Austria has launched a public consultation on the liberalisation of its online gambling market, publishing draft licensing conditions that set a minimum €10m share capital requirement and a €70,000 licence fee — the country’s most significant gambling reform in 26 years.
The consultation follows a triparty coalition agreement that targets October 2027 as the launch date for the new open market. Stakeholders have until 15 July 2026 to submit feedback on the proposed framework.
A high bar for entry
The €10m share capital floor is the headline condition and one of the steepest entry requirements currently on the table in Europe. By comparison, Estonia — which recently began a multi-year gambling tax reduction to rival Malta’s rate — sets its online licence share capital requirement at €1m. Finland, which is also breaking up its state monopoly over the next few years, has no set minimum at all, granting operator permissions on a case-by-case basis.
The gap signals that Austria is targeting established international operators with balance sheets to match, rather than mid-tier or challenger brands looking for a foothold in a newly opened market.
Additional entry conditions include a supervisory board, effective anti-money laundering and player protection compliance, and the resolution of all tax debts and outstanding player protection claims before a licence is issued.
The Malta question
One clause in the draft will attract particular attention from MGA-licensed operators: licences will only be granted to operators whose home state allows Austrian court judgements to be enforced against them.
That condition puts a spotlight on Malta’s controversial Bill 55, which shields Maltese-incorporated operators from civil judgements issued in other EU member states. Operators relying on Malta as their primary licensing jurisdiction may need to restructure their corporate arrangements before they can qualify under Austria’s draft rules.
Player protection and product limits
The draft sets tiered deposit limits by age. Players aged 18 to 26 face a weekly deposit cap of €250. Those aged 26 and over are limited to €1,680 per month, with increases available on a case-by-case basis for players aged 23 and above.
Online play is capped at €5 per stake, with a maximum win limit of €10,000. Each spin must be at least two seconds long, and players must take a cooling-off break after 90 minutes of continuous play.
A centralised self-exclusion registry is proposed for all gambling verticals except lottery, which remains under the state-owned Win2Day operator. The regulator will receive payment blocking powers, including the ability to blacklist IBANs and issue blocking orders to payment providers. IP blocking will be handled through AWS, Cloudflare, and Google.
The ban on jackpot features will be lifted under the new framework. Land-based licences will be capped at 13 nationally.
The cooling-off window
The draft introduces a cooling-off period requiring any operator that currently offers gambling services in Austria without a local licence to cease those activities by 1 January 2027. Operators that continue offering services after that date will be barred from applying for a licence for 18 months from that date — effectively locking them out until mid-2028 at the earliest.
That provision is designed to push offshore operators to self-exclude from the market ahead of the formal launch, clearing the field for licensed operators once the framework goes live.
What comes next
With the consultation window closing on 15 July 2026, Austria’s government will process stakeholder submissions before finalising the legislative text. The October 2027 target gives regulators and operators roughly 15 months from the close of consultation to reach a functioning licensed market — a tight timeline for a country dismantling a decades-old monopoly structure for the first time.
How the final framework handles the Malta enforceability clause and whether the €10m capital floor survives unchanged will be among the most closely watched outcomes of the consultation.
Source: Austrian Federal Government
