Gambling in Tuvalu: Laws, .tv Domains and Online Casinos

Published by Casino News Daily editorial teamReviewed byFilip RadulovicOur editorial approach

Tuvalu, a Pacific island state with a population of roughly 10,000, has no casinos, no national lottery, no sports betting market and no system for licensing online gambling. Gambling is governed by a short statute that dates from 1964, the Gaming and Lotteries Act, now published as Cap. 37.10 in the 2022 Revised Edition of the laws of Tuvalu. The Act allows only small-scale, non-commercial gaming and charitable lotteries approved by a minister, and makes all gaming on gaming machines unlawful. Tuvalu is nonetheless well known online for its .tv domain, an important source of government revenue. A .tv web address is not a gambling licence, and no Tuvalu authority licenses or supervises gambling websites that use one.

Key points

The Gaming and Lotteries Act (Cap. 37.10, in force since 31 January 1964) is the only statute on the official legislation portal dedicated to gambling; the Penal Code contains no gambling offences.
Gaming is lawful only where all players have equal chances and no one takes a cut of the stakes; gaming on gaming machines is unlawful in all cases.
All lotteries are unlawful unless exempted by ministerial notice in the Gazette or approved as small lotteries at entertainments or by non-commercial societies, with prizes capped at $1,000 and total ticket sales at $4,000.
There is no gambling regulator, no casino or online gambling licence, and no published law that regulates gambling on .tv websites. A “Tuvalu Online Gaming Act 2023” mentioned in some online material could not be found on the official legislation portal.
Players can commit offences under the Act (for example, a $100 fine for taking part in unlawful gaming), but we found no reported prosecution relating to online gambling.

Last reviewed: 13 October 2026.

Top Rated Online Casinos for Tuvalu

Vegas Casino Online

400% up to

$500

Visit

Liberty Slots Casino

100% up to

$259

Visit

Sloto'Cash Casino

100% up to

$500

Visit

Tsars Casino

100% up to

€300

+ 100 Spins

Visit

Slot Hunter

100% up to

$/€1,000

+ 100 Spins

Visit

22Bet Casino

100% up to

$/€300

+ 30 Spins

Visit

Vegas Casino Online

400% up to

$500

Visit

Liberty Slots Casino

100% up to

$259

Visit

Sloto'Cash Casino

100% up to

$500

Visit

Tsars Casino

100% up to

€300

+ 100 Spins

Visit

Slot Hunter

100% up to

$/€1,000

+ 100 Spins

Visit

22Bet Casino

100% up to

$/€300

+ 30 Spins

Visit

Historical development

Tuvalu, formerly known as the Ellice Islands, was administered by the United Kingdom until it became independent in October 1978, according to the Australian Government’s Tuvalu country brief, and joined the Commonwealth the same year (Commonwealth Secretariat). Australian currency is legal tender, and Tuvalu also issues its own coins; the dollar amounts in the gambling statute are taken here to be Australian dollars.

The gambling statute predates independence. The 2008 Revised Edition of the Gaming and Lotteries Act records a commencement date of 31 January 1964 and traces the text through the 1990 Revised Edition (Cap. 10) to Act 4 of 1964, Act 3 of 1968, Legal Notice 33 of 1974 and Act 1 of 1984. Its design permits social gaming on equal terms and fundraising lotteries, and treats commercial gambling, in which an organiser profits from players’ losses, as unlawful.

Since independence the Act has been amended three times: by Act 1 of 1984, by the 1991 amendment and by the 2021 amendment. The Gaming and Lotteries (Amendment) Act 1991 (Act 18 of 1991), in force from 1 January 1992, made ministerial approval of small lotteries subject to a fee and inserted a power for the Minister to prescribe fees by regulation. Regulations made on 9 January 1992 (Legal Notice 1 of 1992) set a fee of $5 for each type of approval. We found no provision in the legislation for a casino, a state lottery operator or a licensed betting shop.

Legal framework

Checking gambling legislation and licensing

The Gaming and Lotteries Act (Cap. 37.10)

The current consolidated text is the Gaming and Lotteries Act, Cap. 37.10 (2022 Revised Edition), published on the government’s Tuvalu Online Legislation portal. Its long title describes it as an Act “to provide for the control of gaming and lotteries”. Section 2 defines gaming as “the playing of a game of chance for winnings in money or money’s worth”. A game of chance includes a game of chance and skill combined, but excludes athletic games and sports. A gaming machine is a machine for playing a game of chance that requires no action by any player other than the actuation or manipulation of the machine. The Act does not mention casinos or the internet, and refers to betting only incidentally (for example, in the definition of a player).

The main rules are as follows:

General conditions for lawful gaming (section 3). Gaming is lawful only if the chances are equally favourable to all players, no part of the stakes is retained other than as winnings, and no other payment is required to take part. Where ten or more people are present at a game with unequal chances, or a charge is made for entry to the premises, the gaming is presumed unlawful unless the contrary is proved. Persons under 18 may not take part, except in a private dwelling or with a parent’s or guardian’s permission and presence.
Gaming in public places (section 4). Gaming in a street or other place to which the public has access is an offence, and police may arrest a suspect without a warrant.
Entertainments not held for private gain (section 5). Gaming at fundraising entertainments is allowed under relaxed conditions, including a maximum payment of $1 per player and total prizes of no more than $40.
Gaming machines (section 6). The Act states that “any gaming with a gaming machine is unlawful”. There is no licensing route for slot machines or similar devices.
Lotteries (sections 7 to 9). Section 7(1) provides that “all lotteries are unlawful” unless the Minister exempts a specified lottery by notice in the Gazette. Sections 8 and 9 allow two categories of small lottery with the Minister’s prior written consent and payment of a fee.
Amusements with prizes (section 10). Prize amusements are allowed at the entertainments covered by section 8, provided the proceeds are applied to purposes other than private gain.
Enforcement (section 11). A magistrate may issue a search warrant valid for 14 days; the court may order forfeiture of items connected with an offence; and company officers are liable where an offence was committed with their consent or connivance or through their neglect.

Pyramid schemes amendment (2021)

The Gaming and Lotteries (Pyramid Scheme Ban) Amendment Act 2021, (Act 13 of 2021), which came into force on publication on 23 December 2021, inserted definitions of pyramid selling schemes, Ponzi schemes and chain-letter schemes, and prohibited promoting or operating a scheme in which participants’ rewards depend on recruiting others and the recruitment needed for reasonable rewards is unlikely to be achieved. The penalties are set expressly in Australian dollars: for individuals, a fine of up to A$2,000, imprisonment for up to three months, or both; for repeat offences, a fine of A$2,000 to A$5,000, imprisonment for up to five years, or both.

Other legislation

The Penal Code (Cap. 10.20, 2022 Revised Edition) lists no gambling, betting or gaming-house offences in its arrangement of sections, so the Gaming and Lotteries Act is, on our review, the sole source of gambling offences. The government’s alphabetical index of legislation lists no other Act on gaming, betting or casinos, and a full-text search of the portal for “gaming” returns the Gaming and Lotteries Act and no later gambling statute, bill or gazette notice. Fundraising activity is also touched on by the Licences Act: Legal Notice 2 of 2010 sets an annual licence fee of up to $20 for a “fundraising event planner and organiser”, giving raffle tickets, bazaars and indoor games as examples of the events concerned.

Regulator and licensing model

Tuvalu has no gambling regulator. Functions under the Gaming and Lotteries Act are exercised by “the Minister” and enforced by the Tuvalu Police Force and the courts. The model is best described as restrictive prohibition with narrow exemptions: commercial gambling is not licensed at all, while specified non-commercial activity is permitted subject to conditions or ministerial consent. There is no state monopoly operator, because no gambling operator, public or private, is authorised to run commercial games.

The two permit categories for small lotteries under the 2022 Revised Edition are:

Category	Who may run it	Main conditions
Small lottery incidental to an entertainment (section 8)	Organisers of bazaars, fetes, dinners, dances, sporting events and similar entertainments, with the Minister’s written consent and a fee	No money prizes; tickets sold and results declared on the premises during the entertainment; the lottery must not be the main inducement to attend; no more than $20 spent on buying prizes
Society lottery (section 9)	Societies established for charitable, athletic, cultural or other non-commercial purposes, with the Minister’s written consent and a fee	No prize above $1,000; tickets no more than $2 and all at the same price; total sales no more than $4,000; no sales by or to persons under 16; expenses capped at 10% of proceeds and prizes at half of proceeds

The fee for each consent is $5 under the 1992 regulations recorded in the 2008 Revised Edition. Raffles and bingo are not named in the Act; they fall within the general lottery rules and so need either a section 8 or 9 consent or a Gazette exemption. We found no published register or count of consents issued. Any other lottery, including a commercial or foreign lottery sold in Tuvalu, is unlawful unless exempted by Gazette notice.

Online gambling and the .tv domain

Online casino games on mobile devices

What the law says about online gambling

The Gaming and Lotteries Act does not mention the internet, remote gambling or online casinos. The only references to electronic means, added in 2021, concern the promotion of pyramid schemes. There is therefore no specific offence of offering online gambling to people in Tuvalu, but there is also no licence that could authorise it. On the wording of the Act, a commercial casino game conducted in Tuvalu would not meet the section 3 conditions, because a house edge means chances are not equal and part of the stakes is retained by the operator; gaming machines are banned outright; and lotteries are unlawful unless exempted. No provision of Tuvalu law therefore allows a company to obtain a Tuvalu licence to run an online casino, sportsbook or lottery, whether for local players or for an international market.

We found no Tuvalu provision for blocking gambling websites, no list of prohibited operators, no rules on payment blocking and no gambling-specific advertising code. Section 7(2) of the Act makes it an offence to print, sell, distribute or advertise tickets for an unlawful lottery, which in principle extends to advertising of unlawful lotteries in Tuvalu; no case applying it to online advertising has been reported.

Claims of a “Tuvalu gaming licence”

Some online material refers to an offshore “Tuvalu gaming licence”, said to be issued by a “Tuvalu Gaming Authority” under a “Tuvalu Online Gaming Act 2023”. We could not verify any of these claims from an official source. As of 13 October 2026, no Act of that name, no gaming authority and no related subsidiary legislation appears on the official Tuvalu Online Legislation index or in a search of the portal. The only gambling statute in force on the portal is the 1964 Act, which contains no licensing regime for operators. Any offer of a Tuvalu online gambling licence should be treated with caution unless it can be traced to legislation published by the Government of Tuvalu.

The .tv domain

The country-code top-level domain .tv was assigned to Tuvalu in 1996. The IANA root zone database lists the sponsoring organisation (the ccTLD manager) as the Ministry of Transport, Energy, Communications and Innovations in Funafuti, with a United States-based commercial registry services company as technical contact. The International Monetary Fund’s 2025 Article IV report (Country Report No. 25/257) records licence fees for the .TV domain of A$9.1 million in 2023 and A$11.2 million in 2024, equivalent to 11.9% and 13.1% of gross domestic product, and projects A$10.1 million for 2025.

Registration of a .tv domain name is a technical and commercial transaction with the registry. It does not involve any assessment of the website’s content under Tuvalu gambling law, and it does not mean that the website is based in Tuvalu, licensed in Tuvalu or supervised by any Tuvalu authority. We found no Tuvalu statute, regulation or published government policy that specifically addresses gambling content on .tv websites, either to permit or to restrict it. Any gambling licence held by a site using a .tv address will have been issued in another jurisdiction, and players should look for the licensing information of the jurisdiction actually named on the site and check it with that regulator.

Position of players

Tuvalu’s Act creates offences for participants as well as organisers. Under section 3(5) of the Gaming and Lotteries Act, a person present and taking part in unlawful gaming is liable on summary conviction to a fine of $100. Taking part in gaming in a public place carries the same fine under section 4, and playing on a gaming machine is punishable by a fine of $100 and imprisonment for up to two months under section 6. Organisers and those who knowingly make premises available face higher penalties: for an offence under section 3(4), section 11(2) provides a fine of $200 on summary conviction or $1,000 on trial before a judge, and, for a second or subsequent conviction before a judge, imprisonment for one year and a fine of $1,500.

These offences were written for physical gaming in Tuvalu. The Act does not say whether a resident who places a stake with a foreign website from a phone in Funafuti is “taking part in unlawful gaming” within section 3, and we found no court decision or official guidance on the point. We also found no reported prosecution of any player, in Tuvalu or elsewhere, for online gambling. The accurate summary is that online gambling by residents is not expressly prohibited, is not authorised, and takes place entirely outside the protection of Tuvalu law. A player in dispute with an offshore site has no Tuvalu regulator to complain to.

Private social gaming remains lawful where it meets the section 3 conditions: equal chances, no deduction from the stakes and no charge for taking part. Persons under 18 may play only in a private dwelling or with parental permission and supervision, and lottery tickets may not be sold to persons under 16.

Taxation

Tuvalu levies no gambling-specific tax, which is consistent with the absence of a commercial gambling sector. Small lotteries pay only the consent fee described above. The Income Tax Act (Cap. 26.16, 2022 Revised Edition) taxes “gross income”, defined broadly as “all income, revenue, profits or gains (not being amounts of a capital nature), of any kind whatsoever”, less deductible costs. The sections of the Act we reviewed do not mention gambling winnings, lotteries or prizes, and we could not confirm how occasional winnings are treated; residents with questions should consult the Tuvalu revenue authorities.

Anti-money laundering

Tuvalu’s anti-money-laundering framework covers gambling businesses even though none is licensed. Section 4(1) of the Proceeds of Crime Act (Cap. 10.25, 2008 Revised Edition) defines a “cash dealer” to include “an operator of a gambling house, casino or lottery”. Cash dealers share the obligations of financial institutions under Part 5 of the Act: to verify customers’ identity, keep customer and transaction records, maintain internal reporting procedures and report suspicious transactions. Reports go to the Transaction Tracking Unit, which section 17 establishes within the Tuvalu Police Force.

The IMF’s 2025 Article IV staff report notes that Tuvalu joined the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) in July 2023, that a formal APG mutual evaluation is expected in 2027, and that amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act are needed to establish the legal status and responsibilities of the financial intelligence unit. It also notes that only the National Bank of Tuvalu maintains correspondent banking relationships for international payments.

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

Tuvalu has no national self-exclusion register, no gambling helpline and no statutory responsible-gambling code; we found no government or non-governmental support service dedicated to gambling harm. The protective features of the law lie in the restrictions themselves:

Age limits: no gaming by persons under 18 outside a private dwelling or parental supervision, and no lottery ticket sales by or to persons under 16.
Stake and prize caps: $1 per player and $40 in total prizes for gaming at fundraising entertainments; $2 per ticket, $1,000 per prize and $4,000 in total sales for society lotteries.
No machines: the outright ban on gaming machines removes a product associated with high rates of harm elsewhere.

None of these protections applies to offshore websites, which set their own limits and tools according to the rules of their licensing jurisdiction. General guidance is available in our responsible gambling guide.

Recent and upcoming developments

2022 Revised Edition (published 2023). The Gaming and Lotteries Act was consolidated as Cap. 37.10 in the 2022 Revised Edition, posted on the legislation portal in July 2023. It incorporates the 1991 and 2021 amendments; we found no later amendment.
APG membership (July 2023). Tuvalu joined the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering; its first mutual evaluation as a member is expected in 2027, according to the IMF.
Proceeds of Crime Act reform (pending). The IMF’s 2025 report recommends amending the Act to give the financial intelligence unit a clear legal basis. We found no enacted amendment as of October 2026.
Unverified licensing claims. Claims of a Tuvalu online gaming licence, a “Tuvalu Gaming Authority” and a “Tuvalu Online Gaming Act 2023” could not be found in the official legislation portal at the date of review.

Casino listings for players in Tuvalu

The listings below are generated automatically from our casino database. They do not show that an operator is licensed in Tuvalu: Tuvalu has no gambling regulator and issues no casino or online gambling licences, and a .tv web address does not indicate any connection with Tuvalu law. Because commercial gambling cannot be licensed under the Gaming and Lotteries Act, the listings must not be read as an indication that offering or playing these games is lawful or protected in Tuvalu; readers should check the licence of the jurisdiction named by each operator with that regulator directly.

Vegas Casino Online

No Deposit Bonus

$ 20

No Deposit Bonus

$ 20

Key points

Top Rated Online Casinos for Tuvalu

Historical development

Legal framework

The Gaming and Lotteries Act (Cap. 37.10)

Pyramid schemes amendment (2021)

Other legislation

Regulator and licensing model

Online gambling and the .tv domain

What the law says about online gambling

Claims of a “Tuvalu gaming licence”

The .tv domain

Position of players

Taxation

Anti-money laundering

Consumer protection and responsible gambling

Recent and upcoming developments

Casino listings for players in Tuvalu

Related country guides

Sources and further reading

Related News