How to Check a Casino License, Including a Curaçao One

How to check a casino license comes down to one move: stop reading the badge in the footer and go read the regulator's own record instead. The badge is a sentence the site writes about itself. The register is written by somebody with the power to withdraw the thing it describes, and it lists the licensed company rather than the casino brand, which is why a search for the name on the front of the site comes back empty and the check gets abandoned at exactly the wrong moment.

Where is a casino licence actually recorded?

Every licence exists in two places, and they are not equally worth reading.

On the casino you get a line of text and usually a seal. At the regulator you get an entry in a register. Only the second one is evidence, for a reason that has nothing to do with trust: the regulator is the only party that can also take the licence away, so its record is the one that changes when the licence does. The footer does not change when a licence lapses. Nothing makes it.

The distance between the two is not hypothetical. The Malta Gaming Authority keeps a standing list of websites whose licence claims it disowns, and the wording is blunt: any reference to the MGA and/or gaming licence/s said to be issued by the Maltese Authority, as stated on these domains, is false and misleading. That page exists because copying a seal into a footer costs nothing and takes a minute.

So the practical version is short: whatever the footer shows, the check has to end at the regulator, and getting there means knowing what to search for.

Why is the casino's name not in the register?

This is the step that breaks the check, and it is not the reader's fault.

Registers list legal entities, because a licence is granted to a company and not to a website. "Hugo Casino" is a brand; the thing holding the licence is a company with a registration number, and the two names are rarely the same. Searching a register for the name printed across the top of the site usually returns nothing, and nothing is easy to misread as an answer.

So the first step happens on the casino, not at the regulator: open the terms and conditions or scroll to the very bottom of the footer, and find the operating company. That name is what you carry to the register. For Hugo Casino it is GBL Solutions N.V., and the Hugo Casino review sets out which of these checks have been made and which have not, including a licence number that circulates on third party sites and has not been matched against the regulator's own register.

The Curaçao Gaming Authority publishes its online gaming licence holders as a dated document listing, for each entry, the licence number, the licensee company, the company type, the company registration number, the issue and expiry dates and a status column. Two of those columns do more work than people expect.

Company type separates B2C from B2B. A B2C licence belongs to an operator, the business that takes your deposit. A B2B licence belongs to a supplier of games, platforms or payment services. Finding a supplier's entry and reading it as proof that the casino is licensed is an easy mistake to make, because the company name matches something you saw on the site and the licence is entirely real. It just is not the licence that covers the site holding your money.

Status is where the register asks to be read carefully rather than skimmed. The authority's own licence register page says that its overviews "do not guarantee the current validity of the licenses, as the licensing status of the entities may vary over time" and that "no rights can be derived from these overviews". That is unusually honest for a regulator, and it changes what the document can settle: it tells you a licence was granted, not that it is in force this morning. Other regulators publish the same fields as a live searchable record, which is a real difference in what the check is worth.

What does a Curaçao licence actually cover?

Since 24 December 2024 the Landsverordening op de kansspelen (National Ordinance on Games of Chance, "LOK") has been in force, taking over from the older offshore ordinance, and the body formerly called the Gaming Control Board now regulates online gaming as the Curaçao Gaming Authority. The old ordinance has not vanished, because transitional provisions keep parts of it relevant, which is the honest reason a licence reference quoted in an older guide can look nothing like the entries in the current register. Neither the name of the regulator nor the shape of the licence number has stayed still.

What the licence covers is the operator, offering games in or from Curaçao, under Curaçao's rules. What it does not cover is you. It is not a permission granted in your own country, it makes no statement about your position as a player where you live, and no register entry anywhere converts into one. A licence is a relationship between a regulator and a business, and reading it as a statement about the person depositing is where the word "licensed" does the most damage.

What will the regulator do if a withdrawal stops?

Less than the badge implies, and knowing this in advance is worth more than the check itself.

On the same page that announces the LOK, the Curaçao Gaming Authority states that it "does not handle individual complaints against gaming providers", that "resolving disputes between players and gaming operators is not within our mandate", and that it "is not a civil court and cannot order gaming operators to compensate players or issue judgments". It does still want to hear about problems, because a pattern of complaints can indicate a breach of the ordinance and trigger action against the operator, but that action is supervisory and it is not a refund.

Read that next to the seal in the footer and the seal shrinks to its correct size. A licence tells you a company was assessed and can be sanctioned. It does not tell you a third party will retrieve your balance. Which is why the terms that decide whether money moves, the identity documents required and the withdrawal timetable, deserve more of your attention than the badge does: how account verification and payouts work is the part that determines what happens when you ask for the money back.

Is there an Irish licence to check instead?

Not for an online casino, although there is now an Irish register, and the difference between those two statements is the whole answer.

The Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland licenses under the Gambling Regulation Act 2024, and it publishes a searchable register of licence holders giving the licence number, the activity each licence covers and the issue and expiry dates. It is the live, filterable kind of record described above, not a periodic document. Licences are being opened in stages, though, and the stage reached so far is betting: as the register stood on 27 August 2026, every business to consumer licence in it was for remote betting or for acting as a remote betting intermediary, and none was for remote gaming.

So an online casino will not be found in the Irish register today, and that absence says nothing about the casino. It records which licence type has started being issued, not which operators passed a check. Reading it either way, as a warning or as a clean bill, turns a gap in a schedule into a verdict. Until that phase opens, the records that exist are the ones kept where the operator is licensed.

Whatever those records say, gambling is restricted to adults of 18 or over, and a licence check is a check on a business rather than a judgement about whether playing is a good idea for you. Deposit limits, time limits and self exclusion are on the responsible gaming page, along with free and confidential help services.

Frequently asked questions

The seal links to a validator page. Does that count as checking?

Partly, and the weak point is the direction of travel. A validator reached by clicking the casino's own seal was reached by a route the casino controls, which is the one thing the check is supposed to rule out. Do it in reverse instead: note the company name and licence number, then navigate to the regulator's domain independently and find the entry from there. If the two agree, the seal was accurate. If the regulator's own register holds no such entry, then the seal is the only thing claiming the licence exists.

The company is listed but the status column is blank. Is that a pass?

It is not a fail, and it is not a pass either. A blank cell in a published overview means the document does not say, and the Curaçao register explicitly disclaims guaranteeing current validity. Check the expiry date in the same row, which is a harder fact, and note the date the document itself was published. A licence register dated four months ago answers a question about four months ago.

Does the licence decide how my winnings are treated where I live?

No. Tax treatment is set by the law of the country you live in, not by the licence the operator holds, although in several European countries the rules do turn on whether the operator is established inside or outside the EU and EEA. Curaçao is outside both, so that distinction is live rather than academic, and the answer varies by country. Other recurring questions about accounts and payouts are collected in the frequently asked questions.