of articles 618 to 620 describe imprisonment of three months to two years for organisers and a fine for players.
Under the Constitutional Declaration of 13 March 2025, legislation already in force remains in effect unless amended or repealed, so the gambling provisions continue to apply.
The state lottery, dating from 1954, has held no draw since December 2024; draws were reported in April 2025 to be suspended indefinitely.
On 14 June 2026 the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology announced that it was blocking online gambling and betting sites targeting users in Syria, pending a committee review.
Most broad United States, EU and UK economic sanctions on Syria were lifted during 2025, but targeted listings remain, and Syria was still on the FATF list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring in June 2026.

Last reviewed: 14 October 2026.

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Political and constitutional context

Any account of Syrian law in 2026 has to begin with the change of authority in December 2024. According to Security Council Report, an offensive led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) culminated in the fall of Damascus on 8 December 2024, when President Bashar al-Assad left the country. Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former leader of HTS, was appointed interim president in late January 2025, according to Agence France-Presse.

On 13 March 2025 the interim president signed a Constitutional Declaration setting a five-year transitional period. In an unofficial English translation published by ConstitutionNet, article 3(1) states that “Islamic jurisprudence is the principal source of legislation”; article 26 vests legislative power in a People’s Assembly, two-thirds of whose members are selected through committees and one-third appointed by the president (article 24); and article 51 provides that “Legislation already in force shall remain in effect unless amended or repealed.” The Declaration does not mention gambling, but its effect is that the Penal Code provisions described below remain the governing law.

Historical development

Casinos before 2011

Syria has never had a regulated casino industry. Casinos operated in the Damascus area until the 1970s, when the last of them were closed, according to The National (2011), under pressure from religious conservatives. On 24 December 2010 a gaming venue opened quietly near Damascus International Airport, about 30 kilometres from the city centre. An Associated Press report described it as the first casino in Syria in nearly four decades, built on the site of an earlier casino that had closed in the mid-1970s, and noted that it could not have opened without the approval of the authorities.

The opening was contested from the start. A member of parliament and Islamic scholar told The National that the venue held licences for restaurants and nightclubs but “no licences for casinos or gambling”, and pressed the government to close it. The venue closed after only a few months. On 6 April 2011, in the early weeks of the protests that became the Syrian conflict, Al Jazeera, citing the state newspaper Tishreen, reported that the country’s only casino had been shut down because its owners had “violated laws and regulations”. No further attempt to open a casino has been recorded in the sources reviewed.

The state lottery

The one lawful form of gambling for most of Syria’s modern history was a state lottery. According to a report by the Lebanese outlet Daraj, republished by Worldcrunch in April 2025, the Damascus International Fair lottery dates from 1954, the year of the first fair, and was run by a state lottery institution. The same report gives total New Year prizes of about 2.862 billion Syrian pounds in 2023 and states that prize payouts were capped by law at 45% of ticket sales. The original statute establishing the lottery could not be located for this guide.

Legal framework

The Penal Code of 1949

Syria has no dedicated gambling statute. Gambling is dealt with in the criminal law, which makes Syria an example of a prohibition model: a system in which gambling for profit is not licensed but is treated as an offence. The governing text is the Penal Code issued by Legislative Decree No. 148 of 22 June 1949, which has been amended many times. WIPO Lex lists a 1974 version incorporating amendments up to that year, but the official text of the gambling chapter could not be retrieved for this guide, so the description below relies on consistent press summaries by the independent outlet Enab Baladi.

According to Enab Baladi (April 2026):

Article 619 defines games of chance as games in which luck prevails over skill or intelligence, and lists as prohibited roulette, baccarat, faro, petits chevaux and open poker, as well as games similar to or derived from them.
A person who runs or establishes a place for gambling, together with cashiers, staff and helpers, faces imprisonment of three months to two years and a fine. The court may also ban convicted persons from the premises, expel non-Syrians, confiscate equipment and furniture and close the venue.
Article 620 punishes players who take part in gambling at such venues, or are found playing there, with a fine of 100,000 to 200,000 Syrian pounds.

The fines have been raised over time. In August 2016 Enab Baladi reported that a new text of the provision on running gambling premises or organising prohibited games set a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 pounds alongside imprisonment of three months to two years, replacing a maximum of 1,000 pounds. The later figures above suggest a further increase, but the amending instrument could not be identified. Fine amounts are expressed in pre-2026 pounds. Under the Central Bank of Syria’s currency replacement, old banknotes ceased to be legal tender on 31 July 2026, and from that date the term “Syrian pound” in official transactions refers to the new currency (Enab Baladi, July 2026); how the statutory fines are converted could not be confirmed.

Recent press accounts cite articles 618 to 620; the remaining gambling and lottery provisions of the Code could not be checked against the official text.

Cybercrime Law No. 20 of 2022

Online activity is also covered by Law No. 20 of 2022 on cybercrime, issued on 18 April 2022 and in force since 17 May 2022, according to a legal review by the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM). Article 33 provides that the penalty for an offence, including one defined in another law, is increased when it is committed using information technology. Because the Law does not specify the increase, the SCM review explains that the general aggravation rule in article 247 of the Penal Code applies. Enab Baladi’s April 2026 report states that this aggravation applies to gambling offences committed online. The Law also requires internet service providers to keep copies of user data for a period set by the regulator, fixed at not less than six months by a ministerial decision of May 2022 (SCM). Law No. 20 has not been repealed as far as the sources reviewed show.

Regulator and licensing model

There is no gambling regulator in Syria and no licence of any kind is available for casino games, betting or online gambling. The state lottery, a public monopoly, was the only lawful product, and it is suspended. Enforcement of the prohibition falls to the police and the courts under the Penal Code, and, for online services, to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, which controls access to websites.

Online gambling and enforcement

No operator is licensed to offer online gambling to people in Syria, and there is no legal route by which one could be. Even so, online betting has spread. In April 2026 Enab Baladi described betting applications reaching users through promotional links and local intermediaries, with credit sold through tiered networks of agents and payments made by e-wallets, cash intermediaries and messaging-app bots outside the formal banking system. It cited a lawyer who said that prosecutions tend to target local intermediaries while the networks operating the sites remain out of reach. These accounts could not be independently verified.

On 14 June 2026 the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology announced that it was blocking access to online gambling and betting websites targeting users in Syria. According to Enab Baladi’s Arabic report and its English edition, the Ministry acted on complaints it had received, described the block as a precautionary measure while a committee it had formed reviewed the sites, wrote to social media platforms asking them to stop betting advertisements aimed at users in Syria, and said gambling and betting breach “current legal provisions” without naming a specific law. The number of sites blocked and the committee’s timetable were not published.

The measure followed a general loosening of internet controls: in January 2025 the new communications minister announced the unblocking of dozens of websites banned under the former government (The New Arab).

Position of players

Taking part in gambling is itself an offence in Syria. According to Enab Baladi’s summary of article 620, a player found gambling at a gambling venue is liable to a fine of 100,000 to 200,000 pre-2026 Syrian pounds, while organisers and staff face imprisonment. The Penal Code provisions were written for physical premises, and no court decision applying them to a person who simply bets on a foreign website was found. A lawyer quoted by Enab Baladi treats online betting as a form of prohibited gambling, and the Cybercrime Law allows penalties to be increased when an offence is committed by electronic means. No reported prosecution of an individual online player was identified.

Players also have no recourse in Syria if an unlicensed operator withholds winnings or a payment intermediary disappears, since no Syrian authority licenses or supervises these services.

Taxation

Because no gambling is licensed, Syria has no gambling tax regime and no rules on the taxation of gambling operators or of players’ winnings were identified. While the state lottery operated, its surplus accrued to the state: the Daraj report cites the newsletter The Syria Report as estimating that full ticket sales in 2020 would produce a profit of about 11 billion pounds, compared with 3.9 billion in 2018 (Worldcrunch, 2025).

Sanctions, payments and financial integrity

For decades payments involving Syria were heavily restricted by sanctions. That position changed substantially in 2025. According to the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), Executive Order 14312 revoked the orders underlying the Syria sanctions programme with effect from 1 July 2025; the Syrian Sanctions Regulations were removed on 25 August 2025; the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 was repealed on 18 December 2025; and the designation of Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism was rescinded on 24 August 2026. OFAC states that it “no longer maintains comprehensive sanctions on Syria”, but list-based sanctions remain on Bashar al-Assad and his associates, human rights abusers, Captagon traffickers and certain terrorist groups.

The Council of the European Union adopted legal acts on 28 May 2025 lifting all sectoral economic sanctions on Syria, while keeping measures linked to the former government and to security. In the United Kingdom, the Central Bank of Syria and 23 other entities were removed from the sanctions list on 6 March 2025, and amending regulations of 25 April 2025 lifted restrictions on financial services, including correspondent banking, while asset freezes on several hundred designated persons and certain trade restrictions remain, according to a briefing by Herbert Smith Freehills.

Financial-integrity concerns persist. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the international standard-setter on anti-money laundering (AML), still listed Syria among jurisdictions under increased monitoring on 19 June 2026. The FATF states that Syria has completed its agreed action plan but that it has been unable to carry out an on-site visit to confirm implementation because of the security situation. None of these changes makes gambling lawful.

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

Because gambling is prohibited, Syria has no statutory consumer-protection framework for gamblers: there is no self-exclusion register, no deposit or loss limits, no licensed dispute resolution and no dedicated gambling helpline was identified. A social worker quoted by Enab Baladi in 2026 linked the growth of online betting to unemployment, economic hardship and easy smartphone access, and warned of the lack of early psychological support. People concerned about their own or a relative’s gambling may find general guidance in our responsible gambling guide and should seek help from local health services.

Recent and upcoming developments

December 2024. The former government fell on 8 December; lottery draws stopped.
March 2025. The Constitutional Declaration kept existing legislation, including the Penal Code, in force.
April to September 2025. Lottery draws were reported to be suspended indefinitely; sellers were told the lottery breached Islamic law, and an analyst attributed the closure mainly to religious rather than financial reasons (Worldcrunch). The first post-2024 Damascus International Fair, in September 2025, was held without its lottery (Al-Jumhuriya, 2025). No formal decree abolishing the lottery was found.
2025 to 2026. Most US, EU and UK economic sanctions were lifted; Syria remained on the FATF increased-monitoring list in June 2026.
June 2026. Online gambling and betting sites were blocked pending a committee review, whose results had not been published by mid-October 2026.

No draft gambling law or proposal to license casinos or online gambling was found in the sources reviewed.

Casino listings for players in Syria

The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. No operator is licensed to offer gambling in Syria, and there is no regulator or register to check. Gambling is prohibited under the Penal Code, players themselves can be fined, and online gambling sites are being blocked. The listings must not be read as an indication that playing is lawful in Syria. Although most broad economic sanctions were lifted in 2025, targeted sanctions remain and payments involving Syria are still subject to enhanced scrutiny.

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Syria Online Casino Guide

Key points

Online casinos for Syria

Political and constitutional context

Historical development

Casinos before 2011

The state lottery

Legal framework

The Penal Code of 1949

Cybercrime Law No. 20 of 2022

Regulator and licensing model

Online gambling and enforcement

Position of players

Taxation

Sanctions, payments and financial integrity

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

Recent and upcoming developments

Casino listings for players in Syria

Related country guides

Sources and further reading

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