Belize Gambling Licence 2026: Government Says No Online Licences Are Being Issued

What the government has said

Belize’s online gaming position is a matter of three dated statements, not a fee table.

Date	Source	What it says
18 February 2022	Government of Belize Press Office, Gaming Control Board notice	One online gaming company is licensed to operate from Belize: Mum Casino Ltd. Others claiming a Belize licence must stop
23 May 2024	Government press release, reproduced by Breaking Belize News	Belize “currently has a moratorium on online gaming licenses”. No online gaming company is licensed. No licences will be issued until further notice
9 June 2025	Ministry notice, Belmopan, PDF on the Ministry of Investment site	Same words: a moratorium, no company licensed, no licences issued until further notice. Entities claiming a Belize licence “must immediately cease and desist”

Between the first and second statement the count went from one named licensee to none. The 2025 notice repeats the 2024 position 382 days later, so the moratorium was still in force at that point. The Ministry of Investment’s own search for gaming on 19 October 2026 returned nothing newer than the 9 June 2025 notice. That is 497 days without a published change, which is not the same as proof that nothing changed. It only means no later statement was findable.

What the Gaming Control Act actually fixes

The statute is the Gaming Control Act, Cap. 152, Revised Edition 2020, as published by the Ministry of Investment. It creates the Gaming Control Board (s. 4), whose job is to “control and regulate gaming and to grant or revoke gaming licences” (s. 5). We read all of it for what an online operator would need to know.

• It is written for premises. The licence is applied for by a person who “intends to use or permit any other person to use his premises for gaming” (s. 6). The word online does not appear anywhere in the text. The only hit for “electronic” concerns how notices may be sent.
• Fit and proper test. The applicant and each associate, meaning anyone holding 5% or more of the voting capital or a director, manager or secretary role, must pass (ss. 2(3), 6A(1)-(2)). Under 18 is ineligible (s. 6(3)).
• Twelve months. Every licence is valid for twelve months and renewed on payment of “such annual fee as may from time to time be prescribed by the Board by regulations” (s. 6A(3)). The Act states no amount.
• Tax by regulation. Gaming tax is charged “at such rate of the amount collected in respect of gaming by the licensee as the Minister may from time to time by Regulations prescribe” (s. 9(2)). The Act states no rate. Its proceeds are earmarked for education, sports and culture (s. 9(5)).
• Penalty for operating without a licence. Using premises as a common gaming house without a valid licence carries a fine of up to 100,000 dollars or up to two years’ imprisonment, or both (s. 15(2)). The Act says dollars; it does not convert them.

So the statute gives the licence term, the test and the penalty. Every number a buyer asks about (application fee, renewal, deposit, tax rate) is delegated to regulations. The Ministry’s notices refer to the Gaming Control Act as the licensing law, which is why we treat the regulations as the place any online-specific rules would sit. We could not obtain them, so nothing below the Act level is claimed here.

What vendor pages quote, and where it stops

The top Google results for belize gambling license cost (US results, 19 October 2026) are vendor and directory pages. We opened three. None mentions the moratorium.

Page	Claims	Traceable to a primary source we could read?
Vantegris, updated 29 September 2026	About USD 15,500 to apply, about USD 10,000 a year from year two, turnover tax 0.75% capped at USD 250,000, a USD 500,000 indemnity at the Central Bank, at least 25 local employees, “only around two” operators with valid certificates	No. None of these figures is in the Act. The count of two conflicts with the Ministry’s “no online gaming company”
howtostartcasino.com	Application USD 15,000, renewal USD 15,000, security deposit USD 500,000; names a “Computer Wagering Licensing Board” as issuer	No. The Ministry names the Gaming Control Board
aviabiz.com	Describes an IBC route and application procedure	Not checked against any statute; no fee figure found on the page

We are not saying those figures were never real. They may describe an older regime, and the regulations that would settle it were not readable. The point is narrower: a reader budgeting from these pages is pricing a product that the government’s last written word says it is not selling.

Where the 2026 legislation leaves this

A document titled Gaming and Lotteries Control, Act No. 3 of 2026, is listed on the Belize National Assembly website, and a 2025 Bill of the same name is listed beside it. On 19 October 2026 the National Assembly host returned an “Account Suspended” page for both PDFs, so we could not read either. We cannot say whether the Act has commenced, what it does to the Gaming Control Act, or whether it lifts the moratorium. It would be a mistake to read a new statute’s existence as a reopening of licensing. Only the Ministry can say so, and no such notice was found.

What to do before relying on a Belize claim

1. Operators: write to the Investment, Policy and Compliance Unit at the Ministry of Investment (contact details are on the 9 June 2025 notice) and ask whether any online gaming application can be accepted today. Do not pay a deposit or an agent’s fee on a verbal answer.
2. Counterparties: a casino, supplier or payment client that says it holds a Belize online licence is, on the Ministry’s wording, unauthorised. Ask for the licence number and the issue date, and check them against the Ministry.
3. Comparing options: if the goal is a low-cost licence that is actually issued, the fee-and-register pages on this site cover Nevis, Tobique, Anjouan and Curaçao, and the all-jurisdictions cost comparison sets them side by side. Dominica is a similar case: vendors still price a licence there through an IBC, a company type Dominica repealed from 1 January 2022.

What we could not verify

• Whether the moratorium is still in force after 9 June 2025. No later notice was found on invest.gov.bz.
• The text and commencement of Act No. 3 of 2026 and of the 2025 Bill.
• The Online Gaming Regulations referred to in 2022 and any fee or tax schedule under them.
• Every vendor figure in the table above.
• Whether Mum Casino Ltd. still exists as a licensee. The 2024 and 2025 notices say there is no licensed online company.