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A UK-focused explainer on the licences non GamStop casinos usually hold — what each regulator actually enforces, and what it does not.
Nearly every offshore casino you will see uses the word "licensed" in its footer. The word is doing a lot of work. A UK Gambling Commission licence and a Costa Rica trading-company registration are both technically "licences" in the sense that a government body has stamped a piece of paper. The comparable substance of what those two documents commit the operator to is nearly incomparable. This guide walks through the four regimes you will actually encounter.
Historically Curaçao operated a two-tier "master licence" system in which four master licence holders — GC-1, GC-2, GC-3 and GC-4 — issued unlimited sub-licences to individual operators. The result was an enormous population of casinos operating under a badge that many of them shared and none of them individually applied for. That system had almost no substantive supervision.
The Curaçao National Ordinance on Games of Chance (LOK) came into force in stages during 2024–2025 and consolidated regulation under a single body, the Curaçao Gaming Control Board. Under the new regime, casinos apply directly to the CGB, undergo fit-and-proper testing on ultimate beneficial owners, must appoint a locally resident representative, must segregate player funds, and are subject to a published complaint procedure. It is a meaningful improvement over the master-licence era. It is still not the UK Gambling Commission — audits are less frequent, sanctions rarer, and enforcement against non-payment is administrative rather than judicial.
A Curaçao licence number issued after August 2024 looks like OGL/2024/XXX. A legacy sub-licence number looks like 1668/JAZ or similar. If a casino footer shows the legacy format only, it is trading under the old regime and has not migrated.
Anjouan is one of the three islands of the Comoros in the western Indian Ocean, and the AGA is the newest of the offshore regulators — established in 2023 in response to the Curaçao reform, and courting operators who wanted a cheaper alternative to the new CGB fees. It is administratively lighter than modern Curaçao: less rigorous ownership disclosure, no requirement for a local representative, and a smaller enforcement team. Some legitimate operators use it; so do some opportunistic ones.
Anjouan's complaint form exists and is answered, but response times are unpredictable and there is no published body of dispute rulings. If a casino runs an Anjouan licence, treat the licence itself as satisfying only a minimal regulatory threshold and lean harder on other signals — brand longevity, third-party dispute mediators, public financial reporting where available.
The KGC is the longest-running of the offshore regulators, established in 1996 under the auspices of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake in Quebec, Canada. It is unusual in this space because it maintains a genuinely substantive rulebook: operators must hold player deposits in a trust account, publish a complaints procedure that the Commission adjudicates, and undergo annual audits. The tradeoff is that the KGC hosts a smaller number of casinos, and the licence has become less common on new-market offshore sites since 2020.
If you see a Kahnawake licence, it is a positive signal on the regulator, not a positive signal on the specific operator. The two must be evaluated separately.
Costa Rica has no gambling regulator. It has a corporate registry, and any company can register as a "data-processing entity" that happens to run a gambling website. When a casino says it is "based in Costa Rica" or "operates under Costa Rica law", what it means is that it is incorporated there — nothing more. There is no complaint route, no fund-segregation rule, no fit-and-proper test on owners, and no enforcement body. This is where the highest concentration of short-lived offshore casinos live. Treat a Costa Rica footer as no licence at all.
A licence is a starting point, not a guarantee. It should exist and be verifiable, and its absence is disqualifying. Its presence does not remove your responsibility to weigh the other signals a real consumer would weigh: track record, transparency, community reputation, and the reasonableness of the operator's own terms. See our homepage overview for how these fit together, and the payments guide for the operational side of what a licence does and does not affect.
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