Is online gambling legal in Madagascar?

Legal overview

Gambling in Madagascar is still governed by Law No. 71-011 of 30 June 1971 and by Decree No. 2026-472 of 5 February 2026 on gambling and gaming establishments, with the Ministry of the Interior and Decentralisation responsible for authorising and supervising operators. The 1971 framework was written for land-based casinos, gaming houses, betting and lotteries and does not set out a dedicated licensing regime for online casinos. Local commentators describe online gaming as operating in a grey zone: a December 2025 opinion piece in Midi Madagasikara criticised a de facto monopoly of one dominant online betting operator, opaque licensing and weak oversight. No blocking of foreign gambling websites or payments has been reported, and players on foreign-licensed sites have no protection from a Malagasy authority.

The government wants to replace this framework with Bill No. 019/2026 on gambling activities and gaming establishments, dated 2 June 2026 and deposited in Parliament on 16 June 2026. The bill groups real-money gambling into five categories, each needing its own authorisation from the Ministry of the Interior, among them hotel casino games in hotels of at least three stars, other casinos and arcades, betting on animals, sports and lotteries with scratch cards, and online and network-based gambling as category 4. Online operators would need individual, time-limited and non-transferable authorisations, host their servers in Madagascar and connect to a national gambling data platform owned by the state; failing to connect could bring three months to three years in prison. The bill also sets the gambling age at 21, bans credit betting and provides one to five years in prison for unauthorised or fraudulent operations. The bill was placed on the agenda of the extraordinary session that opened on 25 August 2026 but had not become law in September 2026.

Verification status: this overview is based on secondary sources and has not yet been checked against the official law text or the regulator. Confirm the details with the national authority before relying on them.