Regulation · Permission
The German gambling licence (GGL) explained
The Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder — the joint gambling authority of the sixteen federal states, almost always shortened to GGL — sits in Halle an der Saale, employs 99 people and has granted nationwide permissions for online gambling since 1 January 2023. It keeps the public whitelist under § 9(8) of the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag, and that list is the only reliable answer to the question of whether an operator is permitted in Germany. What a permission covers, what it expressly does not cover, and how to read the list without being misled by it.
By the Casinohafen deskUpdated: 13 October 2026Checked: September 2026
In brief
- Seat in Halle an der Saale, 99 staff, an institution under public law carried by all sixteen federal states; fully competent since 1 January 2023.
- Permissions are granted per form of gambling. A sports betting permission says nothing about whether the same company may offer virtual slot machines.
- Online casino games under § 22c of the treaty are expressly outside the GGL's competence and remain with the individual federal states.
- The whitelist under § 9(8) GlüStV is an interactive database with no export function. A footer seal is a picture and proves nothing.
- Official figures as at 31 December 2025: 28 permission holders for sports betting, 37 for virtual slot machines, 5 for online poker, 5 for online horse race betting — 135 holders across 232 websites.
- Permissions are granted for a fixed term with ancillary conditions. The authority has named the new licensing cycle from 2027 as one of its two priorities.
- Permission holders in total
- 135 as at 31 December 2025
- Websites on the whitelist
- 232 as at 31 December 2025
- Virtual slot machines
- 37 holders, 107 websites
- Sports betting
- 28 holders, 31 websites
- Online poker
- 5 holders, 7 websites
- Staff at the authority
- 99 activity report 2025
One authority for sixteen states, and why its size matters
The GGL is an institution under public law carried jointly by all sixteen federal states, with its seat in Halle an der Saale in Saxony-Anhalt. It took on its responsibilities in stages and has been fully competent since 1 January 2023. Before that, supervision lay with varying state authorities, and decisions were taken up to the end of 2022 by the Glücksspielkollegium — a body that has not decided anything since, and that nonetheless keeps appearing in supposedly current guides.
According to its activity report for 2025 the authority employs 99 people. That figure is worth holding on to when judging what it can and cannot do: it supervises a market in which sports betting stakes alone came to 8.3 billion euro in 2025, and it simultaneously pursues the part of the market that has no permission at all.
Its competence covers virtual slot machines, online poker, online sports betting, horse race betting on the internet, nationwide social lotteries, cross-state commercial gaming brokerage and class lotteries. Everything on this site about online casinos and sports betting in Germany starts from that list.
The gap a permission does not cover: § 22c and the federal states
The most important sentence on this page concerns a hole that advertising and consumer guides alike tend to paper over. Online casino games under § 22c of the treaty are expressly excluded from the GGL's competence. They sit with the individual federal states.
Behind that is a deliberate choice. Under § 22c each state may itself offer online casino games for its own territory — through a legal person under public law, or through concessions, and no more concessions than the number of Spielbank concessions that could have been granted under that state's own casino act as it stood on 17 January 2020. Tying the number to the land-based casino structure is not an accident: online casino games were assigned to the states' own houses rather than to an open market.
From that follows the most consequential dividing line in the German online offer. Virtual slot machines that reproduce classic banked table games — roulette, black jack and baccarat in particular — are not permissible under a GGL permission. If you see such a game online, you are either looking at a state offer under § 22c or at an operator with no German permission at all. The same boundary is where the state Spielbanken sit.
Also outside the authority's remit are those Spielbanken themselves and the land-based arcades. For them only a slice of the treaty applies at all, under § 2(2): the objectives, advertising, the social concept, the information duties, the exclusion system and the exclusion register. Everything else is state law.
What a German permission actually is
It is an administrative act with ancillary conditions, not a certificate. Attached to it are connection to the OASIS exclusion system, connection to the limit file and activity file in LUGAS, the stake and game-duration limits, the advertising time window and the segregation of player funds. The content of an individual permission is not published; what is public is its existence and its scope, through the whitelist.
Reading the whitelist without falling into its four traps
§ 9(8) of the treaty obliges the authority to maintain a public list of permitted operators. It is an interactive database on gluecksspiel-behoerde.de, kept continuously up to date, with no export function.
The first trap is the name. Search for the permission holder, not the brand. Many familiar brand names belong to companies called something entirely different; the brand appears in the entry, but searching by the company name is the more reliable route, and the imprint of the website is where that company name is found.
The second is scope. Permissions apply per form of gambling. An entry for sports betting says nothing about whether the same company may offer virtual slot machines, and this is the single commonest misreading.
The third is the website. One permission holder can run several domains, and only what is listed is permitted. A domain that merely resembles a listed one is not covered — that resemblance is the standard construction of an imitation site, and it is the reason to compare character by character rather than at a glance.
The fourth is a failed search. The database returns only partial extracts to automated queries. Not found in a lookup is not the same as not listed, and a negative result from a scraper or a third-party tool proves nothing at all. What the whitelist does answer reliably is whether a permission exists and which forms of gambling it covers. A seal in a website footer answers neither question; it is an image, and images can be copied.
The official figures as at 31 December 2025
The activity report for 2025, published on 3 July 2026, contains the only solid aggregate figures, and they are tied to that reporting date. The interactive whitelist itself publishes no totals, which is why day-current aggregate numbers quoted in the market are estimates and therefore usually wrong.
As at 31 December 2025 there were 28 permission holders for sports betting with 31 websites, 37 for virtual slot machines with 107 websites, 5 for online poker with 7 websites and 5 for horse race betting on the internet with 7 websites. In total the whitelist carried 135 permission holders and 232 websites.
The ratio of 37 holders to 107 websites in virtual slot machines is the most revealing line in the table: on average a single company runs close to three brands. Anyone who believes they are switching between operators is frequently switching between brands of the same company — which makes no difference to the deposit limit in any case, because § 6c applies across operators. That is set out under the 1,000 euro deposit limit.
On the land-based side of sports betting, 29 organisers held a permission in 2025 — 11 hybrid and 18 internet-only — of which 27 had an active offer, alongside around 2,300 land-based betting shops.
Enforcement in 2025, including where it did not work
The second half of the authority's work is pursuing what has no permission. The 2025 figures describe an instrument set that bites unevenly, and the report is unusually candid about where it does not.
531 administrative procedures were conducted, 231 against operators and 300 against advertisers. 2,263 websites were examined, 287 prohibition procedures initiated, 152 offers and 1,551 websites discontinued. At the reporting date 1,843 illegal websites were no longer reachable from Germany as a result of prohibition orders or network blocking. 254 illegal online operators had withdrawn their offer from the German market, 66 more than the year before; among advertisers the figure was 370, an increase of 86.
On payment blocking the report names 178 affected websites, 1,907 measures and 38 payment service providers that ceased their involvement. On network blocking the authority concedes that the instrument continued not to be deployed to the extent originally intended by the legislator: 386 sites examined, 782 measures, 292 websites blocked or no longer accessible. That admitted weakness is exactly what the Second Amending Treaty of 26 March 2026 addresses, in force since 1 July 2026, by aligning § 9 with the case law of the highest courts — detail under the German gambling treaty.
Fixed terms, and the new licensing cycle from 2027
Permissions are granted for a fixed term and with ancillary conditions; extension and revocation are both provided for. That is the structural reason why the whitelist is a more current proof than any copy of a permission document, any year printed in a review and any badge on a website.
The authority has named two priorities for 2026 and 2027: the statutory evaluation under § 32 of the treaty, and preparation of the new licensing cycle from 2027. For the market that means the composition of the list will move over the coming months — companies can drop out, new ones can appear, individual forms of gambling can be added to or removed from an existing permission.
The practical rule that follows is simple enough to apply in a minute, and the table below sets it out step by step. Our own admission condition for a test is the same one: an operator that is not on the list at the editorial deadline is not tested, not linked and not described as an alternative, which is explained under how we test.
One note for English speakers. The whitelist, the authority's forms and its correspondence are in German, and there is no English version of the database. The fields you need are few — company name, form of gambling, website — and they are the same words each time, which makes this one of the German-only processes that is genuinely manageable with a dictionary rather than a translator.
Step by step
| Step | What happens | Who acts | Time frame |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Find the company name | Open the imprint of the website and note the company named there, not the brand on the logo. | You |
| 02 | Open the whitelist | Go to the GGL database of permitted operators under § 9(8) GlüStV on gluecksspiel-behoerde.de. There is no export; the search runs in the browser. | You |
| 03 | Search by holder, not by brand | Enter the company name from the imprint. If nothing is found, try the brand as a second attempt rather than the first. | You |
| 04 | Check the form of gambling | Confirm that the entry covers the form you intend to play — sports betting, virtual slot machines, online poker or horse race betting are listed separately. | You |
| 05 | Compare the domain character by character | Only the websites listed are covered. A similar domain is not the same domain, and that similarity is how imitation sites are built. | You |
| 06 | Treat a blank result with care | A failed or automated lookup returns partial extracts. If in doubt, ask the authority rather than concluding that the operator is unlicensed. | You, or the GGL |
Frequently asked
Is there an EU licence that is valid in Germany?
Why can I not find roulette or black jack at a German-licensed site?
How long does a permission last?
The whitelist search finds nothing. Does that mean the operator is illegal?
What happens if an operator loses its permission?
Can I complain to the GGL about an operator?
Are the Spielbanken supervised by the GGL as well?
Sources
- Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021, § 9(8) — public list of permitted operators; § 2(2) — the provisions applicable to Spielbanken; § 22c — online casino games with the federal states — <a href="https://www.gesetze-bayern.de/Content/Document/StVGlueStV2021-9" rel="nofollow noopener">gesetze-bayern.de</a>
- Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder — whitelist of permitted operators — <a href="https://www.gluecksspiel-behoerde.de/de/fuer-spielende/uebersicht-erlaubter-anbieter-whitelist" rel="nofollow noopener">gluecksspiel-behoerde.de</a>
- Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder, activity report 2025, published 3 July 2026 — permission figures as at 31 December 2025, enforcement figures, staff — <a href="https://www.gluecksspiel-behoerde.de/" rel="nofollow noopener">gluecksspiel-behoerde.de</a>
- Second Amending Treaty to the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag of 26 March 2026, in force 1 July 2026 — network blocking under § 9, § 4b, governance of the GGL.
- Bundesinstitut für Öffentliche Gesundheit (BIÖG), counselling helpline 0800 1 37 27 00 — <a href="https://www.check-dein-spiel.de/" rel="nofollow noopener">check-dein-spiel.de</a>