Curaçao Gaming Authority

The regulator, and the ordinance behind it

Two names are in live use on the authority’s own site: the navigation reads Gaming Control Board, the body text reads Curaçao Gaming Authority. One body — the foundation incorporated by notarial deed of 19 April 1999, which article 15.2(2) designates as the CGA and article 12.1(1) makes an independent administrative body (zelfstandig bestuursorgaan). A renaming, not a new regulator. The law is the Landsverordening op de kansspelen of 20 December 2024, published in Dutch (opens official website) with an official English translation (opens official website).

One hostname trap: the old gamingcontrolcuracao.org (opens official website) redirects path-for-path to cga.cw on its www host, but its portal subdomain is still live and serves the licence-management portal directly.

What the CGA licenses, and who can hold a licence

• Online gaming licences, in one file whose company type column reads B2C — player-facing operators — or B2B, game suppliers, who hold no player-facing domains.
• Land-based casino licences, in a separate file with its own numbering.
• Article 5.17 certificates, for providers of services or goods to licensees, for up to three years; the purposes in use are Test Labs and Alternative Dispute Resolution.
• Terms. A provisional licence runs up to six months, extendable by up to six more; a definitive licence is issued for an indefinite period, subject to revocation or suspension.
• Curaçao entity only. A legal entity under Curaçao law, statutory seat there, and at least one resident managing director. The portal (opens official website) states that new online gaming applications are currently closed, without giving a date.
• Suppliers. The announcement of 24 June 2026 states that a Curaçao supplier licence is not required for suppliers established outside Curaçao, but that foreign suppliers to CGA licensees must register by 24 December 2026.
• Territory. The sources reached describe the licence as permission to offer games of chance in and from Curaçao; none says it authorises an operator to serve consumers elsewhere. A licence in a register is regulatory information, not a recommendation — see what a gambling licence is.

The official register: four files, nothing to type into

Article 3.1 requires a free, public register of every gaming licence, supplier licence and certificate. It does not require a searchable interface, and none was built: the License register Curaçao Gaming Authority (opens official website) offers four PDF files and no search box, filter or query string. Its five statutory fields are licence type and activities, holder’s name, Chamber of Commerce number, date granted and validity status — none of them a website.

1. Open the online gaming file from the register page

   Open the register page and then open the file headed "Online gaming licenses". There is nothing to type in on the page itself. Inside the PDF, use your reader's find (Ctrl+F) and search for the licensee's legal company name exactly as it appears in the gambling site's own terms and conditions or footer — searching for the site's brand name will almost always find nothing, because the register has no brand and no domain column at all.

2. Read the row on screen, then cross-check

   Column alignment extracts badly and the text layer carries typos, so read rows visually. The enforcement file and the article 5.17 list are on the same page; the latter is how you confirm a dispute body is CGA-certified.

The status words, and why there are four sets of them

The seal system is the only place the CGA defines its status values; for the register files it publishes none, so a status string there means what it says on its face.

The decisive question: which sites does a licence cover?

The register cannot say, and no amount of searching will make it: no published file has a domain column, because the statutory field list has no website field. A name in the register proves a company holds a licence; it says nothing about the site you are on.

Domains live in a separate system. A B2C licensee registers its domains in the portal and proves control of a primary domain with a DNS TXT record carrying a token the portal issues; the CGA scans DNS and marks a match as verified. Only primary domains are verified, and the guidance is blunt: “A verified domain does not imply that the site has been approved.” Approval follows a CGA review of anti-money-laundering and responsible gaming measures, and the ordinance sets a fee of EUR 250 for processing a licensee’s application to use each registered domain name or software application. There are two seals: a Certificate of Operation seal, issued per approved domain, and a Licence Certificate seal for a corporate website, which the CGA states does not authorise player-facing sites.

The certificate URL is keyed on that opaque token, not the domain. Both consumer routes were tested on cert.cga.cw: ?domain= is ignored and returns the homepage, and the endpoint with a placeholder token returns “The site you are looking for cannot be found in our registry, or has the wrong identification values.” There is no route from a domain to its token.

The only check that exists: on the gambling site itself, click the green seal showing the letters “CGA” in white, then read the address bar. You must land on cert.cga.cw, and the certificate must name the exact domain you were just on. A different domain means the site is displaying somebody else’s certificate.

Domains are registered, verified and paid for one at a time — and still not published: see how to check a gambling licence.

Player protection, responsible gaming and self-exclusion

The ordinance forbids a licence holder to give a minor the opportunity to take part in games of chance, and separately defines a vulnerable person as including anyone under eighteen. Neither is phrased as a stated minimum age. Licensees must also report complaint statistics to the CGA twice a year, on 15 January and 15 June.

Responsible gaming

The public responsible gaming page is oriented to land-based casinos, its guidelines are the 2012 final version, and it states no age limit and no complaints route. The one current-regime obligation documented is a timing rule: responsible-gaming complaints should be resolved on best efforts within five business days and acknowledged in writing within two. No deposit-limit, time-out or reality-check requirement was documented in the sources reached.

Self-exclusion

CGA Self-Exclusion Program with Fundashon pa Maneho di Adikshon (FMA) is described on that same page, under a cooperation protocol in place since 30 July 2012, written for land-based casinos and predating the 2024 ordinance by twelve years. No online self-exclusion arrangement under the current regime is documented in the sources we reached — not a finding that none exists, but nothing we could read tells an online player whether they can exclude themselves across Curaçao-licensed sites. See self-exclusion.

Complaints: who can actually decide

Not the CGA. Its Player Complaints Policy Guidelines state that it “will not resolve or make decisions on any player complaints” and “does not mediate in individual disputes”; its regulation page adds that resolving player-operator disputes is not within its mandate.

1. The operator, within six months

   Free of charge, within six months of the incident or the settlement of the bet, on the operator’s own form — provided in English and in the language of the site you use, and submitted in English, Dutch or Papiamentu. Acknowledgement is due in writing within one week, a reasoned decision within four, extendable once in writing by four more.

2. A CGA-certified ADR provider, then the courts

   ADR is at the operator’s cost; check the provider against the article 5.17 certificate list on the register page. You get one attempt: once an ADR process is completed it cannot be restarted with a different entity. The operator must not restrict your right to go to law, except where mutually agreed under specific ADR terms.

What the CGA publishes about enforcement

The enforcement file states that it “currently focuses solely on actions that affect the status of a license, for example, whether it has been revoked, suspended, or not extended”, that it does not include all enforcement measures, and that it “may not always be fully accurate or up to date”. At our check it held 32 rows and two status values: Revoked, and Not extended by the CGA. Absence from it is not a clean record. The ordinance requires a suspension or revocation to be published in the article 3.1 register (article 2.5(4)).

The CGA separately publishes warnings about unauthorised domains, one dated 29 January 2026, which name specific sites; we do not mirror them, but the stream in the publications index is worth reading at source. An announcement of 25 September 2025 states that the orange certificate was terminated on 15 October 2025 (opens official website), that displaying one after that date puts an operator in breach of Curaçao law, and — in the CGA’s own words — that “All former sublicensees have now had their license applications Granted, Approved, or Rejected.”

The mistakes people make with this register

• Searching for the brand or the web address. The register indexes company names; take the licensee’s name from the site’s own terms or footer.
• Treating a name in the file as proof the site is covered. Binding a domain to a licence happens only in the certificate system.
• Trusting the seal graphic. The image is served by the site you are checking, so click it and read the address bar.
• Reading “verified” as “approved”, or accepting a corporate Licence Certificate on a player-facing site.
• Expecting the regulator to recover your money. It has said in three separate documents that it will not.

What we could not verify

Primary sources

Each link below goes to the issuing authority’s own website. Where a page could not be retrieved by our automated checks, that is stated rather than hidden.

• Curaçao Gaming Authority About Us — Curaçao Gaming Authority
  The page contradicts itself on when the National Ordinance on Games of Chance took effect: three statements, one giving 24 December 2025 and two giving 2024. The ordinance itself settles it without relying on the site at all — it was issued on 23 December 2024 and enters into force the day after publication. No last-updated date is shown.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority About Us on the legacy gamingcontrolcuracao.org domain
  Returns HTTP 301 to the matching path on www.cga.cw; the same was confirmed for the root, /responsible-gaming and /contact. But the claim must be scoped to the www host: portal.gamingcontrolcuracao.org returns HTTP 200 and still serves the live licence-management portal on the legacy domain, so 'the old domain now redirects to cga.cw' is only true of www.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · redirected
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Announcement regarding supplier licensing and registration requirements under the LOK (24 June 2026)
  States that 'A Curaçao supplier license is not required for suppliers established outside Curaçao', while foreign suppliers to CGA licensees must register with the CGA by 24 December 2026. The CGA expects the supplier registration process to open in October 2026, which is why no supplier register file appears on the licence-register page even though the duty to keep one is already in force. Text extracted locally.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Announcement regarding the extension of provisional licences issued on 24th December 2024 (23 June 2025)
  Over a year old at the check date, and it does not describe what happened after 24 December 2025 — no follow-up announcement was located. Text extracted locally.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority CGA Certification Policy — seals and certificates
  Defines two distinct, non-interchangeable seals — a per-domain Certificate of Operation seal for B2C operators and a Licence Certificate seal for the corporate website — and sets the consumer test, which is domain-matching, not name-matching: the certificate must name the exact domain being visited, and a certificate naming a different domain means the site is displaying someone else's. The footer shows 'Copyright © 2026' but the policy carries no version number and no last-updated date.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority CGA License Management Portal
  For operators and suppliers, with no public search. It states that the process for new online gaming applications is currently closed, with no date attached, and that the old orange seal is no longer valid where it was issued to sub-licensed operators that were not yet issued with a final licence. The portal wording was captured through an automated page summary, so treat individual phrasings as close paraphrase.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority CGA online certificate service (cert.cga.cw)
  An informational page with Home and Certification Policy links only. It has no lookup field of any kind: a consumer cannot type a domain here and be told who holds it. Two probes were run against this service during research and both returned the generic homepage: a ?domain= query string is ignored, and the certificate endpoint called with a placeholder token does not resolve to a lookup. Curaçao therefore publishes no consumer-facing page where a domain can be checked — the only available check is clicking the seal on the gambling site itself and reading the address bar of the page it opens.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Contact — Curaçao Gaming Authority
  The contact form is marked 'Not intended for complaints', and the page states the CGA 'does not handle individual disputes between players and gaming operators'. Postal address and telephone are confirmed. The three email addresses are not: the served HTML contains only Cloudflare email-protection links, so the local parts are inferred from the adjacent labels rather than observed, and a human should open the page in a browser before any address is published.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Curaçao Gaming Authority — official website
  Dual naming is live on the same site: the header and navigation still say 'Gaming Control Board' while the body text says 'Curaçao Gaming Authority'.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Curaçao Gaming Authority — Online Gaming License Registry (PDF)
  28 pages, 663 numbered rows. Its columns are licence number, licensee, company type, company registration number, issued, expires and status licence — there is no domain or website column, confirmed by full-text search in two independent passes. The status column is free text rather than a controlled vocabulary, and the extracted column alignment is unreliable, so no individual operator's status should be read from it. The filename encodes the publication date, so this URL changes at each update: link the register landing page for a durable link.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Domain Management for Licensed Operators, version 1.3 (24 March 2026)
  The document that explains how Curaçao ties a licence to a domain: DNS TXT verification, the opaque per-domain token behind the certificate URL, the four licence statuses with their colours, and the two seal integration options. Two sentences matter most to a consumer: 'A verified domain does not imply that the site has been approved', and, of the direct-image integration, 'The website owner/operator controls the click behaviour' — so a seal that looks right can link anywhere, and the address bar is what settles it. The fetch tool reported the content as images; the text was extracted locally and the embedded screenshots of the certificate layout could not be read.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Enforcement Register — Curaçao Gaming Authority (PDF)
  32 rows over 2 pages. The CGA states it 'currently focuses solely on actions that affect the status of a license', does not include all enforcement measures, and 'may not always be fully accurate or up to date'. Two status values are in use in the rows — 'Revoked' and 'Not extended by the CGA'; no row observed carries 'Suspended', although the header names suspension. Dated filename, so the URL changes at each update.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority FAQs — CGA License Management Portal
  A provisional licence is 'valid for up to six months, with a possible extension for up to an additional six months'; a definitive licence is 'issued for an indefinite period, subject to revocation or suspension'. Applicants must be Curaçao entities with a statutory seat in Curaçao and at least one resident managing director.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Getting a Gaming License — CGA License Management Portal Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Land-based casino registry — Curaçao Gaming Authority (PDF)
  Fetched in the independent verification pass, closing a gap the first pass left open. Columns are licensee number, licensee, casino operator, hotel name, casino name, issued, expires and status, and status values include 'Assessment in progress'. Licence numbers use a different scheme from the online register. It contains no domain column either — the no-domain finding holds across all four published register files. Dated filename.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Landsverordening op de kansspelen (National Ordinance on Games of Chance) — Dutch original
  Non-English original, published by the CGA and linked from its legislation page, where the regulator states its downloadable legislation is not in the official format. The ordinance is dated 20 December 2024, published in Publicatieblad A° 2024 N° 157, and its closing page reads 'Uitgegeven de 23ste december 2024'. The fetch tool could not read the text layer; it was extracted locally, and headings were separated from body text, so some article numbers could not be tied to the sentence quoted.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Licence conditions index — CGA License Management Portal
  Uses the regulator's own vocabulary of 'indefinite-term online gaming license' and 'indefinite-term supplier license', matching the portal FAQ.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority License register — Curaçao Gaming Authority
  The whole register is four downloadable PDFs: there is no search box, no filter, no dropdown and no query string. The page carries the regulator's own disclaimer that the overviews 'do not guarantee the current validity of the licenses' and that 'no rights can be derived from these overviews'. The URL slug is an opaque CMS identifier and is the only route the site's own navigation offers.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority List of Certificate Holders according to article 5.17 of the National Ordinance on Games of Chance (LOK) (PDF)
  12 rows, with the purposes in use being 'Test Labs' and 'Alternative Dispute Resolution' — this is the list a player uses to check that an ADR body an operator points them to is actually CGA-certified. Column alignment is badly skewed in extraction, so purposes and dates cannot be reliably matched to individual holders, and the file contains at least one typographical error. Dated filename, so the URL changes at each update.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority National Ordinance on Games of Chance (LOK) — official English translation
  A sworn translation, 47 pages, certified by a sworn translator of the Court of First Instance of Aruba. Fetched in the independent verification pass, which used it to correct two article numbers and to confirm that the ordinance does not state a minimum age as a number: it forbids licensees to let a minor take part, and separately defines a person under eighteen as a vulnerable person.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Online Gaming — Regulation
  States that the ordinance came into effect on 24 December 2024, that the earlier offshore ordinance 'remains relevant based on the transitional provisions', and that 'Resolving disputes between players and gaming operators is not within our mandate.' The standardised complaint form it describes as planned carries no date, so that status may be stale.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Online Gaming Legislation — Curaçao Gaming Authority
  Citation hygiene matters here: the regulator itself states that the legislation available for download 'is not in the official format' and is an unofficial consolidated text.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Player Complaints Policy Guidelines, version 1.1 (18 June 2025)
  The clearest official statement that the CGA is not a player redress body: 'The CGA will not resolve or make decisions on any player complaints' and 'the CGA does not mediate in individual disputes'. It sets the operator-first, then CGA-certified-ADR route, with the operator bearing all ADR costs, and states that once an ADR process is completed it cannot be restarted with a different ADR entity. Text was extracted locally because the fetch tool could not read the PDF text layer.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Public announcement and warning regarding unauthorised domains (29 January 2026)
  Describes a genuine seal as 'a green box displaying the letters CGA in white' which, when clicked, 'links directly to the official licence certificate hosted on https://cert.cga.cw/'. The warning names specific unlicensed domains; those are deliberately not reproduced here. The CGA publishes a stream of such warnings through its portal.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Publications index — CGA License Management Portal
  Where the CGA's announcement PDFs are indexed. One labelling inconsistency is confirmed: the index calls a document 'Extension of Provisional Licenses Issued Prior to 24th December 2024' while the document itself is titled 'Issued on 24th December 2024'.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Responsible Gaming — Curaçao Gaming Authority
  Visibly stale relative to the current regime: it is oriented to land-based casinos, the self-exclusion programme with Fundashon pa Maneho di Adikshon runs under a protocol in place since 30 July 2012, and the linked guidelines are the 2012 final version. It describes no online self-exclusion arrangement under the new ordinance, states no age limit and gives no complaints route.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Curaçao Gaming Authority Termination of the Certificate of Operation (the Orange Seal) on 15th October 2025
  Fetched in the independent verification pass, which found it after the first pass missed it. It dates the end of the orange-seal transition to 15 October 2025, states that displaying an orange seal after that date puts an operator in breach of Curaçao law, and says in the CGA's own voice that 'All former sublicensees have now had their license applications Granted, Approved, or Rejected.' It is one of only two official touchpoints for the sub-licence vocabulary and it does not narrate the historic master-licence model.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable