Romania

Romania regulates gambling through the National Gambling Office (ONJN), which issues Class I licences to remote operators and Class II to B2B providers under OUG 77/2009 as amended. During 2024-2025 the framework was substantially tightened: the 2025 package introduced a local-establishment requirement effective 6 October 2025 — operators must be locally incorporated or be an EU/EEA/Swiss company with a registered Romanian permanent tax establishment, with a six-month transition.

Costs rose sharply: the online operator annual licence fee is EUR 300,000, the guarantee fund at least EUR 2,000,000 for online betting, and the authorisation tax was raised to 30% of GGR from 1 August 2025 with a minimum annual tax of EUR 480,000. Advertising was curtailed (ban on influencers/public personalities from 6 October 2025) and a nationwide ONJN self-exclusion system is rolling out in Q1 2026.

Horse-race betting falls within the regulated betting categories (fixed-odds, pari-mutuel, exchange). A bill to raise the gambling age from 18 to 21 passed the Senate in February 2026 but had not become law as of mid-2026. Prediction-market platforms such as Polymarket have been blocked as unlicensed gambling.

Romania has been a gambling-friendly nation since freeing itself of communist rule in 1989. Both land-based and online gambling are legal in the country, and the National Gambling Office licenses internet casinos as well as betting. Playing at unlicensed providers is an administrative offence punishable by a fine of RON 5,000 to RON 10,000, and the regulator has blacklisted more than 1,500 gambling domains and instructed ISPs to block them.

Romania Betting Sites

Operators licensed to take bets in Romania appear on the ONJN’s own list of approved betting sites, which is the place to check one. Licensed operators have been cleared by gaming authorities.

Depositing in Romanian Lei

Legal Romanian betting sites accept lei deposits and withdrawals. If you log in to your online gambling account and visit the cashier, you will find a variety of methods that can be used to fund your account. Many of the methods (such as credit cards) will be familiar to anyone who has purchased something online.

You will also be able to place sports bets and play casino games in the leu format. If you play online poker, your money will be converted to either USD, EUR or GBP for as long as you play. This is done simply to allow you to play with the same currency as players from all other parts of the world.

Is It Legal to Bet Online in Romania?

Yes. It is legal to bet online in Romania at officially licensed gambling sites. Now that we have the new law in place, there are a number of safe betting sites to chose from. It took a long time for lawmakers to work through the process, but today we have a regulatory system under which online gambling is legal.

However, many players still continue to do business with unlicensed offshore betting sites in Romania. Their reasons for doing so vary. The Romanian gambling authority warned players in 2015 that they face fines of 5k to 10k lei if they continue to play at unlicensed sites — and that penalty still stands.

Romania Gambling Laws

Romania has a long history of gambling and lottery-style games, but that all came to an end under four decades of communist rule. The 1989 Romanian revolution finally brought communism to an end and in 1992, a new constitution paved the way for greater freedom of all industries in Romania. Gambling in Romania was finally legal once again.

Internet gambling wasn’t addressed by Romanian law until 2009. That year, the government published Emergency Ordinance No. 77/2009. The law included language that made it a criminal offence to organise online gambling for any purpose. Emergency Ordinance No. 77/2009 is still the governing statute, as amended, and performing gambling activities in the absence of the necessary licence and authorisation remains a criminal offence sanctioned by imprisonment or a criminal fine.

Legislation enacted in 2010 created a framework for licensing online casinos within the country. However, there were two problems with this legislation. First, the country had no licensing authority in place to issue licenses until the National Gambling Office was set up in 2013. Second, the licensing conditions at the time required any potential Romania betting sites to hold an offline gambling license inside the country.

The EU and foreign operators have criticized the offline license requirement as it clearly favors existing operators within the country. As a member of the European Union, Romania is required to provide an equal playing field for its domestic companies and companies based out of other EU member states. That changed in 2015: operators incorporated elsewhere in the EU/EEA or Switzerland can and do hold Romanian licences, provided they register a permanent establishment in Romania.

Law No. 246/2010 was passed the next year and it specifically addressed the licensing of online casinos. the law laid out the process by which online gambling sites could be licensed. Two major problems plagued the legislation from the beginning. No regulatory body was established to even issue licenses and the conditions of getting a license ran afoul of EU free trade treaties.

The 2010 law made it a criminal offence to play at unlicensed gambling sites, with maximum sentences of two years in prison, and it was never successfully enforced because no regulatory body existed to apply it. The player-side rule today is different but not empty: participation in unlicensed online gambling from Romanian territory is an administrative offence sanctioned by a fine ranging between RON 5,000 and RON 10,000.

The regulatory body was finally established in 2013 as the National Gambling Office. At that point Romania had not yet addressed the EU's concerns, and the biggest issue was that an online licence required a physical offline gambling presence or partnership with a casino in Romania. That requirement is gone: the right to organise and operate games of chance is now granted to companies registered in Romania and to legal entities incorporated in the EU, the EEA or Switzerland that have registered a permanent establishment in Romania.

The EU viewed this as an obviously protectionist measure aimed at giving existing Romanian companies the advantage. The biggest concern for players was that the formation of the NGO would make it possible for Romania to enforce its laws against playing at offshore betting sites. The criminal penalty did not survive the later update to the law, but the exposure did not disappear with it: participation in unlicensed online gambling from Romanian territory is an administrative offence sanctioned by a fine ranging between RON 5,000 and RON 10,000, the regulator communicates unlicensed sites to the ISPs so access can be blocked and to the payment processors so payments to and from them can be blocked.

Up until 2015, Romania and the EU seemed to be at a stalemate. Romanian lawmakers were unwilling to relax their licensing requirements while the European Commission insisted that was exactly what needed to happen. Finally, Romanian lawmakers submitted a proposal to update the country's gaming laws in late 2014. These laws were signed into effect in 2015 and instantly made Romania a much better place for both players and operators.

Government Emergency Ordinance 92/2014 (GEO 92/2014) changed the licensing requirements and made it much more feasible for international online betting sites to apply for Romanian licenses. An offline gambling permit is no longer required, but an operator must now either be registered in Romania or be an EU/EEA/Swiss company with a registered permanent establishment in Romania. Licensees whose main gaming server sits outside Romania must also establish safe and mirror servers on Romanian territory.