Agenzia delle Entrate (ADE), Italy’s tax and revenue office, has revised its 2026 forecast for gambling receipts upwards by €807m, pointing to the country’s new online licensing regime as it signed off a favourable opinion on the sector while closing the 2025 state budget accounts.
The upward revision was booked as a budget adjustment for 2026, and it lands at a moment when the wider tax take from gambling has started to soften rather than climb.
What 2025 delivered
Non-lottery gambling licences generated €6.66bn (£5.65bn) in taxes and duties during 2025, a figure that represents around 1% of the Italian government’s total tax take of €668bn. That headline total splits into roughly €346bn from income taxes and €320bn from business taxation such as VAT and excise duties.
Separately, Italy’s state concessions covering lottery, instant-win games and machine gaming produced proceeds of €22.28bn, taken by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) to fund cultural, civic and sports programmes.
Much of the optimism for 2026 rests on the relaunch of the online market. Italy switched to a new licensing regime in November 2025, with the Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli (ADM) granting 52 online concessions. Those licences alone are projected to contribute €365m in income. The Italian online market already clears €5bn in gross gaming revenue, giving the regime a large base to tax.
Higher rates, higher expectations
The Budget Law of 2025 approved a set of marginal tax increases that feed directly into the forecast. Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) tax on online sports betting and virtual betting rose from 24% to 24.5%. Online casino, poker and bingo moved from 25% to 25.5%. Retail sports betting increased from 20% to 20.5%, while virtual betting climbed from 22% to 24.5%.
The tax office estimates the combined measures will deliver more than €500m in additional annual tax revenue. Those increases arrive against a backdrop of wider fiscal pressure on the sector across the EU, where several governments are testing how far gambling receipts can be pushed.
Receipts already moderating
The forecast sits uneasily alongside more recent data. Between January and April 2026, gambling tax receipts totalled €2.52bn, a 7.8% decline compared with the same period in 2025.
The tax office attributes the fall to lower income from gaming machines in land-based venues and to the halving of concessions in the Italian sports betting sector following the regime change. In other words, the same restructuring that underpins the €807m projection is, for now, dragging near-term receipts lower.
Meloni movements
The second half of 2026 pushes Italy into another round of reform, as the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni moves to sign off key decrees before the end of its legislative timetable.
For land-based gambling, MEF Deputy Minister Maurizio Leo is expected to conclude negotiations with Italy’s regional authorities on the final terms of the Reorganisation of Land-based Gambling Decree, which would establish a unified licensing framework for retail venues across the country’s 20 regions. Terms on the licensing structure have been settled, but the government and regional authorities have yet to agree compensation arrangements tied to existing retail concessions and concerns over lost income.
Sports Minister Andrea Abodi, meanwhile, is preparing the government’s long-delayed media and advertising bill for gambling. The legislation would set the legal framework to repeal and replace the 2018 Dignity Decree, which introduced a blanket ban on gambling advertising.
That proposal slipped after the June election of Giovanni Malagò as President of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC). Malagò has backed a 2% levy on football betting revenue to finance Italian football, directing money towards grassroots programmes, stadium redevelopment, training facilities and youth development.
With terms still unsettled, Meloni has put Abodi and the MEF under pressure to deliver both bills by the end of August so they can be folded into the 2026 Budget. The deadline is politically loaded: the government wants the reforms completed before Italy enters the 2027 election cycle. Whether the €807m projection holds will depend on decrees that are still being negotiated, and on whether the current dip in receipts proves temporary.
Source: Agenzia delle Entrate
