The Portuguese national gaming authority has ordered the crypto prediction market Polymarket to cease its activities in the country.
The winds of change are blowing through gambling supervision in both the Netherlands and Belgium. Two regulatory authorities are making a conscious choice to deploy more expertise and manpower to better protect players.
The Kansspelautoriteit in the Netherlands is taking a hard line. In 2026, the regulator is setting its sights on illegal gambling providers and the protection of young people.
In the world of offshore casinos, dodging fines is child’s play. By using volatile legal structures that they liquidate at the slightest sanction, they make recovery impossible and continue their activities with impunity.
Gambling companies are disappearing from Belgian professional football but are gaining ground in the amateur leagues.
The legal gambling market is under pressure, while the illegal one is growing. Dutch State Secretary Arno Rutte is worried. Heavy gamblers, in particular, are seeking refuge outside the licensed offer.
No age verification, no license, but betting with autoplay was fully available. For thousands of Dutch people, it was child’s play to gamble on banned sites. Now, the foreign gambling company Starscream Limited is being presented with the bill: a fine of over 4.2 million euros.
They lost thousands of euros in just a few clicks. Young adults were given free rein to keep gambling at ComeOn casino. The Kansspelautoriteit is now intervening and imposing a fine of 750,000 euros.
“They pretend to follow the rules, but meanwhile, they earn billions.” While dozens of countries ban gambling advertisements, Meta simply keeps selling them. In India, Malaysia, and the Philippines, among others, Facebook and Instagram are running at full speed in an illegal advertising circuit.
The gambling platform Polymarket has announced that it will not pay out to users who placed bets on a US invasion of Venezuela, despite the spectacular arrest of President Nicolás Maduro by US troops. This decision has angered users who thought they had won a million-dollar jackpot.
The biggest names in the gaming industry took a few minutes at the start of the year to share their predictions. 2025 was not an easy year for the gambling sector, and 2026 doesn’t look like it will be any simpler.
One moment a classic horse racing event, the other an American final with millions of viewers. The top tier of the world’s biggest bets is remarkably broad, according to new research by Entain.
The police paint a disturbing picture of poaching in the Netherlands. Behind the scenes, betting is playing an increasingly important role.
‘Without swift action, we will lose control,’ warned BAGO back in 2025.
Many Belgian gamblers are ignoring the strict rules by simply using a VPN. This allows them to hide their location and still access foreign casinos without a licence. These VPN services are easy to find and often cost only a few pounds a month.
What was once a pillar of government communication in the Netherlands has now become a showcase for online casinos operating completely illegally. The ACVZ.org domain, formerly attached to the Adviescommissie voor Vreemdelingenzaken, has been taken over by anonymous players who are now using it to list unregulated gambling platforms, often hosted outside Europe.
Influencers have a lot of influence on young people. They share their lives daily on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. What they like, young people often like too. If an influencer carries a brand, promotes a drink or shows an online casino, young people easily adopt it. They see it as normal behaviour and don’t always think about it.
