Is online gambling legal in Albania?

Legal overview

Gambling in Albania is governed by Law No. 155/2015 on gambling in the Republic of Albania, supervised by the Gambling Supervisory Authority (AMLF). An amendment, Law No. 75/2018, banned licensed sports betting and online gambling from the start of 2019. When the ban took effect in January 2019, the authorities ordered internet service providers to block 343 local and international sports betting and online casino portals.

Law No. 18/2024, adopted on 15 February 2024 and in force since 27 March 2024, brought back sports betting, but only online and with no reopening of online casino games. It caps the market at 10 nationwide online sports betting licences of 10 years, awarded by competitive bid with a minimum fee of ALL 400 million. Operators must be Albanian joint-stock companies, pay 15% of gross gaming revenue into a special fund for sports, culture and innovation, and accept players only after registration with their personal data and payment through licensed financial agents, with no cash. Council of Ministers Decision No. 194 of 26 March 2026 set the procedure, but as of August 2026 the competition had not opened, so no online betting licence had been granted.

Online casino games cannot be licensed under current law, so offshore casino sites serving Albanian players are illegal. AMLF decides which gambling sites must be blocked, and the communications regulator AKEP passes its decisions on to internet service providers and checks that they comply. AKEP reported about 8,000 blocked domains or pages in 2019, 132 in 2020 and 41 in the first half of 2021. Players on offshore sites have no protection under Albanian law.