Romania’s online gambling market is on course for around €3 billion in 2026, on estimates built from National Bank of Romania (BNR) payment data, while the country’s land-based estate is being dismantled by local councils. The number of slot machines in operation fell to 29,014 this year from 45,659 authorised in 2025.
Two changes drive the split. Law 141/2025 raised the remote gambling levy to 30% of revenue from 1 August 2025. Emergency Ordinance 7/2026 then handed authorisation powers for land-based venues to local councils in February. One market is being taxed harder. The other is being closed down one commune at a time.
The €3 billion online market
The most complete public read on Romanian online spend comes from the central bank rather than the regulator.
BNR data shows Romanians spent RON 12.5 billion, around €2.5 billion, on online gambling in 2023, covering online betting, casino and lottery. Romanian card payments accounted for 3.1% of global online gambling expenditure. Romania is 0.33% of the global economy. On card payment volume, Romanians gamble online at roughly ten times their economic weight.
The transaction pattern behind that total is equally specific. Online gambling is the largest category of card payments by volume in Romania, at triple the combined volume of online shopping, subscriptions and other remote payments. Romanians average more than four online gambling card transactions per person per year.
“I recently saw statistics we discussed, as these had never been compiled before. They surprised me,” said Florian Neagu, Director of the Financial Stability Department at the BNR. Translated from Romanian.
Applying the growth the sector has recorded since 2023 to that €2.5 billion base, The iGaming Europe estimates the Romanian online market reaches around €3 billion in 2026, and that online now accounts for roughly 71% of total Romanian gambling revenue. Both figures are our estimates rather than published data. The ONJN does not publish a consolidated market revenue series, which is why a payments dataset from the central bank has become the most reliable public proxy.
Law 141/2025 and the new tax regime
Law 141/2025 was published in the Official Journal of Romania no. 699 on 25 July 2025, with the government assuming responsibility for it in Parliament. Most measures took effect on 1 August 2025. The gambling provisions, set out by KPMG in Romania in its analysis of the package, run as follows.
- Remote gambling, Classes I and III: the levy rose from 21% to 30% of revenue, with the annual minimum lifted from €400,000 to €480,000.
- Land-based annual licence fees rose from 21% to 25% of gambling revenue. The minimum for mutual traditional betting went from €120,000 to €144,000, and for fixed-odds and counterparty traditional betting from €200,000 to €240,000.
- Class A slot machines: €6,000 per device per year, up from €5,300.
- The vice tax on slot machines and video lottery terminals (VLT) doubled from €500 to €1,000 per authorised terminal per year.
- A new 8% tax applies to revenue from lottery-type games, excluding video lotteries.
Player winnings tax was restructured at the same time. It runs at 4% on income up to RON 10,000, RON 400 plus 20% on income between RON 10,000 and RON 66,750, and RON 11,750 plus 40% above RON 66,750. For casino, poker club, slot machine and scratch card winnings above the RON 66,750 threshold, RON 11,750 is deducted from the calculated result.
Value added tax rose to 21% on the same date, with the reduced rate moving to 11% and the 5% rate removed. Operators absorbed a levy increase and a VAT increase in the same week.
The licensing architecture around those rates is unchanged. A Class 1 licence runs 10 years and is renewable, with authorisation renewed annually. Guarantee funds sit at €5 million for online casino and €2 million for other online verticals. Separate draft measures, not yet in force, would raise the legal gambling age to 21 and tighten advertising rules including public figure endorsements.
Councils take control of land-based
Emergency Ordinance 7/2026 moved authorisation of land-based gambling venues from the National Office for Gambling (ONJN) to local councils in February. Councils can set zoning rules, impose local taxes, refuse new venues and ban gambling outright within their boundaries. They were given 60 days to submit proposals. That deadline passed in late April with no penalty attached for councils that missed it.
Of roughly 3,100 administrative units in Romania, 90 have taken a decision. Of those, 35 prohibited gambling and 55 permitted it. That is 3% of the country having decided, and the effect on supply is already severe.
Figures reported by Profit.ro show 2,337 new machine authorisations between February and May 2026, against 18,981 in the same window of 2025, a fall of 87.6%. Authorisation fees collected in that period dropped from RON 485 million to RON 300 million, a decline of 38%, or RON 185 million in four months.
Industry estimates put the machine count at around 80,000 two years ago and roughly 36,000 now, with a further fall to 15,000 to 20,000 expected by the end of the year. Up to 200 municipalities are projected to prohibit gambling.
The operational problem is that a national authorisation and a local permit are now two separate requirements, and holding the first does not guarantee the second.
“It has effectively become a Catch-22. We hold a valid national authorisation, but we cannot operate without a local permit,” said Andrei Frimescu, Director of Communications at Romslot.
Iași closes first
Iași, Romania’s second most populous county, became the first to remove land-based slot machine venues county-wide. All 98 local councils in the county decided to eliminate them following the central government legislation. Some venues closed immediately. The rest run until their licences expire, with the last of them running out in February 2027. The decision followed a campaign involving more than 7,000 activists.
“We can be happy that we are the first county to get rid of this phenomenon,” said Paul Ciobanu, an anti-gambling activist in Iași.
Iași sets the template other counties are expected to follow, and it creates the first real test of whether a valid national authorisation survives a local ban in court.
ONJN enforcement in its first year
The regulator’s own activity has stepped up alongside the legislative changes. Between April 2025 and April 2026 the ONJN carried out more than 11,000 inspections, split between roughly 7,000 physical venues and 3,500 online platform checks.
Fines totalled €2.7 million, of which €1.5 million fell on land-based operators and €240,000 on online operators. The regulator blacklisted more than 300 websites, issued more than 60 content removal orders, seized or disabled 260 devices, cancelled 60 licences and filed 70 criminal complaints over unpaid taxes and manipulation of gambling revenue reporting. The blacklist has since grown, with the ONJN adding close to 800 illegal gambling sites to it.
On player protection, the ONJN cleared a backlog of 54,000 self-exclusion requests and allocated €5 million to its “Aware and Free” responsible gambling programme. Law 141/2025 also requires monthly reporting from Class II operators, and the regulator has introduced digital registers and QR-coded gaming machines.
Polymarket blacklisted, and the appeal fails
The ONJN blacklisted Polymarket on 31 October 2025, treating it as an unlicensed counterparty betting operator under Government Emergency Ordinance 77/2009, which makes participation in or promotion of unlicensed gambling a misdemeanour.
The trigger was election volume. Romanian presidential election markets on the platform drew more than $600 million in cumulative trades. Bucharest mayoral election markets added $15 million.
“It would be a reckless precedent to allow counterparty betting to be recast as trading,” the ONJN said.
Polymarket appealed on the basis that its event contracts are financial instruments rather than gambling products, with users taking positions against each other on outcomes. A Romanian court rejected the appeal on 2 April 2026 and the ban stands.
“The real stake is to protect the legal framework that regulates gambling and prevent a dangerous loophole: redefining betting under the seemingly harmless name of ‘prediction platform’,” said Vlad-Cristian Soare, President of the ONJN.
Romania was early on this. Italy’s ADM has since taken its own action against the platform, which ended a €22 million sponsorship with Lazio. The Romanian judgment gives other European regulators a decided case to point at.
Romania’s most-visited gambling domains
Regulatory data covers licensed capacity and enforcement at sector level. Web traffic gives the brand-level view of where Romanian demand sits.
The table below covers monthly visits to the 14 largest Romania-facing gambling domains, with device split and month-on-month and year-on-year change. All 14 list direct traffic as their main acquisition channel.
| Domain | Visits | Desktop visits | Mobile visits | Mobile share | MoM | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| superbet.ro | 12.24M | 1.99M | 10.25M | 83.8% | +1.81% | +15.96% |
| betano.com | 3.42M | 470.35K | 2.95M | 86.3% | -15.31% | -6.04% |
| casapariurilor.ro | 2.7M | 222.16K | 2.47M | 91.8% | +6.53% | -12.58% |
| efortuna.ro | 1.64M | 165.23K | 1.48M | 89.9% | +16.52% | +1.41% |
| winbet.ro | 1.5M | 574.2K | 924.55K | 61.7% | -5.20% | -9.16% |
| unibet.ro | 1.36M | 156.53K | 1.2M | 88.5% | -11.51% | -26.94% |
| getsbet.ro | 1.34M | 92.13K | 1.24M | 93.1% | +46.38% | +11.12% |
| netbet.ro | 1.22M | 92.6K | 1.13M | 92.4% | +55.00% | -2.86% |
| winner.ro | 1.1M | 44.56K | 1.06M | 96.0% | +10.11% | -2.28% |
| powerbet.ro | 848.85K | 26.52K | 822.33K | 96.9% | -23.76% | +39.71% |
| maxbet.ro | 773.06K | 76.62K | 696.44K | 90.1% | -1.70% | +41.14% |
| princesscasino.ro | 744.49K | 70.27K | 674.22K | 90.6% | -19.82% | -8.98% |
| stanleybet.ro | 639.28K | 101.81K | 537.47K | 84.1% | +20.85% | +57.29% |
| stake.com | 580.27K | 358.94K | 221.33K | 38.1% | -34.42% | +28.99% |
What a visit measures, and what it does not
A visit is a single session on a domain. It begins when a user arrives and ends after a period of inactivity or when the user leaves. One person generates many visits in a month.
The measurement covers web sessions on desktop and mobile browsers. It does not capture native app usage. Visits are not active players and they are not revenue. A domain can rank high on traffic and convert poorly. Read the table as a demand and brand recall signal.
Concentration, mobile share and the retail migration
The 14 domains total 30.11 million monthly visits. Superbet alone accounts for 12.24 million of them, or 40.7% of the tracked set, more than three times its nearest competitor. The top three domains, Superbet, Betano and Casa Pariurilor, hold 61% between them. Romanian online traffic is far more concentrated than the UK equivalent, where no single brand exceeds 17% of the tracked total.
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Aggregate mobile share across the 14 domains is 85.2%. Seven of them exceed 90% mobile, led by powerbet.ro at 96.9% and winner.ro at 96.0%. Only two domains lean toward desktop: stake.com at 61.9% desktop and winbet.ro at 38.3%. Romania is a mobile market by a wider margin than most of Western Europe.
Seven of the 14 domains grew year on year. The growth list is worth reading against the land-based closures. Stanleybet gained 57.29%, Maxbet 41.14%, Powerbet 39.71%, Stake 28.99%, Superbet 15.96%, Getsbet 11.12% and eFortuna 1.41%. Stanleybet, Maxbet, Winbet and Princess Casino are retail brands with physical estates under pressure from council decisions, and three of the four are gaining online traffic while their venues close.
The seven decliners are Unibet at -26.94%, Casa Pariurilor at -12.58%, Winbet at -9.16%, Princess Casino at -8.98%, Betano at -6.04%, NetBet at -2.86% and Winner at -2.28%. Unibet’s decline is the steepest on the table by a wide margin.
Month on month, 7 of the 14 grew. NetBet rose 55.00% and Getsbet 46.38%, the two largest short-term moves on the list. Stanleybet added 20.85% and eFortuna 16.52%. Stake fell 34.42%, Powerbet 23.76%, Princess Casino 19.82% and Betano 15.31%.
Top games and the land-based inheritance
The titles ranked highest across Romanian market listings are cabinet games ported to browser. Romanian online casino content is still dominated by the retail catalogue.
Shining Crown from Amusnet, at 96.37% return to player (RTP), sits at the top of most Romanian rankings. Burning Hot and 20 Super Hot, also Amusnet, are in the same tier. Book of Ra Deluxe and Sizzling Hot Deluxe, distributed online by Greentube for Novomatic, complete the classic group. These are the games Romanian players learned on physical machines in the 36,000-strong estate that is now shrinking.
That inheritance explains the supplier hierarchy. Amusnet and EGT Digital hold their online share because their content is what Romanian players already recognise from venues. Greentube holds the same position for the Novomatic catalogue. When a slot hall closes and its regulars move to a phone, they look for the game they were playing the week before.
The newer tier
Pragmatic Play is the supplier gaining ground fastest against that legacy. Gates of Olympus and Gates of Olympus 1000, both at 96.50% RTP, Sweet Bonanza at 96.60% and Sugar Rush at 96.50% now rank alongside the classic titles rather than below them. These are online-native products built on cascading reels, cluster pays and high volatility, and they perform on a market that never played them in retail.
NetEnt occupies a narrower position with Blood Suckers and its Dracula titles, which carry obvious local resonance and a following among players who came to online casino through online rather than through a slot hall. Play’n Go’s Book of Dead is the other established online-first title in the Romanian top tier.
The commercial question for suppliers is what happens to the classic tier as the retail estate disappears. Amusnet and Greentube content holds share in Romania because a generation of players was trained on it in venues. If machine numbers fall to 15,000 to 20,000 by the end of 2026, that route into the classic catalogue closes, and the acquisition advantage passes to whoever owns the games new players meet first online.
What to watch
Three things decide the Romanian market over the next 18 months. The first is how many of the remaining 3,000 administrative units take a decision, and in which direction. The second is litigation. Operators holding valid national authorisations refused local permits have a case to bring, and Iași’s February 2027 licence expiries set the deadline for bringing it.
The third is whether a 30% remote levy keeps volume inside the licensed market. The ONJN’s blacklist is growing and its enforcement budget is being used, but the same pattern that has played out in the Netherlands and is now being tested in the UK applies here. Romania has one of Europe’s highest online gambling participation rates by payment volume, and restricting licensed supply moves that demand somewhere else rather than removing it.
Entain has already begun a phased exit from Central and Eastern Europe. Whether other international operators read Romania the same way will show up in traffic long before it shows up in tax receipts.
Source: ONJN
