Colombia Gambling Licence 2026: The Coljuegos Concession, and the Tax That Changed Four Times

The tax, with dates, because that is the whole problem

Colombia’s gambling tax has changed four times since February 2025, and most published guidance is frozen at one of the dead versions. Here is the sequence.

When	What	Status now
Since 2001	Derechos de explotación, 15% of gross gaming revenue, Ley 643	In force, unchanged throughout
February 2025	19% VAT on player deposits, Decreto 175 de 2025	Struck down
Late 2025	Reworked by Decreto 1474 de 2025	Struck down
29 January 2026	Constitutional Court suspends the underlying emergency, Auto 082 de 2026	Superseded by the ruling below
9 April 2026	Sentencia C-079 de 2026 declares the measures unconstitutional and orders refunds	Final
12 March 2026	16% national consumption tax, Decreto Legislativo 0240 de 2026, under a separate flood emergency	In force for the 2026 tax year only

Coljuegos frames the same standing charge to players as a contribution of 15% of monthly winnings to the health system, which is the same 15% seen from the other end rather than an additional levy.

Two things follow. The 19% VAT on deposits that appears on most pages describing Colombia is not merely stale, it was annulled and the tax collected under it was ordered refunded. And the 16% that replaced it is a different tax under a different emergency, and it expires with the 2026 tax year, so a 2027 model should not carry it.

There is one unresolved point we are not going to paper over. The decree describes the taxable event as the deposit the player makes, while the tax authority’s own compilation states the base as gross gaming revenue for the bimonthly period. That gap between event and base is exactly the ground on which the earlier VAT was contested, and automatic constitutional review of this decree did not appear complete when we checked.

The practical instruction: treat any Colombian gambling tax figure quoted without a date attached as unreliable, including figures in the thirty-percent range that stack the dead VAT onto the standing charge.

It is a concession, not a licence

Coljuegos is an Empresa Industrial y Comercial del Estado administering the monopolio rentístico created by Ley 643 de 2001. What you obtain is a contract with the state to exploit part of that monopoly, a contrato de concesión para la operación de juegos de suerte y azar por internet en la modalidad de novedosos.

The regime was created by Resolución 20161200025334 de 2016, modified by Resolución 20201000008294 de 2020, and amended again on guarantees by Resolución 20250021304 de 2025. The term is five years.

That is worth stating precisely because six competitor pages assert five years without pointing at anything, and because the three-to-five-year band that several others quote belongs to juegos localizados, a different category. The five years here comes from the text of a published concession contract.

Colombia was also the first Latin American country to regulate online gambling, in 2016, and it remains the most centralised regime in the region. One national regulator, no provincial or state layer. That single fact is the biggest structural difference from Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, and it is why a Colombian entry is a single negotiation rather than a campaign.

What it costs

There is no published application fee and no fixed annual licence fee. Colombia takes a share of revenue instead, which makes it structurally different from Brazil at BRL 30 million or an offshore licence at a flat annual figure.

What you must commit is guarantees. A cumplimiento guarantee of 15% and a salarios y prestaciones guarantee of 5%, both of the contract value the applicant projects, plus a prize-payment guarantee of at least COP 615,000,000 under Acuerdo 08 de 2020. On top of that Coljuegos requires a bank certification evidencing funds matching player account balances, and a funded mechanism covering prize payment and the return of funds.

What is not published is a minimum capital or patrimonio técnico figure. Coljuegos asks for financial statements demonstrating capacity and leaves the judgement open. Peso capital figures circulate in adviser material; none could be traced to reachable primary text, so we do not print one. If you are quoted a capital requirement, ask which instrument sets it.

Three published rules that shape the product

Pay out at least 83%. Operators must return 83% of the amounts received from bets to registered players as prizes. It appears as obligation 34 of the concession contract, and Coljuegos states it publicly too. Where the operator acts as intermediary on cross bets, its commission may not exceed 17% of gross income. A margin ceiling written into the contract is a real constraint on product design, and few jurisdictions state one this plainly.

Use a .CO address. Coljuegos tells players to check that the operator’s domain or URL ends in .CO. Both .co and .com.co satisfy it, which is why wplay.co and betplay.com.co both appear among authorised operators.

Register players to a Colombian address. The account address must be in Colombian territory. This is a domestic market concession, not a regional or export licence, and there is no Latin American passporting of any kind.

Verifying an operator: check which list you are reading

Coljuegos publishes two overlapping lists of authorised online operators, and they disagree.

The current one was last modified 31 August 2026 and shows fourteen operators on contracts running up to C2261, including Betano, Stake and MrYoker. The older page was last modified 30 January 2024 and still lists fifteen operators on contracts numbered 1631 to 2007, including Betfair, Megapuesta, Fullreto and Wonderbet, and omits everyone authorised since.

Both are live on the regulator’s own site. Read the wrong one and you get a wrong answer in either direction: a current licensee apparently missing, or a former one apparently still authorised.

There is a second trap on the current page. Its surrounding text says sixteen legal sites while its table lists fourteen. Count the table, not the sentence.

Timelines, and the number we will not print

A Coljuegos page mentions a two-month response period, and that figure travels. We could not tie it to the internet concession regime: the only two-month rule traceable in Ley 643 governs extensions for a different licence type. The most recent published concession took roughly five and a half months from application to signature.

So we publish no processing time for Colombia. What we can say is that the regulator publishes the contracts, so you can read what previous applicants actually agreed to and how long their files took, which is more than most jurisdictions allow.

Responsible gambling

Obligations were restated by Resolución 20244000022654 de 2024 of 16 October 2024. Self-exclusion traces to Acuerdo 08 de 2020 and is implemented by each operator.

We found no evidence of a central cross-operator self-exclusion registry. Several sources describe one. If a binding national scheme matters to your compliance design, confirm it with Coljuegos before relying on it, because we could not verify that it exists.

Who this suits

An operator targeting Colombian players, able to fund guarantees rather than meet a capital floor, and comfortable with a margin ceiling and a tax layer that has moved four times in eighteen months. Against Brazil it is far cheaper to enter and slightly heavier on revenue. Against Mexico, where no new federal permits are issued and the excise reached 50% of bets less prizes in January 2026, it is simply open. Against Argentina, it is one regulator instead of twenty-four.

Our Latin America guide sets out how the region compares market by market, since nothing you can hold covers it as a block.