Curaçao casino licence: how to check it and what it covers

A Curaçao casino licence is a permission issued directly by the Curaçao Gaming Authority, the CGA, under the island’s National Ordinance on Games of Chance, the LOK, and it can be checked in a few minutes against two official sources: the CGA’s published licence registry and its certificate service at cert.cga.cw. Checked properly, it tells you three things: whether the licence is real, which company actually holds it, and which complaint route exists if the casino is holding your money. Since 24 December 2024 every genuine licence has come from the CGA itself, with numbers in the OGL/2024/… or CGA/2025/… format rather than a badge pointing back to a master licence holder. This guide is written for players anywhere: the check itself, what the licence requires of a casino, what it gives you and what it does not, the complaint route with its time limits, and what your own country changes.

If a Curaçao operator is holding your money now, start with our Curaçao refunds service or a free eligibility check, then use the checks below to confirm the licence.

How do you check a Curaçao casino licence number?

Take the licence number from the casino’s footer or terms. Under the current regime it is one of two formats, both ending in a four-digit sequence number: OGL/2024/165/0185 is the pattern for licences authorised in the first LOK year, and CGA/2025/2516/1271 is the pattern the register uses for later ones. Then check it in two places.

1. The licence registry. The CGA publishes its Online Gaming License Registry as a PDF linked from the register page on cga.cw. The edition dated 3 September 2026 lists 662 licences in the dataset we publish, each with the licensee company, its Curaçao company registration number, whether it is a B2C operator or a B2B supplier, the issue date and a status column. Search that PDF for the number, or paste it into our free Curaçao licence checker, which holds the same register and returns the row in a second.
2. The certificate. Every licence has a public certificate page at cert.cga.cw/token?id= followed by the last segment of the number without its leading zeros. OGL/2024/250/0115, for example, resolves at cert.cga.cw/token?id=115 and names GTW B.V., company number 165433, as a B2C licensee. A genuine site seal links to that domain, not to an image hosted on the casino’s own server. The certificate also lists the approved domains, which the register PDF does not.

Confirm three details before you rely on anything: the company on the register matches the company in the casino’s terms letter for letter, the domain you played on appears on the certificate, and the status is not Expired or Revoked. The licensing portal at portal.cga.cw is the CGA’s application system for licensees; its public search box returns no records without a login, so it is not a way to verify a licence. A footer that quotes only a legacy master-licence reference, or that says “licensed and regulated in Curaçao” with no number at all, is showing paperwork that stopped meaning anything at the end of 2024.

What each register status means

The status column is the CGA’s own wording, and the register dataset we publish (edition 3 September 2026, 662 licences) uses five values. Assessment in progress (311 rows) is the register’s wording for a licence whose assessment by the CGA has not yet concluded; it is the most common status and not a warning sign on its own. Indefinite (206 rows) is a licence with no expiry date, the register prints N/A in the expiry column for those rows, and it matches the CGA’s own conditions for an indefinite-term online gaming licence. Active (63 rows) means the licence is currently in force. Expired (32 rows) means the licence no longer stands, whatever the footer still displays. Revoked at the operator’s request (50 rows) is the register’s own wording for a voluntary surrender recorded by the CGA.

The register carries the CGA’s own caveat that its overviews do not vouch for the current validity of the licences, which is why the certificate check matters, and it has one further gap worth knowing. Licences the CGA itself revoked or refused to extend can also sit in a separate document, the Enforcement Register, and a number can therefore look clean in one document and sit in the other, so check both. Our Curaçao enforcement register mirrors the CGA’s list, and what a revoked Curaçao licence means for your money takes it from there.

Verified Curaçao casinos: brand, entity, licence number, register status

These are Curaçao-licensed brands we have independently checked against the CGA register and certificate service, most of them widely used by UK and international players. The register status is taken straight from the 3 September 2026 edition, so the same licence can carry a different status to what the casino’s own footer implies, and several brands share one licence because one Curaçao company operates them all. Each name links to our full operator file, which carries the entity detail, the verification date and, where relevant, our own complaint record for that brand.

Register edition 3 September 2026. This is a sample, not the whole market: search the full register at our free Curaçao licence checker, and check the enforcement register before trusting a brand that is not on this list, since a licence can be revoked between register editions.

Who issues Curaçao gambling licences now?

Since 24 December 2024, the Curaçao Gaming Authority has been the sole issuer. The LOK came into force that day, renamed the Gaming Control Board as the CGA and dismantled the master-licence structure that had defined the jurisdiction for almost three decades. Under the old arrangement a handful of private master licence holders sub-licensed hundreds of casinos, and a complaint about a sub-licensed site had no public authority to land with. The LOK ended that: master licence holders lost the power to grant sub-licences, and every operator that wanted to keep trading had to apply to the CGA in its own name. If a guide still tells you to escalate a complaint to a master licence holder, it is describing a route that has not existed since the end of 2024. Who stands behind a given brand, and how to trace it, is covered in who owns a Curaçao casino.

What does a Curaçao licence require of a casino?

The LOK and the CGA’s licence conditions attach duties the old system never seriously policed. The licensee must be a company established under Curaçao law with its registered office on the island. It must verify the identity of its players, with customer due diligence triggered once transactions reach NAf. 4,000 (roughly $2,200 / £1,700). It must hold all player funds in a segregated account and ensure it has sufficient funds at all times to pay out prize money, with ring-fencing measures to match. Its terms must contain a complaints procedure and ADR made available under Article 5.3 of the LOK, and must state that the gaming agreement is governed by Curaçao law with disputes heard in the Curaçao courts. It must run responsible-gaming measures, set out rule by rule in the Curaçao responsible gambling rules. From 2025 it must also engage an ADR entity certified by the CGA, at its own expense. Breaching these conditions carries a real consequence, because the body that imposed them can suspend or revoke the licence, and the enforcement register shows that it does.

What the licence gives a player, and what it does not

What it gives you is a defined counterparty and a defined procedure: a named Curaçao company you can identify, a six-month right to complain that the operator must answer within fixed time limits, a free certified ADR stage whose cost falls on the operator, a regulator that reads complaints and can act on a pattern of them, and, under Article 15.3 of the LOK, a claim that is legally enforceable in Curaçao, because the old civil-code bar on enforcing gambling claims is switched off for claims against CGA licensees. The CGA’s complaints policy also stops an operator restricting your own right to take legal action.

What it does not give you is anything from your own country’s system. A Curaçao licence is not a domestic licence anywhere else: no home regulator has authority over the operator, no domestic ombudsman or adjudicator will hear the dispute, and no domestic self-exclusion scheme reaches the site. The CGA does not decide individual disputes and cannot order compensation. And the seat of any court claim is Curaçao, not where you live, which is why the sum matters: a claim of £50,000 / $65,000 can justify instructing counsel there, while a claim of £500 / $650 belongs in the free stages and nowhere else.

The licence decides which protections were ever in play.

How do you complain about a Curaçao casino?

The route runs in a fixed order with time limits set by the LOK and the CGA’s Player Complaints Policy, and each stage builds the file for the next one. If your complaint is specifically a refused or stuck payout, Curaçao casino not paying out runs this sequence in withheld-money detail, and who can actually help with a Curaçao casino sets out what each body can and cannot do.

1. Validate the entity, then preserve the record. Check the licence as described above and note the operating company exactly as spelt, because a complaint addressed to a brand name, a payment processor or a company that does not hold the licence goes nowhere; our operator files record the position we hold for dozens of these brands. Then save the cashier history, the bank or wallet statements, the terms as they read today, and every chat and email, with dated screenshots. Published terms change once a complaint is under way.
2. Complain to the operator, in writing, within six months. Article 5.3 of the LOK gives you the right to complain to the licensee free of charge within six months of the incident. The operator must acknowledge receipt in writing within one week and give its final ruling within four weeks, extendable once by a further four weeks with written notice. Responsible-gaming complaints are expected to be resolved within five business days. Invoke the published procedure by name, set out dates and amounts plainly, and ask for any refusal in writing. Note that only the registered player can complain: the LOK bars selling or assigning a claim against a licensee, so anyone acting for you acts on your behalf, never as the owner of the claim.
3. Escalate to the certified ADR provider. Every licensee must engage an ADR entity certified by the CGA and named in its terms. The referral is free to you, the operator bears all costs, the CGA expects the process to take no more than 90 days from referral, and it expects the outcome to bind the operator. An ADR entity can refuse a file if the internal complaints process was never completed, which is why the stage above has to be run properly. The Curaçao casino ADR process explains what to send and what to expect.
4. Report the breach to the CGA. Send the paper trail to complaints@cga.cw, the dedicated inbox; the authority’s general address does not take complaints. In the CGA’s own words it “is not a civil court and cannot order gaming operators to compensate players or issue judgments”, and it does not mediate individual disputes. What it does instead is treat a complaint, or a pattern of them, as a possible breach of the LOK and act against the operator where that is warranted, without disclosing the status of any investigation. The pressure is real, because the licence is what lets the operator trade.
5. Take a legal assessment where the value justifies it. Under Article 5.5 of the LOK the gaming agreement is governed by Curaçao law and disputes go before the Curaçao courts. That route exists and has been used: on 31 October 2024 the Curaçao Court of Appeal declared the two companies behind BC.Game bankrupt on petitions brought for players with unpaid balances, which is an illustration rather than a rule. Where a meaningful sum is at stake and the record shows real failures, an evidence-led claim through regulated legal partners can run alongside or after the regulatory route.

If you are not sure which stage you are at, our free complaint route finder maps your situation to the right next step, and a free eligibility check tells you plainly whether the file supports more than a complaint.

Large withdrawals: the source-of-funds rules

Most stuck withdrawals from Curaçao casinos are explained, or excused, by the CGA’s anti-money-laundering regulations of January 2025, so it is worth knowing exactly what they say. Customer due diligence is mandatory once a player’s transactions reach NAf. 4,000 (roughly $2,200 / £1,700), calculated daily and cumulatively across every deposit and withdrawal since the account was opened. If that threshold is reached because the player asks to withdraw, the regulations require a complete freeze of the account until verification is done. Where the risk is higher, enhanced due diligence applies, and the CGA lists the source-of-funds evidence it expects operators to ask for: savings, employment, pension releases, share sales and dividends, property sales, gambling winnings, inheritances and gifts. A cash-out of NAf. 5,000 or more is an objective indicator the casino must report to the Financial Intelligence Unit.

The rule that protects the player sits in the same document. If the requested information and documents are not received within 30 days of the threshold being reached, the casino has to terminate the relationship, and, where no presumption of money laundering exists, transfer the funds to the player. So a request for payslips or bank statements on a £20,000 / $26,000 withdrawal is not itself a breach. An account still frozen months after you supplied everything is a different matter: that is a withdrawal complaint under Article 5.3, with the six-month clock and the ADR route behind it. Keep every document you sent and the date you sent it, because that record is the case.

Curaçao casinos and international players

The Curaçao route above is the same wherever you live. What changes is whether your own country adds anything to it. In Europe, Germany and Austria recognise restitution claims against operators that held no domestic licence: the Court of Justice of the EU confirmed in April 2026 that a member state may attach civil consequences to its own prohibition, and Austria’s Supreme Court has held that contracts with operators lacking an Austrian concession are ineffective and the stake repayable. The Netherlands went the other way on 3 July 2026, when its Supreme Court held that the absence of a licence does not make the gaming contract void, leaving only case-by-case claims.

Outside Europe the picture is thinner. In the United States online gambling is regulated state by state and offshore sites hold no state licence, so no state regulator has authority over them; a coalition of 50 attorneys general asked the Department of Justice in August 2025 to act against those platforms. In Canada the AGCO says plainly that it cannot make a gaming site give your money back and assists only with regulated sites. In Australia the ACMA warns that where an illegal offshore service withholds your winnings you are unlikely to see the money again, and points players to independent legal help or the relevant licensing authority instead. Wherever you are, the Curaçao stages above remain the ones with teeth, and each of our operator files carries a section on what your location changes.

If you are in the UK

A Curaçao licence is not a Great Britain licence, and nothing in the British system reaches across. The Gambling Commission states that it does not have the powers to resolve individual gambling complaints or help consumers get their money back, and that applies with even more force to an operator it does not license at all. The UK dispute-resolution framework binds Commission licensees only, so IBAS and the other approved bodies cannot take a Curaçao case, and GAMSTOP covers only companies licensed in Great Britain. Whether non-GamStop casinos are legal in the UK covers the legality question, and if you had self-excluded when the losses happened, getting money back after gambling on GamStop is the guide to read first.

Read side by side, the two regimes answer the same questions very differently, and the differences are the ones that matter once money is stuck.

	UK Gambling Commission	Curaçao Gaming Authority
Who licenses the casino	The Commission licenses operators offering gambling to Great Britain	The CGA has issued all Curaçao licences directly since 24 December 2024
Complaint time limits	Operator’s procedure first, with eight weeks to resolve before ADR	Six months to complain, acknowledgement in one week, ruling in four weeks, extendable once
Dispute resolution	Free approved ADR, such as IBAS, once the internal process is exhausted	Free CGA-certified ADR at the operator’s expense, expected within 90 days and expected to bind the operator
Self-exclusion coverage	GAMSTOP participation is mandatory	Outside GAMSTOP entirely, with operator-level tools only
Compensation powers	Fines and sanctions operators; does not award player compensation itself	Can sanction or revoke a licence; cannot order compensation or issue judgments
Where a court claim is heard	The courts of England and Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland	The Curaçao courts, under Article 5.5 of the LOK
Verification	Public register at gamblingcommission.gov.uk	Register PDF via cga.cw and certificates at cert.cga.cw

Can you get your money back from a Curaçao casino?

Sometimes, and the honest framing matters. Losing money to a Curaçao casino is not in itself a claim: money gambled and fairly lost is simply lost. A regulatory breach does not automatically create a repayment right either; it is evidence that duties were broken, which a route then has to turn into money. What moves cases is the record: a written refusal, a self-exclusion history the operator ignored, identity or responsible-gaming failures, a withdrawal still frozen long after the 30-day verification window closed, and a payment trail that supports the figures. No outcome can ever be promised, by us or by anyone. Our guide to getting your money back from a Curaçao casino sets out the practical order of attack, and our Curaçao refunds service assesses whether a large loss or a withheld balance has the conduct behind it to support a claim.

Does GamStop apply to Curaçao casinos?

No. It binds only operators licensed by the Gambling Commission in Great Britain, so a Curaçao-licensed site sits outside the scheme and a GAMSTOP self-exclusion does not reach it. To block gambling sites across your devices free of charge, use BetBlocker (betblocker.org), alongside GAMSTOP (gamstop.co.uk) for operators licensed in Great Britain. If gambling is harming you or someone close to you, the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133 is free, confidential and open 24 hours a day, and GamCare (gamcare.org.uk) offers live chat and ongoing support.

Sources

• Curaçao Gaming Authority, licence register page (cga.cw) and Online Gaming License Registry, edition of 3 September 2026 (PDF); Enforcement Register, edition of 10 July 2026 (PDF); certificate service (cert.cga.cw).
• Curaçao Gaming Authority, online gaming regulation and its statement on player complaints (cga.cw/regulation/online-gaming); contact page with the complaints inbox (cga.cw/contact).
• National Ordinance on Games of Chance (LOK), official English translation, Articles 1.3, 5.3, 5.5 and 15.3 (portal.cga.cw).
• CGA Player Complaints Policy Guidelines v1.1, 18 June 2025 (PDF); CGA Alternative Dispute Resolution Role and Certification v1.0, 8 September 2025 (PDF).
• CGA licence conditions for an indefinite-term online gaming licence, effective 17 December 2025 (portal.cga.cw).
• CGA AML/CFT regulations for casinos and providers of other online games, January 2025 (PDF).
• Curaçao Court of Appeal bankruptcy of Blockdance B.V. and Small House B.V., 31 October 2024 (Curaçao Chronicle).
• Court of Justice of the EU, Case C-440/23, press release of 16 April 2026 (curia.europa.eu); Austrian Supreme Court, 1 Ob 229/20p (ogh.gv.at); Dutch Supreme Court, 3 July 2026 (hogeraad.nl).
• National Association of Attorneys General, coalition letter on offshore gambling, 5 August 2025 (naag.org); AGCO, internet gaming complaints (agco.ca); ACMA, protect yourself from illegal gambling operators (acma.gov.au).
• UK Gambling Commission, what we regulate (gamblingcommission.gov.uk); GAMSTOP coverage (gamstop.co.uk).

Last reviewed: 5 September 2026.

Change log

5 September 2026: added a verified-operator table (34 Curaçao-licensed brands with entity, licence number and live register status, each linked to its operator file), a spelling FAQ entry covering the British licence and the American license spelling, and the shared licence-route block. 3 September 2026: expanded into the Curaçao licence hub for players anywhere, with the register how-to and the certificate URL format, what each register status means, the enforcement-register gap, the LOK licence duties, the complaint route with the Article 5.3 time limits and the Article 5.5 court seat, the AML source-of-funds rules, and sections on international players and on the UK position; UK framing removed from the title, summary and opening. 30 August 2026: rebuilt around the CGA complaint route and the licence register; added the comparison table, the step-by-step complaint section and the register links. 21 July 2026: retitled toward the licence queries the page ranks on. 20 April 2026: first published.

General information, not legal advice. We are not solicitors or a law firm. We connect clients with regulated legal partners.