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Gambling Laws in Sweden 2026: A Definition Problem

Yes — gambling is legal in Sweden for adults aged 18 and over, under licence from Spelinspektionen, governed by the Gambling Act (spellagen 2018:1138), in force since 1 January 2019. Now the complication, which is the whole story of Swedish gambling law: the Act tells you in its second section that it does not reach online gambling “not directed at the Swedish market.” Sweden’s enforcement problem is not a shortage of penalties or political will. It is written into the sentence that defines who the statute binds — and the reform the government has spent 2025 and 2026 preparing is, at bottom, a proposal to rewrite that one sentence.

Is gambling legal in Sweden in 2026?

Yes, for adults aged 18 and over, provided the operator holds a Swedish licence. Online casino, online bingo, slots, sports betting, horse-race betting, lotteries, land-based bingo and restaurant casino games are all lawful under licence. Land-based casino games in a dedicated casino venue are the exception, and not because they were banned as a vice: the licence category was simply deleted.

Providing licensable gambling without a licence is a criminal offence. Chapter 19, Section 1 of the Gambling Act creates the offence of olovlig spelverksamhet — unlawful gambling operations — punishable by a fine or up to two years in prison for anyone who intentionally or through gross negligence provides gambling without the necessary licence. Chapter 19, Section 2 does the same for främjande av olovligt spel, promoting participation in it. Where the offence is intentional and aggravated, Section 3 raises the range to between six months and six years, with professional or systematic conduct and scale as the aggravating markers. Stakes taken in the course of such an offence are forfeit under Section 9.

Read as a criminal code, this is a reasonably tough statute. The question that decides everything is which conduct it reaches at all.

So what does the Gambling Act actually apply to?

Gambling provided in Sweden — and Chapter 1, Section 2 then removes from that definition any online gambling not directed at the Swedish market. Two sentences. One gives; the other takes away:

“The Act shall be applied to gambling provided in Sweden, unless otherwise follows from Sections 3, 4 or 5. Online gambling not directed at the Swedish market shall not be regarded as provided in Sweden.” (Chapter 1, Section 2, spellagen 2018:1138, our translation.)

The bill that produced the Act explains what “directed at” requires, and the explanation is where the difficulty starts. Prop. 2017/18:220 at page 290 states that it is not sufficient that a site offering gambling is accessible from Sweden; the site must be designed for the Swedish market, and whether it is must be settled by an overall assessment in which relevant circumstances may include Swedish-language content or the offer of deposits and winnings in Swedish kronor. Nothing in the statute lists the factors. Nothing sets a threshold. The test is a judgment call, and by design.

Spelinspektionen has published its own list of indicators in a strategy document for work against unlawful online gambling: Swedish-language pages, kronor, marketing aimed at Sweden, payment options or payment service providers registered in Sweden or used mainly by Swedish consumers, and use of an e-identification system used mainly by Swedish consumers. Useful indicators. None of them is in the Act.

Is an unlicensed site that takes Swedish players breaking the law?

Not necessarily — and the Swedish government says so in its own words. This is the single most misreported fact about Swedish gambling law, and the correction comes from the Ministry of Finance memorandum of 19 February 2025 (HR2025/00344) that commissioned the current review.

That document sets out, under the heading “there is a grey zone on the gambling market,” that a licence is required of operators that direct themselves at the Swedish market, but that it is permitted for an operator to have customers in Sweden so long as the business is not directed at the Swedish market in the sense the Act intends. It follows, in the ministry’s own construction, that the unlicensed market consists partly of gambling that lacks a necessary licence — unlawful — and partly of other unlicensed gambling that is not unlawful. And then the sentence that ought to appear in every account of this market: Spelinspektionen cannot act against operators providing unlicensed gambling that is not unlawful.

The same memorandum records three further things worth stating precisely. First, in supervision cases the burden of proving that a gambling business directs itself at the Swedish market sits on Spelinspektionen — and the ministry names the exact difficulty: it can be hard to establish and prove that an operator has done anything more than passively accept Swedish customers. Second, the regulator reports that it is now less common for unlicensed operators to use Swedish-language sites, Swedish currency and similar obvious connecting factors than it was shortly after re-regulation, and that operators seeking Swedish customers constantly find new routes and change their methods. Third — and this is the part nobody quotes — the ministry accepts that the judgment can be “very complex,” and that it has to be made not only by Spelinspektionen and gambling companies but by actors with no specialist knowledge of the industry: police, prosecutors, and the payment service providers who are legally obliged to block card payments to gambling that lacks a necessary licence.

Put those together and you have a compliance test that rewards its own evasion. The statutory indicators of targeting are cosmetic and cheap to remove; the commercial reality of taking Swedish money is not. An operator that strips the Swedish language, the krona and the Swedish marketing has not reduced its Swedish revenue by a krona, but it has moved the regulator’s burden of proof from difficult to close to impossible — and it has handed the same unresolved question to a card processor in another country.

That card needs its units flagged, because mixing them is how bad numbers get made. The 2,186 is a count of websites compiled to 30 April 2026 and published in Spelinspektionen’s channelisation report of 15 June 2026; the 70 is a count of actors on the prohibition list at 31 December 2025, from the regulator’s 2025 annual report; the 334 is the number of sites the report attributes to companies already under prohibition orders. Four months and two units separate them, so read the 15% as an order of magnitude, not a rate.

There is one comparison in this area that does keep its units, and it is the more damning of the two. The 2025 annual report records that the year’s supervision of unlicensed gambling covered an estimated 180 to 220 unlicensed websites, producing 20 prohibition decisions and three injunctions on the promotion of unlawful gambling. Websites against websites: the regulator has now identified roughly ten to twelve times more unlicensed sites than its supervision touched in a year (16Best analysis; 2,186 sites identified to 30 April 2026 against 180–220 covered during calendar 2025, so the two counts sit four months apart). That is not a resourcing anecdote. It is what a burden of proof costs when it has to be discharged site by site.

Has the directional criterion ever been tested in court?

Yes, and the regulator lost at both levels. The government’s own February 2025 memorandum notes that the meaning of the directional criterion was left to develop through case law — and, seven years in, the single authority it points to is the Administrative Court of Appeal in Jönköping, 7 February 2025, case 1859-24. The ministry’s wording is careful: the question has “among other things” been tested there, which does not exclude other cases. But that is the one judgment the government put on the record when it commissioned a rewrite of the provision, and it is worth reading closely.

On 6 July 2023 Spelinspektionen ordered Zimpler AB, a Swedish-registered payment institution, to stop providing payment service solutions containing the BankID e-identification system to gambling operators without a Swedish licence. The order was made mainly under Chapter 3, Section 7 — the administrative prohibition on promoting participation in unlawful gambling, a power that had come into force only on 1 January 2023 — together with the general injunction power in Chapter 18, Section 23. It carried a conditional fine of SEK 25 million if Zimpler did not comply by 31 July 2023, and it applied immediately.

The Administrative Court in Linköping quashed it on 22 May 2024 in case 5684-23. Its reasoning is short and, for the regulator, brutal. To issue such an order, the court held, two things must be established: that unlawful gambling occurred, and that it was promoted. On the first, the court noted that Spelinspektionen had not identified in its decision which operators or websites Zimpler had worked with that were supposedly directed at the Swedish market. It had not been alleged that those sites were in Swedish, had marketed themselves towards Sweden in any capacity, or had offered deposits in Swedish kronor. And then the finding that matters: even though Zimpler is registered in Sweden, is largely used by Swedish consumers, and its direct bank transfers involve customers identifying themselves with BankID, those circumstances alone were not sufficient for the gambling to be regarded as directed at Sweden — not least because a person holding a Swedish personal identity number can use BankID from abroad.

On promotion the court went further, holding in the alternative that even if unlawful gambling had been shown, Zimpler’s conduct would not amount to promotion under Chapter 3, Section 7. The legislative history restricts the concept to services developed specifically for gambling companies; normal payment orders are not promotion. Zimpler’s service was standardised and substantially the same whoever the counterparty was. On 7 February 2025 the Administrative Court of Appeal dismissed Spelinspektionen’s appeal.

What licences exist, and what may each one offer?

Six licence families, one per chapter of the Act, plus a separate permit for gambling software — and since 1 January 2026 one of them can no longer be granted for casino games. A licence runs for a fixed period of at most five years and is renewable on application.

Scope note: the Ch. 9 figure is 2025 net turnover — stakes minus winnings paid out — from the Spelinspektionen and Skatteverket quarterly series, not revenue on any other basis. Licence duration and renewal are in Chapter 4 of the Act.

The last row is a genuinely unusual piece of policy. Sweden did not liberalise its state casino monopoly; it abolished the activity. Prop. 2024/25:73 removed casino games from the state gambling licence, so no operator — not even Svenska Spel — can be licensed to run a casino in a dedicated venue. The estate had already gone: Casino Cosmopol Sundsvall closed in 2020, Gothenburg and Malmö in February 2024, and Svenska Spel announced the closure of the Stockholm venue on 25 April 2025, with the business wound up that month and around 240 jobs lost. The Act still says, in Chapter 14, Section 2, that a person under 20 may not be admitted to a casino. There are no casinos left for the sentence to describe.

What did re-regulation in 2019 actually change?

It replaced a state monopoly plus an untaxed offshore market with a licensed, taxed and supervised one — and it did so while accepting from the first day that some offshore play would remain outside the statute. Before 1 January 2019 the Lotteries Act and the Casinos Act gave Svenska Spel the lotteries, the value machines and the four Casino Cosmopol venues, and AB Trav och Galopp the horse-race betting. Everything else Swedes played online ran on Maltese and Gibraltar licences that Sweden taxed at nothing.

What re-regulation created is a rulebook, and the rulebook is where Sweden is genuinely distinctive. What it did not create was a way of reaching an operator that declines to look Swedish. That was a deliberate choice: the passage in Prop. 2017/18:220 excluding gambling not directed at Sweden exists precisely so that not all internet gambling would fall within the Act. The choice has been revisited twice since. Ds 2021:29 examined extending the Act to all gambling accessible from Sweden, and Prop. 2022/23:33 revisited the scope again. Neither produced an amendment. The government’s stated reason, recorded in its 2025 terms of reference, was that the meaning of the directional criterion should be developed through practice. Practice produced one judgment, and it went against the regulator.

For what the licensed market has done with the money since, and why Sweden’s channelisation figures are harder to read than anyone admits, see our gambling in Sweden statistics page.

Which Swedish rules go further than the European norm?

The one-bonus rule and the moderation standard for marketing — and the second is written as a standard rather than a number, which is exactly why it is hard to apply. A licensee that operates in Sweden and elsewhere will tell you the Swedish rulebook is not the most expensive in Europe; it is the most judgment-dependent. The bonus rule is the counter-example, and it matters to the argument on this page: it is a rule, it says what it means, and when the regulator has enforced it the courts have upheld liability every time — adjusting only the size of the fee.

Two of those rows deserve a second look together. Chapter 14, Section 4 requires a licensee’s game information to be in Swedish. Chapter 1, Section 2 treats Swedish-language content as evidence that a site is directed at Sweden. The same feature is a legal obligation inside the perimeter and a liability outside it — which is one reason the outside of the perimeter has quietly de-Swedified.

On the marketing standard, note what Parliament has and has not done, because the sequence is the reverse of what most summaries imply. In Prop. 2021/22:242 the government considered raising the bar to special moderation, the alcohol-advertising formula, and declined — proposing instead a modest clarification that the overall assessment should give particular weight to how risky the game in question is. The Riksdag then rejected even that clarification, striking the amendment to Chapter 15, Section 1 out of the bill in November 2022 on the culture committee’s reasoning that it was premature to legislate while case law was still forming. So the standard in force is one word, måttfullhet, with no statutory guidance attached to it and no appellate ruling defining it. Sweden’s marketing rule has exactly the property that has been costing it cases everywhere else on this page.

What does the Swedish state charge?

22% of gross gaming revenue under the Gambling Tax Act (2018:1139), raised from 18% on 1 July 2024, plus fixed licence and supervision fees — and nothing at all on a player’s winnings from a Swedish-licensed operator. The tax base is behållningen: stakes received minus winnings paid out in the tax period. That is the same quantity as gross gaming revenue, and it is not turnover.

Scope note: these are different kinds of charge on different bases and must not be added into a single effective rate. Corporate income tax sits on profit, a separate quantity again. The supervision-fee figures are from the annex to SIFS 2026:1 as decided on 22 January 2026; the schedule is reset by the regulator and the previous one, SIFS 2024:4, carried different amounts, so any figure quoted from an older source will be stale.

What changed in Swedish gambling law in 2026?

Six changes on four dates — and, against the run of the coverage, one of them loosens a rule. Every one of them regulates a licensee. The table separates what has commenced from what is merely proposed, because most accounts do not.

The credit ban repays a close reading, because it is the clearest example of Sweden tightening a rule it can actually enforce. The old Chapter 14, Section 8 stopped a licensee or its agent offering or extending credit for stakes itself. The new wording stops them allowing or contributing to gambling financed by credit from anyone, and obliges them to take appropriate measures to counter it. A narrow exception survives in the new Chapter 14, Section 8 a: the regulator may allow credit for a Chapter 6 public-benefit lottery that is not a party political lottery, where there are special grounds and the licensee takes measures to keep the aggregate credit amount from exceeding one fortieth of the price base amount — SEK 1,480 for 2026, since the government set the base at SEK 59,200 on 18 September 2025 (16Best calculation from the statutory fraction and the published base amount; the 2025 equivalent was SEK 1,470). Exemptions already granted under the old wording continue to run.

Notice the pattern across the whole table. A credit ban binds licensees and their agents. An API specification binds licensees. A fee schedule binds licensees. A bonus freedom is handed to licensees. Only the last row — the one that is not law — addresses the operators the government says it cannot currently reach.

Who does enforcement actually land on?

Licensees, overwhelmingly — and the regulator’s losses cluster with striking consistency on the provisions written as standards rather than as rules. This is the sharpest test of the argument on this page, and it is testable, because Swedish administrative judgments are published.

Start with the volume, and quote it carefully, because the regulator’s own annual report describes the same 49% twice in two different ways. Its results section says Spelinspektionen “increased the number of closed supervision cases by 49 percent”; its detailed section says the agency initiated 216 supervision activities in 2025, up 49% on 2024, and took decisions in 198 supervision cases, an increase of just over 200%. The detailed figures are the ones to use. Within that, supervision was opened against 35 licensees, and 64% of that group’s cases decided by the time the report closed led to an intervention. Against unlicensed operators the comparable output is 20 prohibition decisions, three promotion injunctions, and a prohibition list holding 70 actors at year end. Then look at what happened to the money in court.

Four scope warnings, because this table is the evidence for the whole page. (1) This is the set of fees we can trace from a named Spelinspektionen decision to a published judgment, not the complete population. (2) The Zimpler figure is a conditional fine attached to an injunction, a different instrument that never fell due, so it is excluded from every percentage below. (3) Only three of the nine fees have reached a final, unappealable outcome — both Mr Green fees and ATG. The Svenska Spel quashing is under appeal, and the five Linköping judgments of June and July 2026 are first instance and may yet be appealed, so every percentage here is a snapshot dated 27 July 2026. (4) Amounts are sanction fees as decided, in nominal kronor; they are not the operators’ revenue, and the statutory ceiling itself is relative — 10% of the licensee’s previous-year licensable turnover under Chapter 19, Section 13 — so a larger fee does not by itself mean a graver breach.

Four observations follow, and the fourth is the one that matters. First, the duty of care in Chapter 14, Section 1 is a standard: protect players from excessive gambling, monitor play, write an action plan. In the Svenska Spel judgment the court went as far as saying that the demonstrable circumstances, mainly the size of the losses, pointed towards the ten customers having gambled excessively — and then held that the term is not defined closely enough to settle the question, that no binding regulations on the duty have ever been issued, and that in the absence of concrete rules an intervention should in principle be reserved for cases where a licensee has disregarded its player-protection duties “in a flagrant manner.” On that test, evidence that customers were being harmed was not enough. Second, the money-laundering cases turn on a specific rulebook with specific obligations, and the courts applied them without visible difficulty: assuming that a deposit consists of earlier winnings is not an enhanced customer due diligence measure, whether or not the customer used the same bank account for deposits and withdrawals; large deposits from people with modest declared incomes raise the risk and require more work.

Third — and this is where the lazy version of this argument goes wrong — the courts have not rejected the duty of care. In May 2024 the Administrative Court of Appeal held the opposite: the duty obliges a licensee to limit a customer’s gambling on its own initiative and to take the measures needed to counter excessive play. The Supreme Administrative Court refused leave to appeal that December, so it is settled. The regulator’s own reason for appealing the Svenska Spel judgment is that it conflicts with those earlier decisions. Sweden’s duty-of-care problem is therefore not that the obligation is denied. It is that proving a breach of it has so far cost the regulator 84% of the money it put on the table — the mirror image of the 16% left standing — and that the 84% is one judgment away from being 17%, because SEK 100m of it is the Svenska Spel quashing now sitting with the Administrative Court of Appeal. Which is the honest way to hold this argument: the magnitude is volatile, the direction is not.

Fourth: the state-owned operator, the one Sweden controls most completely, is the one that beat a SEK 100 million fee at first instance. That figure ties the largest sanction fee in the regulator’s published decisions we have been able to find — Spooniker was charged the same SEK 100 million on 18 March 2020 for unlawful bonuses and lotteries, the Administrative Court cut it to SEK 50 million, and by the time the Court of Appeal finished with it on 27 May 2024 the figure was SEK 30 million. Which yields the most deflating number on this page: the largest sanction fee we can trace to a final, unappealable outcome is SEK 30 million — 70% below the largest we can find imposed, and every larger figure standing today is still first instance or under appeal. The Svenska Spel supervision covered a two-month window, 17 October to 17 December 2021, and examined the ten customers who had lost the most money in it. Nobody was hiding. The obligation, like the scope provision, is a sentence requiring judgment rather than a rule requiring compliance.

What can Spelinspektionen do about a site it cannot licence?

Issue an injunction, apply to a court to block payments to an account, or order an internet provider to display a warning notice — but not block the site. The toolkit is real, narrow, and in one case explicitly ruled out on policy grounds.

Set that against what the regulator says it is up against and the shape of the problem is clear. Spelinspektionen reported in July 2026 that a large part of its second-quarter work on unlicensed gambling was analysing how those operators reach Swedes — social media, influencers, banners, SMS, sponsored search results — and that clear information and early contact often lead operators to correct themselves voluntarily. Persuasion is doing work that a statute is supposed to do. Note also the division of labour, which surprises most readers: licensees’ marketing is supervised by the Swedish Consumer Agency under the Marketing Act, because Chapter 15, Section 4 routes breaches there, while Spelinspektionen supervises the promotion of unlicensed gambling.

What would the 2027 proposal change?

The definition, not the penalties. Ds 2025:23 would delete the directional criterion and replace it with a participation criterion: online gambling is provided in Sweden if a person located in Sweden can take part in it. The exit is no longer looking un-Swedish; it is actively preventing Swedish participation through appropriate and effective measures.

The sequence is worth laying out with dates, because the status matters more than the content. The Ministry of Finance commissioned the review on 19 February 2025, appointing Marcus Isgren, chair and head of the National Board for Consumer Disputes, and set a reporting deadline of 17 September 2025 — the date the terms of reference themselves specify, and the date most secondary coverage repeats as though it were the publication date. The government announced the report and published it as Ds 2025:23 on 24 September 2025. Alongside the new scope test it proposes extending the administrative promotion ban to payment solutions and similar economic or administrative services supplied to gambling operators, whether or not those services were developed for the gambling industry — which reads as a direct legislative answer to the Zimpler judgment — and a presumption that a person resident or ordinarily present in Sweden who makes a payment to or from unlicensed gambling is playing from Sweden, rebuttable only by evidence of participation from abroad. Spelinspektionen was then instructed to spell out what an operator must do to stay outside the Act, and reported on that in late March 2026, grouping the measures into access to gambling, registration and payments, and terms and user controls, ranked by the effectiveness it assessed — while declining to say which single measures would suffice.

All of it is proposed. The memorandum has been through consultation; there is no bill before the Riksdag as at 27 July 2026; the stated commencement is 1 January 2027 if adopted. Anyone telling you Sweden has criminalised offshore play from 2027 is describing a memorandum, not a statute.

What are the rules for a player?

You must be 18, you set your own deposit limit online, you can block yourself from every licensed operator with one notification, and winnings from a Swedish-licensed operator are tax-free. Chapter 14, Section 2 states both age rules: licensable gambling may not be provided to anyone under 18, and no one under 20 may be admitted to a casino — a provision now without an object, since no casino licence exists. Section 3 requires that gambling be provided so that age can be checked, and that the age limit be clearly displayed where the game is offered.

Swedish law does not criminalise the player. Chapter 19, Sections 1 and 2 punish providing and promoting unlawful gambling, not participating in it. What the player loses by going outside the licensed perimeter is protection, not liberty: no Spelpaus block, no mandatory deposit ceiling, no duty of care, no Swedish supervision — and, where the operator sits outside the EEA, a tax bill on the winnings. That last consequence is the one the statute puts in the warning notice.

Support is statutory too. Chapter 15, Section 3 requires commercial gambling messages to state the minimum age, and requires licensees to ensure that contact details for an organisation providing information and support on gambling problems appear where gambling is conducted and alongside commercial messages, radio excepted.

How does Sweden compare?

Among the markets we have mapped, Sweden is the one whose central fight is about the wording of a definition rather than about who regulates, whether a product is allowed, or what the rate should be. Its peers argue about authority and price. Sweden argues about a subordinate clause.

Scope note: these charges sit on different bases and are not a rate ranking. Sweden’s, South Africa’s, Brazil’s and Nigeria’s figures are gross-gambling-revenue based; Germany’s 5.3% is charged on turnover, and the GGR-equivalent shown depends on the game’s return to player.

The instructive contrast is the Netherlands, and the Swedish government picked it out itself. Its 2025 terms of reference note that in the Netherlands it is unlawful to allow players in the country to play without a licence — participation is enough — and instruct the investigator to pay particular attention to Dutch law. Sweden is not inventing the participation criterion. It is importing a definition another EU market has already been running for years. For the full country map, ranked by channelization rather than by legality, see our sports betting laws by country hub.

Why do the sources disagree?

Because Swedish gambling coverage collapses four distinctions that the statute keeps apart: unlicensed versus unlawful, passed versus commenced, proposed versus in force, and a rule versus a standard. Every conflict we hit building this page is one of the following.

• “Unlicensed” is not the same as “illegal” in Sweden, and the government says so. Guides routinely state that any operator without a Swedish licence is acting illegally. The Ministry of Finance’s own February 2025 memorandum divides the unlicensed market into gambling that lacks a necessary licence, which is unlawful, and other unlicensed gambling, which is not — and states that Spelinspektionen cannot act against the second category. Any sentence that flattens the two is describing a different statute from the one in force.
• The scope test is a burden of proof, not a checklist. Lists of “factors” circulate as though satisfying two of them settles the matter. They come from Spelinspektionen’s strategy document, not the Act, and the Linköping court expressly found that a Swedish-registered payment provider, mainly Swedish customers and BankID authentication were not, on their own, enough. Where a source says Swedish players alone trigger the licence requirement, it is describing the Dutch rule or the 2027 proposal.
• Delivered, published, consulted and enacted are four different states. Isgren delivered on 17 September 2025; the memorandum was published on 24 September 2025 as Ds 2025:23; consultation followed; commencement is proposed for 1 January 2027. None of that is law, and dates from the four stages get quoted interchangeably. The same trap caught the credit ban in the other direction: the government proposed 1 April 2026 in Prop. 2025/26:11, and the Riksdag’s decision of 17 February 2026 commenced it on 1 May 2026. Sources written before that vote print the wrong date.
• The exception amount for lottery credit is a formula, not a number. Spelinspektionen states the ceiling as about SEK 1,480; the statute states it as one fortieth of the price base amount. Both are right. The base amount was set at SEK 59,200 for 2026 on 18 September 2025, so the fraction yields SEK 1,480 this year and SEK 1,470 last year. Quote the formula, not the figure, unless you state the year (16Best analysis).
• The supervision fee in most 2026 write-ups is last year’s number. This is the one conflict on the page where we had to overrule a good secondary source. ICLG’s 2026 Sweden chapter gives the annual supervision fee as SEK 264,000 and attributes it to SIFS 2024:4. That regulation was repealed on 1 March 2026. Its replacement, SIFS 2026:1, decided 22 January and issued 2 February 2026, sets the fee for a commercial online gambling or betting licence at SEK 240,000 per licence at item 5 of its annex, and SEK 16,500 for a gambling software permit at item 8. We read the annex rather than the summary, which is why the figure here is SEK 24,000 below the one in circulation. The schedule is reset by the regulator, so date every fee you quote.
• Sanction fee, conditional fine and criminal penalty are three separate instruments with separate ceilings, and they exclude one another. A licensee’s sanction fee runs from SEK 5,000 to 10% of the previous year’s licensable turnover (Ch. 19 s. 13). A payment service provider’s tops out at SEK 10 million (Ch. 19 s. 14). A conditional fine attached to an injunction has no ceiling in the Act, which is how a SEK 25 million figure attached to a payment firm. And Chapter 19, Sections 7 and 12 bar stacking them. Reporting a conditional fine as a fine imposed, as much coverage of the Zimpler case did, overstates the penalty by the whole of it: no money was ever payable.
• Net turnover, gross gaming revenue and turnover. Spelinspektionen’s statistics and the Gambling Tax Act both use behållning or nettoomsättning — stakes minus winnings paid out. That is gross gaming revenue and it is what the 22% is levied on. It is not amount staked. Sweden’s SEK 28.2 billion licensed market in 2025 is therefore not comparable with handle figures from markets that publish turnover, a confusion we unpick in gambling in Brazil statistics.
• Counts of sites, counts of companies and counts of cases are three different denominators. The 2,186 figure counts websites to 30 April 2026. The 70 counts companies on the prohibition list at 31 December 2025. The 35 counts licensees put under supervision during 2025. Dividing across them produces confident nonsense; we label the unit and the date on every one.
• A quashed decision is not a cleared operator, and an appeal is not a final answer. The Svenska Spel judgment of 2 June 2025 quashed the regulator’s decision because the failure was not shown to a standard justifying intervention; Spelinspektionen has appealed, and the Administrative Court of Appeal requires leave to appeal under Chapter 20, Section 2. Until that is resolved, the SEK 100 million is neither payable nor definitively gone, and the percentage we compute above is explicitly a first-instance figure.

Key takeaways

• Gambling is legal in Sweden under licence, and the statute is clear about it. The Gambling Act 2018:1138 has been in force since 1 January 2019, Spelinspektionen licenses six families of gambling for up to five years at a time, the tax is 22% of gross gaming revenue since 1 July 2024, and unlicensed provision carries up to two years in prison, or six where aggravated.
• The Act defines its own reach in a way that undoes much of that. Chapter 1, Section 2 excludes online gambling not directed at the Swedish market, the legislative history requires a site to be designed for Sweden rather than merely reachable from it, and Spelinspektionen carries the burden of proving targeting.
• Sweden therefore has a category of unlicensed gambling that is not unlawful. The government wrote that down itself in February 2025, together with the finding that the regulator cannot act against it — and that unlicensed operators have moved away from Swedish text and kronor since re-regulation, which is precisely the evidence the test relies on.
• The one case that tested the criterion went against the regulator on both limbs. A Swedish-registered payment institution, largely Swedish customers and BankID authentication were held insufficient to show that the underlying gambling was directed at Sweden, and a standardised payment service was held not to be promotion. Linköping quashed on 22 May 2024; Jönköping dismissed the appeal on 7 February 2025.
• Where Sweden writes rules it wins; where it writes standards it loses. Of the nine traceable sanction fees, SEK 24 million of the SEK 150 million charged under the duty of care is still standing — 16% — against SEK 26.5 million of SEK 29.5 million charged under the money-laundering rulebook, 90%. Discount the SEK 100 million Svenska Spel quashing, which is first instance and under appeal, and duty of care still runs at 48%. No rulebook fee has been extinguished at final instance; where courts intervened on one they cut the amount and kept the liability.
• Every 2026 tightening binds the licensed side. Casino games ceased to be licensable on 1 January 2026, party political lotteries lost their exemptions the same day, the extended credit ban commenced 1 May 2026 rather than the proposed 1 April, and the Spelpaus API rules take effect 1 August 2026.
• Against unlicensed sites the strongest available tool is a notice. Payment blocking requires a court application and its own preparatory materials concede it is hard to apply; site blocking was ruled out on 21 March 2025 as too great an intrusion on a fundamental freedom; what remains is an order to an internet provider to display a warning that winnings are taxable.
• The fix on the table is a sentence. Ds 2025:23 would make the Act apply because a person in Sweden can participate, putting the burden on the operator to prove it kept Swedes out, and would extend the promotion ban to payment services regardless of whether they were built for gambling. Proposed for 1 January 2027. Not law. Sweden is trying to repair a licensing regime by changing the definition of who it binds — which is an admission that the definition, not the enforcement, is what has been failing.

Frequently asked questions

Is online gambling legal in Sweden in 2026?

Yes. Online casino, online bingo, slots and sports betting are all legal in Sweden for adults aged 18 and over, provided the operator holds a licence from Spelinspektionen under the Gambling Act, spellagen 2018:1138, which has been in force since 1 January 2019. Commercial online gambling is licensed under Chapter 7 of the Act and betting under Chapter 8, and licences are granted for a fixed period of at most five years. Providing licensable gambling in Sweden without a licence is a criminal offence under Chapter 19, Section 1, punishable by a fine or up to two years in prison, rising to between six months and six years where the offence is intentional and aggravated. Land-based casino games in a dedicated casino venue are the one form no longer licensable at all, because Proposition 2024/25:73 removed casino games from the state gambling licence with effect from 1 January 2026.

What is the directional criterion in the Swedish Gambling Act?

It is the rule in Chapter 1, Section 2 of the Gambling Act that decides whether the Act applies at all. The Act applies to gambling provided in Sweden, and online gambling that is not directed at the Swedish market is not regarded as provided in Sweden. The bill behind the Act, Proposition 2017/18:220 at page 290, states that it is not enough that a gambling website is accessible from Sweden: the site must be designed for the Swedish market, and whether it is must be decided by an overall assessment in which relevant circumstances may include Swedish-language content or the offer of deposits and winnings in Swedish kronor. In supervision cases Spelinspektionen bears the burden of proving that a business is directed at the Swedish market, a point the Ministry of Finance recorded in its terms of reference for the current review on 19 February 2025.

Is it illegal for a Swede to play at a site without a Swedish licence?

Swedish law does not criminalise the player. Chapter 19, Sections 1 and 2 of the Gambling Act punish providing gambling without the necessary licence and promoting participation in it, not taking part. Whether the operator is acting unlawfully depends on the scope rule: the Swedish government stated in February 2025 that the unlicensed market consists partly of gambling that lacks a necessary licence, which is unlawful, and partly of other unlicensed gambling which is not unlawful, and that Spelinspektionen cannot act against the second category. What a player loses by playing outside the licensed system is protection rather than liberty: no Spelpaus block, no mandatory deposit limit, no duty of care and no Swedish supervision. Winnings from an operator without a Swedish licence established outside the European Economic Area are also taxable income for the player, which is one of the facts the statutory warning notice under Chapter 18, Section 28 must convey.

How much is gambling tax in Sweden?

Gambling tax is 22 per cent of gross gaming revenue, meaning stakes received minus winnings paid out in the tax period, under the Gambling Tax Act 2018:1139. The rate was 18 per cent from the start of the licensed market and was raised to 22 per cent on 1 July 2024 by Proposition 2023/24:74. Licensed gambling for public-benefit purposes is exempt from the tax, although party political lotteries lost that exemption on 1 January 2026 under SFS 2025:768. Operators also pay fixed fees: the application fee for commercial online gambling and betting is 230,000 kronor where both licences are applied for together, and there is an annual supervision fee set each year by Spelinspektionen. There is no tax on a player's winnings from a Swedish-licensed operator.

What is the Swedish one-bonus rule?

Chapter 14, Section 9 of the Gambling Act provides that a licensee may offer or provide a bonus only on the first occasion a player plays any of that licensee's games. It is among the strictest bonus rules in any licensed European market and it catches reload offers, cashback and retention promotions, not just repeat welcome offers. It sits alongside the marketing standard in Chapter 15, Section 1, which requires that moderation be observed in all marketing of gambling to consumers and that marketing not be specially directed at people under 18. Breach of the marketing rules is treated as unfair marketing under the Marketing Act 2008:486, which is why licensees' marketing is supervised by the Swedish Consumer Agency rather than by Spelinspektionen.

What did the Zimpler judgment decide?

It decided that a Swedish payment institution was not promoting unlawful gambling, because the underlying gambling had not been shown to be unlawful. On 6 July 2023 Spelinspektionen ordered Zimpler AB to stop providing payment service solutions containing BankID to operators without a Swedish licence, under a conditional fine of 25 million kronor. The Administrative Court in Linkoping quashed the order on 22 May 2024 in case 5684-23, finding that the regulator had not identified which sites were supposedly directed at Sweden, that it had not been alleged those sites were in Swedish or offered deposits in kronor or marketed themselves towards Sweden, and that Zimpler being registered in Sweden, largely used by Swedish consumers and involving BankID authentication was not on its own sufficient to make the gambling directed at Sweden. The court added that a standardised payment service would not amount to promotion in any event. The Administrative Court of Appeal in Jonkoping dismissed Spelinspektionen's appeal on 7 February 2025 in case 1859-24. It is the only judgment on the directional criterion cited in the government's own February 2025 review terms of reference.

Will Sweden change its gambling law in 2027?

It is proposed, not decided. The Ministry of Finance appointed Marcus Isgren on 19 February 2025 to review the scope of the Gambling Act, he reported on 17 September 2025, and the proposals were published on 24 September 2025 as departmental memorandum Ds 2025:23. The central proposal replaces the directional criterion with a participation criterion, so that online gambling counts as provided in Sweden if a person located in Sweden can take part, unless the operator takes appropriate and effective measures to prevent participation from Sweden. The memorandum also proposes extending the administrative prohibition on promoting unlawful gambling to payment solutions and similar services supplied to gambling operators whether or not those services were developed for the gambling industry, and a presumption that a payer resident in Sweden is playing from Sweden. Spelinspektionen was asked to specify what measures would count and reported in late March 2026 without saying which single measures would suffice. The proposed entry into force is 1 January 2027 if adopted, and as at 27 July 2026 no bill has been put before the Riksdag.

Sources

• Spellag (2018:1138) — full text as promulgated, Svensk författningssamling (Ch. 1 s. 2 scope; Ch. 14 s. 1 duty of care, s. 2 age 18 and casino 20, s. 4 information in Swedish, s. 5 near-miss and demo play, s. 7 deposit and loss limits, s. 8 credit ban with the one-fortieth price-base exception, s. 9 one bonus, ss. 11–12 self-exclusion and Spelpaus; Ch. 15 ss. 1–6 marketing, moderation, direct marketing, sponsorship and broadcast advertising; Ch. 16 s. 2 gaming system located in Sweden; Ch. 18 s. 12 remark and warning, s. 23 injunctions, s. 24 conditional fines, s. 26 payment blocking on court application, s. 28 warning notice; Ch. 19 ss. 1–3 criminal offences and penalties, s. 7 no double punishment, ss. 10–15 sanction fees and their limits, s. 16 late-information fee; Ch. 20 s. 2 appeals and leave to appeal)
• Sveriges riksdag — Spellag (2018:1138), consolidated text and Spelförordning (2018:1475) (application fee of SEK 230,000 for commercial online gambling and betting applied for together; Ch. 13 s. 1 duty on payment service providers to block card payments to unlicensed gambling)
• Finansdepartementet — Promemoria 2025-02-19, HR2025/00344, Översyn av spellagens tillämpningsområde (the terms of reference: the difficulty of applying the directional criterion; Prop. 2017/18:220 p. 290 on Swedish text and currency; the regulator’s burden of proof; unlicensed operators moving away from obvious Swedish connecting factors, Fi2024/01052; the grey zone of unlicensed gambling that is not unlawful; Ch. 19 ss. 1–2 and Ch. 13 s. 1 of the Ordinance; the Dutch comparison; Kammarrätten i Jönköping’s judgment of 7 February 2025 in case 1859-24; Riksrevisionen RiR 2024:19; deadline of 17 September 2025)
• Regeringen — Spellagens tillämpningsområde, Ds 2025:23 and press release on the investigator’s report (participation criterion; appropriate and effective measures; extension of the promotion ban to payment solutions; presumption rule for payers resident in Sweden; proposed entry into force 1 January 2027)
• Förvaltningsrätten i Linköping — DOM 2024-05-22, mål 5684-23, Zimpler AB v Spelinspektionen (order of 6 July 2023 under Ch. 3 s. 7 and Ch. 18 s. 23; conditional fine of SEK 25,000,000 with a deadline of 31 July 2023; the finding that Swedish registration, Swedish customers and BankID were not sufficient to satisfy the directional criterion; the alternative finding on promotion)
• Spelinspektionen — Dom: Zimpler AB, Kammarrätten avslår Spelinspektionens överklagande and the underlying decision of 6 July 2023 (appeal dismissed 7 February 2025)
• Förvaltningsrätten i Linköping — DOM 2025-06-02, mål 2812-24, Svenska Spel Sport & Casino AB v Spelinspektionen (warning and sanction fee of SEK 100,000,000 decided 25 March 2024 under Ch. 14 s. 1; decision quashed) and Sveriges Domstolar — court announcement of the judgment
• Spelinspektionen — Spelinspektionen överklagar förvaltningsrättens dom gällande Svenska Spel Sport & Casino AB (appeal lodged; the decision said to conflict with earlier duty-of-care judgments)
• CasinoBeats — Videoslots fälls, LeoVegas-bolag frias i omsorgspliktsmål (Förvaltningsrätten i Linköping, 22 June 2026: Videoslots Ltd upheld, SEK 12m, case 3671-25, decision April 2025; Roar Vegas Ltd quashed, SEK 8m, case 3061-25, decision March 2025)
• European Gaming — Swedish court upholds AML fines against Betsson, Snabbare, Spooniker and Sveriges Domstolar — Spelbolag har överträtt reglerna om åtgärder mot penningtvätt (rulings of 2 July 2026 upholding SEK 6.5m against Betsson Nordic Ltd, SEK 10m against Spooniker Ltd and SEK 5.5m against Snabbare Ltd, imposed May 2025; the holding that assuming a deposit consists of earlier winnings is not an enhanced due diligence measure)
• Sveriges riksdag — Prop. 2025/26:11, Ett nytt förbud mot spel på kredit and Spelinspektionen — Utökat kreditförbud träder i kraft den 1 maj (new Ch. 14 s. 8 and s. 8 a; proposed 1 April 2026, commenced 1 May 2026 following the Riksdag’s decision of 17 February 2026; exception ceiling of about SEK 1,480)
• Spelinspektionen — SIFS 2026:3, föreskrifter om det nationella självavstängningsregistret (decided 23 April 2026, published 29 April 2026, in force 1 August 2026; checks at direct marketing, player registration and login through purpose-specific APIs with a licensee-specific Actor ID and API key)
• Spelinspektionen — Ändringar i spellagen från den 1 januari 2026 and Sveriges riksdag — Prop. 2024/25:73, Avveckling av statliga kasinon (casino games removed from the state gambling licence from 1 January 2026; party political lottery changes under Prop. 2024/25:154)
• Svenska Spel — Svenska Spel stänger Casino Cosmopol i Stockholm (closure announced 25 April 2025, around 240 staff affected; Sundsvall closed 2020, Gothenburg and Malmö February 2024)
• Regeringen — Interpellation 2024/25:512, Ip-blockering av olicensierade spelbolag (question of 10 March 2025 and the minister’s answer of 21 March 2025 rejecting IP blocking as too intrusive and pointing to the payment route instead)
• Sveriges riksdag — Prop. 2022/23:33, Åtgärder för att säkerställa en sund och säker spelmarknad and Prop. 2021/22:242, En förstärkt spelreglering (the administrative promotion ban in Ch. 3 s. 7 comes from Prop. 2021/22:242, enacted as SFS 2022:1674 and in force 1 January 2023; the practical difficulties recorded with the payment-blocking provisions; the government declining a special-moderation marketing standard and proposing a risk-weighting clarification instead) and Bet. 2022/23:KrU2 (the Riksdag rejecting the proposed amendment to Ch. 15 s. 1, so plain måttfullhet stands unamended)
• Sveriges riksdag — Prop. 2017/18:220, En omreglerad spelmarknad (the 2019 reform; p. 290 on the directional criterion; p. 222 on the scope of promotion)
• Skatteverket and Sveriges riksdag — Lag (2018:1139) om skatt på spel and Prop. 2023/24:74, Höjd spelskatt (22% of behållning from 1 July 2024; exemption for public-benefit gambling)
• Regeringen — Prisbasbelopp för 2026 fastställt (SEK 59,200 for 2026, set 18 September 2025, against SEK 58,800 for 2025 — the basis for the one-fortieth credit exception figures)
• Spelinspektionen — Årsredovisning 2025 and Gambling Insider — summary of the 2025 annual report (supervisory activity up 49% on 2024; supervision opened against 35 licensees; about 64% of closed cases producing an intervention; 70 actors on the prohibition list at year end; licensed net turnover of SEK 28.2bn)
• Spelinspektionen — Kanaliseringsgrad på den svenska spelmarknaden 2025 (report of 15 June 2026: 2,186 gambling websites without a Swedish licence identified to 30 April 2026, of which 334 belong to companies under prohibition orders)
• Spelinspektionen — Regeringsuppdrag: åtgärder mot deltagande i olicensierat spel and Arbetet mot olagligt spel under andra kvartalet 2026 (the March 2026 report on measures unlicensed operators could take, grouped as access to gambling, registration and payments, and terms and user controls; the Q2 2026 analysis of how unlicensed operators market to Swedes)
• Spelinspektionen — SIFS 2026:1, föreskrifter om avgifter för tillsyn (decided 22 January 2026, issued 2 February 2026, in force 1 March 2026, repealing SIFS 2024:4; s. 4 — a licensee holding several licences pays a fee for each; annex items 1–8: SEK 1,000,000 for the state lottery licence and SEK 1,000,000 for value machines, SEK 15,000 to SEK 600,000 for public-benefit lotteries by turnover band, SEK 20,500 per dedicated bingo hall, SEK 240,000 per commercial online gambling or betting licence, SEK 3,000 to SEK 850,000 for land-based commercial gambling, SEK 6,000 per vessel, SEK 16,500 for a gambling software permit) and Avgifter vid ansökan (one application fee of SEK 230,000 where both licence types are applied for at the same time)
• Kammarrätten i Jönköping — DOM 2025-10-13, mål 2422-23, Spelinspektionen v AB Trav och Galopp (Spelinspektionen’s decision of 17 November 2022, warning plus SEK 6,000,000; Förvaltningsrätten i Linköping’s judgment of 29 June 2023 quashing it in mål 9315-22; the Court of Appeal setting that aside and fixing the fee at SEK 3,000,000; breaches serious but not systematic across thirteen sampled customer files) and ATG — no leave to appeal in the Supreme Administrative Court (2 March 2026, so SEK 3m is final)
• Spelinspektionen — Mr Green Limited, decision of 23 August 2021 (two warnings: a sanction fee of SEK 1,500,000 under the money-laundering rules and SEK 30,000,000 under the Gambling Act)
• ICLG — Gambling Laws and Regulations Report 2026: Sweden (licence categories; application fee of SEK 230,000; maximum licence period of five years; 22% of GGR; the first-participation bonus rule; the moderation standard; land-based casinos prohibited from 1 January 2026). Note: this chapter states the annual supervision fee as SEK 264,000 and attributes it to SIFS 2024:4, which was repealed on 1 March 2026. We use the current schedule, SIFS 2026:1, which sets SEK 240,000 — see the methodology section.
• Spelinspektionen and Skatteverket — Omsättning på spelmarknaden per kvartal (net turnover by licence type; SEK 265m of land-based commercial gambling in 2025; total licensed net turnover of SEK 28,198.2m in 2025, marked preliminary)