OASIS explained: Germany’s nationwide gambling exclusion register

Active exclusions

367,000 nationwide, February 2026

Register queries in 2025

5.2 billion, about 432 million a month

Connected operators

9,000 around 41,000 premises

Cost to the player

0 € for entry and for lifting (§ 8c)

Does OASIS apply to you if you are not German?

Yes, and it is worth being clear about this first. The register is tied to a person and to the act of gambling with an operator holding a German licence — not to citizenship, not to a German identity card, not to a residence status. An Irish engineer in Munich and a Japanese student in Leipzig sit inside the same system as their German neighbours from the moment they open an account.

The exclusion travels with you inside Germany and stops at the border. It has no effect on operators licensed in Malta or Curaçao, appears in no foreign register, and touches neither your immigration file nor your Schufa credit record. What being a foreign resident really changes is the administration, not the law: every form is in German, the digital route depends on German identity infrastructure, and the authority corresponds in German.

Who runs the register, and who can undo an entry

OASIS is operated by the state of Hesse, represented by the Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt — a regional administrative authority comparable to a prefecture. Hesse runs it for all sixteen states, which share the cost, so your correspondence carries a Darmstadt address even if you live in Hamburg. Before 2021 each state kept its own list and someone excluded in one could carry on playing in the next.

§ 8 paragraph 3 requires identification by inspection of an official identity document, or a comparable check, and a match against the register before participation: online before the account is opened and before every login, on the premises at the door and at the latest before the first game.

One division of labour decides where you send things. An entry can be created by an operator or by the authority; an exclusion can be lifted by the Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt and by nobody else. An operator offering to remove your exclusion is mistaken.

The identity documents the authority accepts

This is where most time gets lost. The authority requires a completed application carrying your own handwritten signature plus a copy of a valid identity document: the German Personalausweis or a passport. A driving licence is expressly not accepted, foreign ones included.

For most foreign residents that is simple — your national passport does the job, and there is no requirement that the document be German. Residence permits are not named in the list of accepted documents, so the passport is the safe choice.

The fully digital route is the one a foreign passport will not open. Submitting end to end through the Hessen-Portal, the state of Hesse's online administration platform, requires a BundID account together with the online identification function of a German eID. Without that, the digital form is closed to you and you fall back on paper or on applying in person at a venue.

• Accepted: a valid passport of any nationality, or the German Personalausweis.
• Not accepted: a driving licence, German or foreign.
• Always required: your own handwritten signature on the application.
• Digital route only: BundID plus the German online identification function.

Three ways into the register

The most common is self-exclusion. It needs no reason: whoever applies receives it. No one examines your playing behaviour, asks for a medical certificate or asks why. The step-by-step version is on applying for self-exclusion.

The second is exclusion applied for by others, the Fremdsperre. Under § 8a it is entered where a person is at risk of gambling addiction, is over-indebted, fails to meet financial obligations, or stakes amounts out of all proportion to income and assets. Relatives, venue staff and counselling services can bring the case with evidence; the authority decides, and the person concerned may comment first. See exclusion applied for by a relative.

The third is exclusion on the operator's own initiative, required of a licence holder that sees the marks of problematic play. It runs through the algorithmic early-detection system under § 6i paragraph 1 — algorithms no outsider can inspect, which makes it the least visible part of the system.

How long it lasts, and the sentence everybody misreads

§ 8a sets the standard case at a year: the exclusion is for at least one year unless the person applying for a self-exclusion asks for a different period. English-language write-ups routinely compress this into "three months", which is wrong in a way that matters.

There are two floors. Exclude yourself and you may ask for as little as three months — but if you ask for nothing, you get a year. Where somebody else brings the case the minimum is one year and cannot be shortened. The difference is deliberate: self-exclusion stays a tool in the player's hand, an imposed exclusion is an intervention.

Neither ends with the calendar. Once the minimum has run, the entry continues indefinitely until a written application ends it. Excluding yourself for three months and expecting to play in the fourth without doing anything is the commonest misunderstanding in this whole area. The full chain is on duration and deadlines.

Getting out again

§ 8b allows lifting only on the written application of the excluded person, and only after the minimum period. An application made too early is ineffective — it is not held on file, so it must be made again. Only the Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt decides.

Between the application arriving and the exclusion ending sits a statutory waiting period that again depends on how you got in: one week after receipt for a self-exclusion, one month where a third party brought the case. In the latter case the authority also informs the third parties, along with their right to apply for a fresh exclusion.

Once lifted, the entry can no longer be retrieved by operators. The personal data are deleted six years after the exclusion ends (§ 23); data from the 24-hour panic-button lock under § 6i paragraph 3 go within two weeks. Details on lifting an OASIS exclusion.

What an OASIS entry cannot do

It is not a criminal record and not a report to a credit agency. Employers, banks, insurers and landlords have no access; only operators obliged under § 8 paragraph 3 may query it, and only for the admission check.

It is not a payment block. An exclusion keeps you out of licensed offers and does nothing to stop an unlicensed site abroad from accepting a deposit. Treating it as a complete technical barrier overestimates it; dismissing it for that reason underestimates it, because 367,000 active entries and 5.2 billion queries a year are not a symbolic procedure.

It is also not the self-exclusion button inside one operator's account. That works at that operator alone and the operator can reverse it; an OASIS entry works across the licensed market and the operator cannot touch it. The two are set side by side on operator exclusion versus OASIS.

The lighter tools below an exclusion

OASIS is the hardest instrument in German player protection, not the only one, and for many people a lighter one fits better. The cross-operator deposit limit under § 6c is 1,000 euro per calendar month across all German-licensed operators combined, not per account; lowering it takes effect at once, raising it only after a seven-day protection period. It is enforced through the limit register inside LUGAS, the supervisory system run since 1 January 2023 by the Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder (GGL). See the 1,000 euro deposit limit.

Shorter still is the panic button under § 6i paragraph 3: a clearly marked button that locks you out for 24 hours without questions and ends automatically. In the game itself § 22a paragraph 7 caps the stake at one euro per round on a virtual slot — but since 1 July 2026 the GGL permits graduated increases to three euro from age 21 and five euro after 90 days without conspicuous playing behaviour and with monitoring, a rule limited until the end of 2027.

Help in English, and why an exclusion is not treatment

An exclusion is a barrier: it buys time, it treats nothing. The Bundesinstitut für Öffentliche Gesundheit (BIÖG), the federal public health institute, runs a free and anonymous counselling line on 0800 1 37 27 00, Monday to Thursday 10:00 to 22:00 and Friday to Sunday 10:00 to 18:00, with the information service at check-dein-spiel.de. The line is German-language; if your German will not carry a long conversation, say so at the start and ask to be referred to a local counselling centre, since the larger cities have services working in English, Turkish, Russian, Arabic and Polish.

Step by step

More on this topic

Frequently asked

Sources

1. Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021 (interstate treaty on gambling), §§ 8, 8a to 8d and § 23 — exclusion system, entry, lifting, costs and the register itself.
2. Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021, §§ 6a, 6c, 6h, 6i and 22a — player account, deposit limit, activity register, panic button and stake limits.
3. <a href="https://rp-darmstadt.hessen.de/sicherheit-und-kommunales/gluecksspiel/spielersperrsystem-oasis/spielerinnen-und-spieler" rel="nofollow noopener">Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt — OASIS, information for players</a> (application routes, accepted identity documents, forms).
4. <a href="https://rp-darmstadt.hessen.de/presse/bilanz-2025-mehr-als-fuenf-milliarden-abfragen-ueber-das-spielersperrsystem-oasis" rel="nofollow noopener">Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt, 2025 balance — more than five billion queries through OASIS</a> (press release of 10 February 2026).
5. <a href="https://www.gluecksspiel-behoerde.de/de/fuer-gluecksspielanbieter/aufsichtssysteme" rel="nofollow noopener">Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder (GGL) — supervisory systems LUGAS, limit register and activity register</a>.
6. <a href="https://www.check-dein-spiel.de/" rel="nofollow noopener">check-dein-spiel.de</a> — counselling service of the Bundesinstitut für Öffentliche Gesundheit (BIÖG), free helpline 0800 1 37 27 00.