Austria Online Gambling Licence: Bill 594 d.B., €370,000 to Enter, 45% Tax and the 7 December Standstill

Where the bill stands on 13 November 2026

Austria still has no licence to apply for. Government Bill 594 d.B., which would end the federal monopoly on online gambling, reached the Nationalrat on 5 August 2026 and was assigned to the Finance Committee on 14 September. The parliament’s own status page, read on 13 November 2026, says the committee has not started deliberations.

The bill also cannot be voted yet. Austria notified it to the European Commission under Directive 2015/1535 as TRIS 2026/0415/AT, received on 4 August 2026. The three-month standstill was due to end on 5 November. The TRIS record now shows 7 December 2026: Malta issued a detailed opinion, which extends the standstill, and the Commission sent comments. Austria has to answer both before it adopts the law.

That leaves 25 days between the end of the standstill and 1 January 2027, the date from which the bill expects unlicensed operators to have left the Austrian market. The bill does not move that date if Parliament is late. Most of it takes effect at the end of the day it is promulgated, and the cooling-off rule is written against the fixed date.

Date	What happens	Source
29 June 2026	Ministerial draft 125/ME published for consultation	parlament.gv.at
4 August 2026	TRIS notification 2026/0415/AT received by the Commission	TRIS
5 August 2026	Government Bill 594 d.B. introduced in the Nationalrat	parlament.gv.at
14 September 2026	Assigned to the Finance Committee	parlament.gv.at
5 November 2026	Original end of standstill	TRIS
7 December 2026	Extended end of standstill (Maltese detailed opinion)	TRIS
31 December 2026	Last day an unlicensed operator can stop without a Sperrfrist; the public blacklist, covert test play, and hosting, search-engine, ISP and payment blocking (§§ 51a, 56a–56e) take effect at the end of the day	§ 14(2a) Z 3; § 60(54)
1 January 2027	Online concessions can be granted; bonus-tax rule (§ 57a) applies	§ 60(55), (63)
1 October 2027	First online concessions take effect	§ 60(63)
1 January 2028	0.1% Finanzierungsbeitrag added to online gross gaming revenue	§ 60(55)
31 December 2028	Existing lottery concession, which covers today’s legal online games, expires as extended	§ 60(63)

The government bill kept the ministerial draft’s figures. Fees, the tax rate, the capital requirement, the deposit limits, the 18 and 24-month bars and the 1 October 2027 start are the same in both texts. The cooling-off cut-off moved by one day, from 30 to 31 December 2026, and the confiscation dates moved from 31 October to 31 December 2026 and 1 January 2030.

What changes: one concession becomes many

Today the Glücksspielgesetz gives the federal government a monopoly. Online casino games are lawful in Austria only as “electronic lotteries” under the single lottery concession in § 14. Everything else offered to Austrian players online is a prohibited game under § 2(4), and still owes Glücksspielabgabe at 45% of gross gaming revenue under § 57(2).

The bill rewrites § 13 to define online gambling as any game of chance taken part in directly through electronic media, with the result decided centrally, other than the lotteries in §§ 6 to 12a. Section 14(1) then splits the concession in two. The lotteries stay with one concession, awarded after a public call for interest. Online gambling gets “an unlimited number of concessions”, decided on application by Bescheid under § 14(6). There is no tender and no cap for online.

Supervision moves to a named Glücksspielaufsichtsbehörde, and § 60(56) makes the Finanzamt Österreich that authority. The Amt für Betrugsbekämpfung keeps enforcement against unlicensed sites.

The existing lottery concession is extended to 31 December 2028 (§ 60(63)). Its electronic-lottery rights lapse earlier if its holder is granted one of the new online concessions.

The cooling-off period, worked through

Section 14(2a) lets an operator that has served Austria without a licence still pass the reliability test. Three conditions apply.

1. Tax. Every Glücksspielabgabe amount due under § 57(2) and not time-barred has been paid on time, or disclosed and paid under § 29 FinStrG before the expression of interest, with stake, winnings and bonus records handed over in machine-readable form.
2. Player judgments. Every final judgment an Austrian civil court has given against the operator in favour of a player has been satisfied, and new ones are paid within the deadline until the grant.
3. Exit. Unlicensed Austrian play stops from 1 January 2027 and stays stopped until the grant.

An operator that stops after 31 December 2026 is barred from an online concession for 18 months from the day it stops. If it stops after 31 December 2029, the bar is 24 months.

Austrian play stops on	Earliest possible grant
31 December 2026 or earlier	1 January 2027 (valid from 1 October 2027)
15 January 2027	15 July 2028
1 March 2027	1 September 2028
1 October 2027	1 April 2029
15 January 2030	15 January 2032

Section 14(2b) makes the test hard to route around. Group companies up to the beneficial owner under § 2 WiEReG are treated as the applicant. A brand that is “only slightly altered”, given additions or combined with other elements that leave a risk of confusion still counts as the old brand. The applicant signs a sworn conformity declaration and discloses every relevant entity and brand, and the authority publishes them on the federal EVI platform so third parties can report breaches. A false declaration found after the grant means withdrawal. Part-payment in an insolvency, a restructuring plan or a liquidation of a predecessor company does not count as payment.

What the concession costs at your revenue

Section 59a(1) sets three fees for online gambling: EUR 70,000 per application, EUR 300,000 on first grant, and EUR 600,000 for each further grant (renewal). A first term runs up to five years and a renewal up to ten (§ 14(4) Z 1). Entry is therefore EUR 370,000, or EUR 74,000 a year over a full first term. A ten-year renewal costs EUR 60,000 a year in grant fees, or EUR 67,000 if a new EUR 70,000 application fee is also charged; the bill does not say whether a renewal counts as a new application.

The bigger line is tax. Bill 594 d.B. renames § 17(3) Z 7 from “electronic lotteries” to “online gambling” and leaves the rate at 45% of annual gross gaming revenue (Jahresbruttospieleinnahmen). From 1 January 2028 § 1(4) adds a Finanzierungsbeitrag of 0.1% of the same base to fund the gambling and player-protection office, so the total becomes 45.1%.

Gross gaming revenue a year	Grant fees (first term, per year)	Tax 2027 (45%)	Fees + tax as % of GGR, 2027	From 2028 (45.1%)
EUR 1m	EUR 74,000	EUR 450,000	52.40%	52.50%
EUR 2m	EUR 74,000	EUR 900,000	48.70%	48.80%
EUR 5m	EUR 74,000	EUR 2,250,000	46.48%	46.58%
EUR 10m	EUR 74,000	EUR 4,500,000	45.74%	45.84%
EUR 25m	EUR 74,000	EUR 11,250,000	45.30%	45.40%
EUR 50m	EUR 74,000	EUR 22,500,000	45.15%	45.25%

Assumptions: fees spread evenly over a full five-year first term; no corporate income tax, VAT, capital cost or compliance spend; tax on gross gaming revenue as defined in the Act.

Licensing does not lower the rate. The current Textgegenüberstellung shows 45% already in force both for the lottery concession’s electronic lotteries and, as Glücksspielabgabe, for unlicensed online play. The bill keeps 45% on both sides and exempts a concessionaire from the Glücksspielabgabe only because it pays the Konzessionsabgabe instead (§ 57(2), last sentence). Any page that budgets Austria at 40% is using an old rate.

Bonuses become taxable stakes

From 1 January 2027 a new § 57a treats bonuses, free spins, promo tickets, credits and discounts as stakes for §§ 17, 57 and 58. A free spin with no face value counts at the game’s minimum stake. Refunds of stakes, later credits and refunds after a gambling contract is held void do not reduce the base.

Licensees get one relief: a concessionaire paying under § 17(3) Z 7 may deduct bonuses actually granted up to 5% of gross gaming revenue (§ 57a(3) Z 3). The explanatory notes say the relief is meant to be revenue-neutral and to keep licensed operators able to advertise with bonuses.

At EUR 10m of gross gaming revenue and a bonus budget of EUR 1m (10%), EUR 500,000 is deductible and EUR 500,000 is not. The non-deductible half costs EUR 225,000 in tax, 2.25 percentage points of revenue. A bonus policy designed for Malta or Curaçao should be repriced before launch.

Who can apply

Requirement	Bill provision	What it means in practice
Company with a supervisory board	§ 14(2) Z 1	A condition of every § 14 concession
Paid-in share capital of at least EUR 10m, lawful origin, not reduced by losses	§ 14(2) Z 3	The lottery concession needs EUR 100m; the old single-concession figure was EUR 109m
Seat in the EU or EEA	§ 14(3)	A non-EU/EEA company cannot apply at all
Austrian company, or a branch	§ 14(3)	A branch is enough if the home regulator holds a comparable licence, supervises it and assists Austria on request, and Austrian judgments are enforceable in the home state
Separate books and management for Austrian operations	§ 14(3)	All tax records available at the Austrian branch at any time
Reliability, including former grey-market activity	§ 14(2) Z 4, (2a), (2b)	See the cooling-off section above

For a Malta-licensed group the branch route is the obvious one, provided the MGA agrees to act as the supervising authority in Austria’s chain of supervision. Malta’s detailed opinion in the TRIS file is not public, so it is not known whether it concerns this point, the blocking powers or the cooling-off rule. The Malta profile covers the home-licence side.

Product rules that shape the business

Online gambling inherits player-protection rules from the slot-machine section, § 5, with “virtual slot machines” carrying more of them than other games (§ 13(2) and (3)).

Rule	Provision	Applies to
Deposit cap EUR 250 a week up to age 26, EUR 1,680 a month from 26	§ 13(4)	All online gambling
Different cap possible from age 23 if extra monitoring and feedback tools apply	§ 13(4)	All online gambling
Player-set money and time limits per day, week and month; increases after 72 hours, decreases at once	§ 5(4) Z 10 via § 13(2)–(3)	All online gambling
Stake of up to EUR 5 a game, win of up to EUR 10,000 a game, at least 2 seconds a game, no parallel games	§ 5(5) Z 1–4 via § 13(2)	Virtual slot machines
Shutdown after 90 minutes of continuous play, for at least 15 minutes, with a risk video	§ 5(5) Z 6 via § 13(2)	Virtual slot machines
Cross-operator exclusion register	§ 31g (from end of 31 December 2026)	All operators

The impact assessment adds an online supervision system with a cross-operator deposit limit and “safe servers” giving the authority access to game data. Section 60(66) orders an evaluation by the end of 2031 of whether the cross-operator limit is driving players offshore.

What the government expects

The Vorblatt books EUR 2,380,000 of application fees and EUR 6,000,000 of grant fees in 2027. At EUR 70,000 and EUR 300,000, that is 34 applications and 20 online grants, if every fee is an online one. The table does not split by concession type.

The ministry assumes a channelisation rate of 45% for the last quarter of 2027, 60% in 2028, 70% in 2029 and 75% in 2030, with at least 80% as the medium-term aim. It puts Glücksspielabgabe collected from unlicensed online operators at about EUR 40m a year on average, falling by a third in 2027 and a third in 2028, by two thirds in 2029 and to nothing from 2030. The Konzessionsabgabe rows of the same table, shared between the federal government, the Länder and the municipalities, add up to EUR 15.0m in 2027 and EUR 210.0m in 2030.

Those are the government’s own planning figures, not market data. They are useful mainly as a sign of how many concessions the ministry expects in the first year.

What is still open

• The committee. Fees, dates and deposit caps can change when the Finance Committee takes the bill up. Nothing has been tabled there yet.
• The TRIS answer. Austria has to respond to the Commission’s comments and to Malta’s detailed opinion. A detailed opinion can lead to amendments or to a longer process, but it does not stop the law.
• Timing against 1 January 2027. If the law is promulgated after 31 December 2026, the cooling-off date in § 14(2a) Z 3 still points to 1 January 2027. Expect argument about whether a stop required by a law not yet in force can be enforced.
• Renewal fees. Section 59a does not say whether the EUR 70,000 application fee is charged again on renewal.

For comparison, Germany taxes slots at 5.3% of stakes and caps deposits at EUR 1,000 a month across operators, and the Netherlands charges 37.8% of gross gaming revenue plus a levy. Italy shows the opposite design: a capped tender at EUR 7m per concession. Austria’s model has no cap and a low entry fee, but the highest tax of the four. The Germany profile and Netherlands profile hold the current figures for both.