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Jurisdiction

Gambling regulation in Sweden

Sweden publishes the web addresses a licence covers — but the register answers a narrower question than most readers think they are asking, and one of its URLs returns a server error instead of a negative.

Last reviewed: 18 September 2026MawarSlotResmi Editorial Desk

In short

Gambling in Sweden is licensed and supervised by Spelinspektionen, the Swedish Gambling Authority, under the Gambling Act (2018:1138). Its Licensregister publishes the web addresses a licence covers, so a domain can be looked up — but not in one step: the result list shows operator name and web address, while licence type and validity dates sit one click deeper. The register publishes no status words at all, only a date range.

Regulator
Spelinspektionen (opens official website) (Swedish Gambling Authority)
Statute
Gambling Act (2018:1138), amended through SFS 2026:1077; English text unofficial
Licence register
Licensregister (Licence and permit directory) (opens official website) — JavaScript-rendered, free-text search
Domains published
Yes — a “Webbadress” column
Licence status values
None published; validity is a “Giltig” date range
Self-exclusion
Spelpaus.se (opens official website) — statutory, Swedish e-identification
Who decides a complaint
Not the regulator. Money claims go to ARN, which recommends rather than orders.

The regulator and the statute

Spelinspektionen licenses and supervises gambling throughout Sweden. Its English section is a partial mirror: the pages a consumer needs most — where to report a problem, illegal gambling, gambling problems — exist only in Swedish, and the register’s controls stay Swedish on English pages.

The statute is the Gambling Act (2018:1138), issued on 14 June 2018 by the Ministry of Finance and amended through SFS 2026:1077. The translated-laws page (opens official website) attaches a disclaimer governing every English phrase quoted below: “in case of any discrepancies between the English version and the original Swedish version the latter will prevail.”

What is licensed, and who needs a Swedish licence

The Act sorts licences by chapter: games reserved for the State (5), gambling for purposes in the public interest (6), commercial online gambling (7), betting (8), land-based commercial gambling (9), gambling on vessels in international traffic (10), and gambling-software permits — the business-to-business strand — under Chapter 11. A licence runs for a fixed period of at most five years (Chapter 4 § 8), and a renewal filed no later than four months before expiry keeps it in force until decided.

The register uses a different vocabulary. Its “Välj licenstyper” filter offers thirteen values: Allmännytta bingo, Allmännytta lokalt poolspel, Allmännytta lotteri, Fartyg internationell trafik, Kommersiellt online, Kommersiellt vadhållning, Landbaserat kasinospel, Landbaserat kortspel, Landbaserat varuspel, Olagligt spel, Spelprogramvara (gambling software), Statligt lotteri and Statligt värdeautomater. They stay Swedish on the English page, and pairing them against the chapter headings would invent a correspondence the sources do not state.

Does a licence from somewhere else cover Swedish consumers?

The regulator answers through its definition of illegal gambling rather than a rule about foreign licences. Its page on illegal gambling activity (opens official website) describes it as a company directing itself at Swedish consumers without a licence from Spelinspektionen, and lists the indicators examined: a .se domain or Swedish-language site, payment in Swedish kronor or through Swedish payment services, and marketing directed at Sweden. The test turns on the absence of a Swedish licence, not the presence of one issued elsewhere; promoting unlicensed gambling through marketing, affiliate links or apps is itself illegal.

Using the licence register

The register is a live, JavaScript-driven search: a plain fetch returns an empty shell. An unfiltered view reported 2,229 entries on 18 September 2026, a count that includes public-benefit lottery holders.

  1. Search the free-text field

    Licensregister (opens official website). The field is labelled “Sök på spelaktör, spelplats eller webbadress”, with scope tabs Alla, Spelaktör, Webbadress and Plats above it.

  2. Paste the domain, press Sök

    Enter it exactly as it appears in the address bar. If nothing matches, the page shows “Inga resultat” — the clean negative, and the only reliable one here.

  3. Click through to the per-domain page

    Results carry two sortable headings, Spelaktör and Webbadress, and no dates. Behind the Webbadress link sit “Licensinnehavare” and a “Licenser” block with “Licens” and “Giltig”.

No status vocabulary, only dates

Most registers on this site publish a status word per entry. Sweden’s publishes none, so there is nothing to interpret and nothing for us to define. The only currency signal is “Giltig”, normally a closed range in the form YYYY-MM-DD till YYYY-MM-DD — though one listed domain rendered “till” with nothing after it, so an end date is not guaranteed. There is no last-updated stamp, and a licence can be revoked between the register being updated and you reading it.

Can the register tell you whether a website is covered?

Yes, more directly than most: Spelinspektionen states that the register holds the web addresses of gambling sites for online and betting licensees, alongside the venues of land-based holders.

Domain shown by regulator Manual verification required

One caveat decides whether the answer means anything: a domain search returns the licence holder’s whole portfolio. Searching one address returned several belonging to the same holder, which shows the set belongs to a listed operator but does not confirm the address you started with. An entry records an entitlement, not a recommendation.

On the per-domain page, compare the exact address against “Webbadress”, the “Licensinnehavare” against the company named in the site’s own terms, and the “Licens” and “Giltig” values against what you were told — checking as you go that you are in the licence register and not the historical decisions archive.

What licensees owe players

Player-protection duties in the Gambling Act (2018:1138)
ProvisionDuty on the licensee
Ch. 12 § 1Register players; only people with a permanent address or long-term residence in Sweden may be registered for online gambling.
Ch. 12 § 2Take name, address and national registration number, and verify identity by a reliable electronic identification or the equivalent.
Ch. 12 § 4Gambling may not commence until the licensee has verified that the player has not excluded themselves.
Ch. 14 § 1The duty of care (omsorgsplikt): protect players from excessive gambling, counteract it by continuously monitoring gambling behaviour, and set out the duty in an action plan.
Ch. 14 § 2No licensed gambling for anyone under 18 (as amended by Act 2025:291); § 3 adds that age must be verifiable.
Ch. 14 § 10Provide an online tool letting players assess their own gambling behaviour.
Ch. 14 § 11Let registered players exclude themselves for a set period or indefinitely; for online casino, online bingo and computer-simulated machines, also offer immediate 24-hour exclusion.

From the authority’s unofficial English translation; where the languages differ, the Swedish prevails.

That 24-hour option belongs to the operator, not to the national scheme, and identity verification is a precondition of play rather than a step at withdrawal. The Responsible Gambling page (opens official website) adds that anyone under 20 is not allowed to enter Casino Cosmopol; we could not locate that rule in the Act translation, so it is recorded as a website statement, not attributed to the Act.

Spelpaus: self-exclusion with a statutory backbone

Spelpaus.se is branded a service from Spelinspektionen, but the scheme is statutory. Chapter 14 § 12 provides that a player shall be able, by notifying the gambling authority, to exclude themselves from all gambling that requires registration, and that the exclusion “shall apply at all license holders” — the register Chapter 12 § 4 obliges every licensee to check.

Spelpaus at a glance
ElementWhat the official pages say
Durations10 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, or until further notice (at least 12 months).
RegisteringSwedish e-identification: Mobilt BankID, BankID, Freja eID+ or a foreign eID, plus a Swedish personal identity number. A form route is signposted for people without an e-ID and for trustees.
Ending itCannot be cancelled before the date chosen. A fixed term ends automatically; an exclusion may be replaced with a longer one but never shortened, and an indefinite one stands for twelve months before it can be revoked.
What it blocksAll gambling requiring registration: online, in shops and at racecourses, and Vegas value machines.
What it missesOffline lottery tickets and scratch cards, traditional bingo halls, restaurant casino games, claw machines, ships in international waters, small local horse pool betting — none require registration.
Side effectsCompanies must cross-check the register before marketing directly; money already in a gambling account can still be withdrawn.

Support sits outside the regulator: Stödlinjen (opens official website), a national line for players and relatives run by Stockholm regional healthcare with support from the Public Health Agency of Sweden, states that it costs nothing and that callers need not identify themselves.

Who can actually decide a complaint

Spelinspektionen is unusually direct about the limits of its role. Its page for players with a problem (opens official website) states that it cannot pursue a dispute between a player and the licence holder, and that while it may raise issues in a broader context it does not investigate individual matters. Konsumentverket, IMY and Reklamombudsmannen below are named by the regulator but not fetched by us, so they appear without links.

How Spelinspektionen routes a consumer complaint
The problemWhere the regulator sends you
Unpaid winnings or withheld moneyARN (Allmänna reklamationsnämnden), which assesses the case and recommends how it should be resolved — a recommendation, not a binding decision
Marketing that breaks the rulesKonsumentverket
Mishandling of personal dataIntegritetsskyddsmyndigheten (IMY)
Offensive advertisingReklamombudsmannen
A licensee breaking the Gambling ActThe tip-off channel, which may lead to a supervision case, sanctions or revocation — but which states it cannot help you communicate with a company or resolve a dispute

Gambling is not one of ARN’s named sectors; it sits inside the general area. ARN divides cases into twelve dispute areas (opens official website), and the “Allmänna” area (opens official website) names gambling and lotteries among its examples. ARN’s consumer page (opens official website) sets the conditions: the complaint must reach ARN within a year of your first complaint to the company, a 150 SEK fee applies, and the claim must meet a value threshold.

The authority takes reports at [email protected] and on 0152-650 100; complaints and dispute resolution compares this route with jurisdictions that fund a dispute service.

Enforcement, and the absence of a blacklist

Spelinspektionen publishes no warning list or blacklist of unlicensed operators, so absence from the licence register is the only official negative signal — which is why the search behaviour above matters. The authority does not investigate crimes itself; it reports to the police and prosecutors.

What it does publish is the decision archive. The supervisory decisions register (opens official website) searches an actor or decision and filters by decision type, category, status and licence type. Decision types are Förbud (ban), Upphävt förbud (ban lifted), Varning, Föreläggande, Anmärkning, Återkallande (revocation) and Avslutas utan åtgärd; categories include Olagligt spel, Spel på underåriga, Penningtvätt and Matchfixning.

Mistakes specific to checking a Swedish licence

Using the per-domain URL as a checker

It returns an HTTP 500 page for an unlisted domain, so a missing licence reads as a broken site. Only the search box produces “Inga resultat”.

Stopping at the result list, or hunting for a status word

The list gives operator name and web address only, and there is no status vocabulary to find. Licence type and the “Giltig” dates are one click deeper.

Following a link published before June 2025

The website was relaunched on 10 June 2025 and old paths return 404, including an earlier English translation of the Act. The current file is amended through SFS 2026:1077.

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.