Gambling regulation in the Netherlands

The regulator, the territory and the language barrier

The Kansspelautoriteit — Ksa, in English the Netherlands Gambling Authority — describes itself as “an independent administrative body and the supervisor and regulator of gambling services”, dates its establishment to 2012, and is governed by a board appointed by the Ministry of Justice and Security.

Its remit is the Netherlands. Other jurisdictions within the Kingdom license gambling under their own authorities, and such a licence is not a Dutch one and does not appear in the Dutch register; the most commonly confused has its own page here. Expect Dutch: the English section covers who the Ksa is, ten safety tips and a register explainer, while exclusion-register duties, the complaints route, advertising rules and licensing policy are Dutch-only.

What needs a licence, and what a licence from elsewhere does not cover

Offering online gambling here requires a remote gambling licence — in the Ksa’s words, on the basis of article 31a of the Wet op de kansspelen. Four categories of higher-risk online games of chance are licensable: casino games against the licence holder, casino games against other players, sports betting, and betting on horse and harness racing. Land-based gambling is licensed too, with fewer fields in the register. Remote licences run five years.

On territory the Ksa is direct: its introduction to the register says that here you find all providers who may offer games of chance in the Netherlands — “Hier vindt u alle aanbieders die kansspelen mogen aanbieden in Nederland.” A licence from another authority does not put an operator in it.

The Kansspelwijzer, and the search box that is not the register

The register page sits on the regulator’s domain, but the register itself is an iframe served from openovergokken.nl, the Ksa’s prevention site — which is why the wrapper page looks almost empty without the frame, and why the data, the detail pages and the permalinks live on that second host.

1. Scroll to the embedded panel

   Kansspelwijzer (opens official website). The panel is the register; everything around it is the Ksa website.

2. Search inside that panel

   The Ksa’s English explainer: “Search the company name, website, app or licence number to verify whether we issued a licence.”

3. Open the matching entry, then read Websites and Geldig

   Which domains the licence covers, then its validity range. If the panel will not load, openovergokken.nl/kansspelwijzer (opens official website) serves the same register.

What an entry shows, and the status word that is not there

Labels captured on 18 September 2026; no field values are reproduced here. A land-based entry we opened showed a reduced set, without address fields, Publicatie, Merknamen or Websites.

No status vocabulary is published

The register does not label entries active, lapsed, suspended or surrendered, and the Ksa publishes no definitions of such terms for it. What it gives instead is Geldig, a validity date range in Dutch long-form dates, read against today’s date. Where an authority publishes no status vocabulary we do not supply one. The classification fields carry short Dutch phrases such as Online casinospel tegen vergunninghouder, but no published list of all possible values was found, so what you see is a sample rather than a key.

Can this register tell you whether a website is covered?

Yes, and that is the strongest thing about it: Websites names the domains recorded against a licence and Merknamen the brands, so the decisive check is a comparison rather than an inference. Match all of the following.

• The exact domain against the "Websites" field on the licence holder's detail page — a lookalike domain, a mirror or a brand not listed is outside what the register attests
• The brand against the "Merknamen" field
• The "Geldig" validity range on each licence block
• "Type kansspel" and "Vergunningtype" against the kind of gambling the site is actually offering you
• The legal entity name and "Nummer handelsregister" against the company named in the site's terms

Land-based entries carry no domain fields, so this works only for online licences. A match confirms that the authority issued a licence and recorded that domain against it: regulatory information, not a recommendation. This site publishes no verdicts about operators and mirrors no register contents — see the methodology and how to check a licence.

What Dutch licensees are required to do

The gambling age is 18; we cite no article of the Wet op de kansspelen for it, because the passage retrieved cross-refers to another article rather than stating the age. An operator must hold a tested connection to the exclusion register to obtain and keep a licence, check a player before allowing play, and notify the Ksa of problem gambling behaviour. The check, operative since 1 October 2021, runs on citizen service number, name and date of birth; the operator receives a pseudonymised Crukscode with a hit or no-hit answer, keeps only the code and destroys the identifying data. How often it must be repeated is not stated.

Also required since 1 October 2024: a pop-up about session duration and applicable limits every 30 minutes. Advertising rules bar television, radio, newspapers, magazines and role models such as influencers and professional athletes, and set a reach obligation framed as a result to achieve — “ten minste 95% van de bereikte personen 24 jaar of ouder is”.

Cruks: the national exclusion register and the gokstop

The Ksa operates a central exclusion scheme, Cruks — Centraal Register Uitsluiting Kansspelen. The action is a gokstop, registered at cruksregister.nl (opens official website).

What it covers

Online gambling sites, arcades and casinos holding a Dutch licence, all or nothing — being excluded online while keeping arcade access is refused. The Ksa states it cannot exclude anyone from illegal operators, the ones likeliest to accept an excluded player.

How long

A minimum of six months, chosen by the player — the one figure here corroborated outside the register’s own site, on the government’s English page and on the Ksa’s page about registering someone else.

Registering, and ending

With DigiD, the national electronic identity, through a three-step wizard, effective immediately; a paper route exists for those without DigiD, and only the postal route returns a posted confirmation. It cannot be ended inside the first six months, and after that ending it is a request with a fixed eight-day cooling-off period.

Registering another person

A relative, friend, employer, curator or court-appointed administrator can apply, through an eight-step application asking about the harm caused and the steps already taken. Someone registered without consent may object only within six weeks.

What a gokstop does not do: stop marketing, since the operator is not automatically told; touch your balance or trigger refunds; or necessarily cover documents without a citizen service number, which the player must add. Nobody can check on anyone else’s behalf, because the Ksa may not disclose whether a named person has one.

Who can decide a Dutch gambling complaint

Not the regulator, and it says so itself. On its report page the Ksa states “De Kansspelautoriteit kan uw probleem niet oplossen en wij kunnen niet persoonlijk bemiddelen” and “U krijgt geen persoonlijke terugkoppeling op uw melding”: it cannot solve your problem, cannot mediate personally, and gives no personal reply to a report. Reports are intelligence, used to work out whether more people are raising the same complaint. Even where an excluded player was admitted to gamble anyway, the Ksa says it does not deal with compensation, though it can investigate.

Its route is to check the register, talk to the provider, then report. The explainer page (opens official website) sets that out; the report form is a separate address, and exclusion-register questions have their own form again. It then names Het Juridisch Loket, De Fraudehelpdesk, ACM’s ConsuWijzer and Open over Gokken, which we do not link because those sites were not fetched during our checks.

What the Ksa publishes about enforcement

Sanction decisions appear in a reverse-chronological list, each with a date, a linked title and a short description of the breach and the measure. The measures named on it are last onder dwangsom, boete, aanwijzing, bestuursdwang and invordering, left in Dutch because they are the regulator’s own labels. Sanctiebesluiten (opens official website) has no keyword search; the box on that page is the same site-wide website search. Paging works through a page parameter, and the last-page link points at page 14 on a zero-indexed pager, so fifteen pages of decisions.

• Facilitators are targets, not just operators. The stated approach to illegal online gambling extends to bevorderaars — websites, apps, affiliates, influencers, payment providers and internet service providers — with cooperation from search and social platforms, banks, hosting providers and other regulators.
• No published blacklist was found on the enforcement landing page, the illegal online gambling page or the sanctions list — an absence rather than proof of one. The practical substitute is the register.

Mistakes specific to the Netherlands, and 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.

• Government of the Netherlands Games of chance: rules and supervision
  The best English official statement of the six-month rule — players on the register may not gamble for at least six months at any provider with a Dutch licence — and confirmation that the Kansspelautoriteit manages the register. The older path for this page under /topics/ now redirects here and its parent returns 404, so cite this address.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Government of the Netherlands Measures introduced to ensure better protection for online gamblers
  Two cautions. Its deposit-limit sentence is about the cap a new adult player may set, not about the operator's duty to make contact, so it does not corroborate that duty. And it calls the Dutch scheme a gamstop, which is the name of the UK scheme and appears to be a mistranslation; do not repeat that wording.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit 10 tips for gambling safely
  The regulator's own English source for the duty on operators to make contact when a player exceeds a monthly deposit limit of 350 euro, or 150 euro for players aged 18 to 24. That contact duty is a different mechanism from the net deposit ceiling in the responsible-play policy rule; the two are often conflated.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Aanpak illegale online gokspelen — action against illegal online gambling
  Dutch-language page. Notable for extending the regulator's approach beyond operators to facilitators — websites, apps, affiliates, influencers, payment providers and internet service providers. It shows no last-updated date.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Aanpak misstanden — how the Dutch regulator tackles abuses
  Dutch-language index of enforcement subjects. No published list of illegal operators was found here or on the sub-pages read — an absence, not a proof of absence. The practical substitute is the register: an operator that is not in it is not licensed.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Belangrijkste regels voor kansspelreclame — the main rules for gambling advertising
  Dutch-language page. Advertising may not target people aged 18 to 24, and at least 95 percent of the people an advertisement reaches must be 24 or older — framed as an obligation of result. It shows no last-updated date.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Beleidsregels vergunningverlening kansspelen op afstand 2026 — remote gambling licensing policy rules
  Dutch-language page. Licences run five years, and the first cohort issued in September 2021 expires on 1 October 2026 — so register entries and validity dates will churn heavily around that date. The underlying policy text in the official gazette was not fetched.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Centraal Register Uitsluiting Kansspelen (Cruks) — the Dutch national self-exclusion register
  A plain fetch of any page on this site returns the document title and nothing else, so everything recorded from it was read in a browser and could not be re-verified independently. The one figure that is corroborated elsewhere is the six-month minimum, which also appears on the regulator's own site and on government.nl. The register covers gambling sites, arcades and casinos holding a Dutch licence, and the regulator states it cannot exclude anyone from illegal operators. Note the domain: the intuitively shorter cruks.nl is a commercial third-party site, not this register.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · js-only
• Kansspelautoriteit Cruks — Een ander inschrijven, applying to register another person
  Browser-only. An eight-step application whose steps show what evidence is expected, including harm caused and steps already taken. The substantive eligibility criteria sit behind a separate information page that was not opened.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · js-only
• Kansspelautoriteit Cruks — Gokstop nemen, registering a gambling stop
  Browser-only. Registration runs through a three-step wizard behind a DigiD login, which in practice limits online self-registration to people who have one; paper forms are linked as a fallback.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · js-only
• Kansspelautoriteit Cruks — Hulp & Info, the self-exclusion register's help and FAQ
  Browser-only, and its answers open only after expanding the accordion, so nothing here could be independently re-verified. It is the source for the eight-day cooling-off period on ending an exclusion, the six-week objection window after an involuntary registration, and the statements that a gambling stop does not halt marketing, does not touch an account balance and does not trigger refunds.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · js-only
• Kansspelautoriteit Cruks registration form in English (PDF)
  Confirmed to exist and to be a real PDF of about 136 KB, but its text could not be extracted, so the fields it asks for and the way it words the six-month minimum are unverified. It is the only English-language Cruks artefact confirmed; the site's interface is Dutch throughout.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit English — Kansspelautoriteit, the Netherlands Gambling Authority
  The regulator describes itself here as an independent administrative body supervising gambling services, established in 2012. The English section is thin: the Cruks duties, the complaints route, advertising rules and licensing policy exist only in Dutch.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Gokstop voor een ander aanvragen — applying for a gambling stop on someone else's behalf
  Dutch-language page covering the three routes — relative, friend or employee; curator; administrator — and confirming the six-month minimum applies to involuntary registrations too. The numeric suffix in the path is the live URL the regulator links to, but it looks like a content-management artefact and may not be stable.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Kansspelwijzer — register of providers licensed to offer gambling in the Netherlands
  The register on this page is an iframe served from the regulator's own prevention site. Do not use the search box in the page furniture: that is the Kansspelautoriteit's site-wide website search, which searches the regulator's site and not the register. Search inside the embedded register panel instead.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Kansspelwijzer on OpenOverGokken — the host that serves the register data
  OpenOverGokken states it is an initiative of the Kansspelautoriteit; its footer carries a 2025 copyright line and the register shows no last-updated stamp. A plain fetch does return a server-rendered listing, but search, filtering and paging need JavaScript, and no query-string search parameter works — four were tested and every one returned the unfiltered list. The host also serves an incomplete TLS certificate chain, so some automated clients fail to verify it while browsers and curl do not.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Koa-portaal — the Dutch remote gambling licensing portal for operators
  Linked site-wide by the regulator but returned an empty JavaScript shell, so its contents are unverified. It is a licensee and applicant login, not a consumer tool.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · js-only
• Kansspelautoriteit Netherlands Gambling Authority — English landing page
  A second English entry point reached from the site's language switcher; its content overlaps the other English page.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Online kansspel aanbieden — offering online gambling in the Netherlands
  Dutch-language page setting out the four categories of higher-risk online gambling that need a remote gambling licence.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Register of licensees — English explainer for the Dutch licence register
  An explainer, not the register itself: it tells a reader to search the company name, website, app or licence number, and links onward to the Dutch register tool.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Sanctiebesluiten — published Dutch gambling sanction decisions
  A reverse-chronological browse list in Dutch. Paging works through a page parameter — the last page link is page 14 on a zero-indexed pager, so fifteen pages in all — but there is no keyword search; the search box on the page is the regulator's site-wide search. The measures named on the list itself include last onder dwangsom, boete, aanwijzing, bestuursdwang and invordering.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Speler checken in Cruks — how operators check a player against the exclusion register
  Dutch-language page describing the check on citizen service number, name and date of birth, the pseudonymised Crukscode and the hit or no-hit answer, operative since 1 October 2021. It does not state how often the check must be repeated, so any claim that it happens at every login is unverified.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Stel een vraag of doe een melding over een kansspel — ask a question or report a gambling problem
  Redirects to the regulator's current explainer page. Dutch-language. This is where the regulator states that it cannot solve a player's problem, cannot mediate personally, and gives no individual feedback on a report; reports feed market oversight, not redress.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · redirected
• Kansspelautoriteit Stel een vraag over het Cruksregister — ask a question about the Cruks register
  Dutch-language form, separate from the general gambling report form.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Stel een vraag, meld een probleem met een kansspel — the regulator's report form
  The eight-step form the explainer page links to, as distinct from the explainer itself. Dutch-language.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Uitsluitregister Cruks — operator duties towards the Dutch exclusion register
  Dutch-language page. Operators must hold a tested connection to Cruks to obtain and keep a licence, and must check a player before allowing play.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Veelgestelde vragen Beleidsregel verantwoord spelen 2024 — FAQ on the responsible play policy rule
  Dutch-language page. It confirms the net deposit ceiling of 700 euro a month and the duty to block further deposits beyond it. The lower figure widely quoted for players aged 18 to 24 does not appear on this page and is not published here.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Veilig spelen — playing safely, from the Dutch gambling regulator
  Dutch-language page.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Kansspelautoriteit Voor spelers — the Dutch regulator's information for players
  Dutch-language page.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Overheid.nl Wet op de kansspelen — the consolidated Dutch Gambling Act
  The date shown is the start of the consolidated version's validity period, which is what this site displays instead of a last-updated stamp. The age limit of 18 is solid and corroborated by the regulator's own pages, but the article that sets it was not pinned down in this read — the passage captured cross-refers to another article — so no article number should be cited from here.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable
• Rijksoverheid Maatregelen voor bewuster speelgedrag en betere bescherming spelers van kansspelen gaan 1 oktober 2024 in
  Dutch-language original of the 2024 player-protection announcement.
  Checked 18 September 2026 · reachable