Ireland Gambling Licence 2026: GRAI Fee Tables, Gross-Win Basis, 39 Licensees

The short answer

Ireland has a new regulator and a new licence, and for the first time a remote operator applies to one body instead of the Revenue Commissioners. The GRAI’s first business-to-consumer licences commenced on 1 July 2026, covering remote betting and remote betting intermediaries. Everything else is still to come: in its notice of 30 June 2026 the GRAI said applications for gaming, lotteries, B2B, charitable and philanthropic licences will open “throughout 2027 and 2028”.

What it costs to apply as a remote betting operator:

• €20,000 if your gross win in Ireland is below €250,000.
• €400,000 if it is €200 million or more.
• Ten brackets in between, all fixed amounts, all set by S.I. No. 37/2026, made on 9 February 2026.

Three things the fee page does not tell you are what “turnover” means, what the register shows and what is not yet priced. This page covers those. It does not cover Irish betting duty: we could not find the rates on a Revenue page we could open, so we leave them out rather than quote a secondary source.

Fee tables

The fee is set by a table, the bracket is picked by turnover “applicable to the last financial year of the applicant preceding the date of the application”, and an applicant with no Irish activity yet uses its estimated turnover for the first twelve months after the grant (S.I. 37/2026, regs 3 and 4). The tables below are those in Schedules 1 and 2. We compared all 168 amounts in the Statutory Instrument with the appendices of the GRAI’s own fee guidance by script: they are identical.

Remote betting licence (Table C)

Turnover bracket	Application fee
below €250,000	€20,000
€250,000 – €499,999.99	€30,000
€500,000 – €1,999,999.99	€50,000
€2m – €7,499,999.99	€65,000
€7.5m – €14,999,999.99	€100,000
€15m – €29,999,999.99	€135,000
€30m – €44,999,999.99	€200,000
€45m – €149,999,999.99	€265,000
€150m – €199,999,999.99	€330,000
€200m and above	€400,000

Remote betting intermediary licence (Table D)

Turnover bracket	Application fee
below €275,000	€20,000
€275,000 – €999,999.99	€30,000
€1m – €2,999,999.99	€40,000
€3m – €4,499,999.99	€50,000
€4.5m – €5,999,999.99	€60,000
€6m – €8,999,999.99	€80,000
€9m – €11,999,999.99	€100,000
€12m – €17,999,999.99	€140,000
€18m – €23,999,999.99	€180,000
€24m and above	€230,000

Remote gaming licence (Schedule 2, Table B)

Turnover bracket	Application fee
below €200,000	€20,000
€200,000 – €499,999.99	€25,000
€500,000 – €1,499,999.99	€32,500
€1.5m – €4,999,999.99	€40,000
€5m – €9,999,999.99	€90,000
€10m – €19,999,999.99	€160,000
€20m – €29,999,999.99	€210,000
€30m – €39,999,999.99	€280,000
€40m – €49,999,999.99	€350,000
€50m and above	€450,000

The regulation also sets in-person tables (betting at racecourses and similar premises from €750 to €20,000, other in-person betting from €1,500 to €175,000, in-person gaming from €5,500 to €225,000), each with a further €1,200 per premises for the pre-licence inspection. A holder of an in-person betting licence pays no fee for a remote betting licence if its remote bets stay under the lower of €250,000 or 10% of its in-person bets, and the in-person application is granted (reg. 3(3)).

One drafting oddity, for anyone citing the instrument: the citation clause names it the Gambling (Licence Application Fees) Regulations 2026, while the explanatory note, which is not part of the instrument, calls it the “Gambling (Licence Fees) Regulations 2026”. Cite the clause.

What “turnover” means here

The Act defines turnover for most licensees as total income from the relevant gambling activity less winnings paid out, and for a betting intermediary as the charges paid to it for the facility (the GRAI quotes this definition in its guidance). The GRAI then adds a warning, in plain words: within the industry “turnover” usually means stake, which “can cause some confusion”, so for application fees it equates turnover to gross win, “the total of wins minus losses”, before overheads. Four rules follow from the guidance:

• Irish activity only. A remote operator counts what it generates from its Irish operations, not group revenue.
• Bonuses and free bets count only if the customer has the unrestricted right to the cash equivalent.
• Rakeback and cashback are not counted. The guidance treats them as business costs, like affiliate payments.
• Intermediaries count commission and any other charge paid to them for the facility, not the bets placed through it.

Where the bracket edges bite

The fee does not rise in proportion. It steps, and the step is a flat sum. Computed from Table C:

Gross win crosses	Fee moves from	to	Extra cost of crossing
€250,000	€20,000	€30,000	€10,000 (+50.0%)
€500,000	€30,000	€50,000	€20,000 (+66.7%)
€2m	€50,000	€65,000	€15,000 (+30.0%)
€7.5m	€65,000	€100,000	€35,000 (+53.8%)
€15m	€100,000	€135,000	€35,000 (+35.0%)
€30m	€135,000	€200,000	€65,000 (+48.1%)
€45m	€200,000	€265,000	€65,000 (+32.5%)
€150m	€265,000	€330,000	€65,000 (+24.5%)
€200m	€330,000	€400,000	€70,000 (+21.2%)

At the €500,000 line, €499,999 of gross win costs €30,000 and €500,000 costs €50,000. As a share of the lower edge of the bracket the fee is 10.0% at €500,000, 1.33% at €7.5m and 0.20% at €200m. The table is heavily regressive: small operators pay a large share of their gross win and large ones pay almost nothing. Remote gaming has the same shape and a steeper step in the middle: the move from €1.5m–€5m to €5m–€10m takes the fee from €40,000 to €90,000, an increase of 125%.

For orientation only, the Dutch regulator’s flat application fee is €61,300 whatever the revenue. Ireland’s remote betting fee is lower than that for an operator with less than €2m of gross win (€50,000 or less) and higher from €2m (€65,000), passing €100,000 at €7.5m. The comparison is of application fees only: the two regimes differ in tax, levy and renewal.

What is open, and what is not

Licence	Status at 18 October 2026	Evidence
Remote betting	Open; licences issued from 1 July 2026	GRAI notice, 30 June 2026; register
Remote betting intermediary	Open; licences issued from 30 July 2026	Register
In-person betting	”Later in the year”; one licence already on the register	GRAI notice; register
Gaming (including remote casino)	Applications to open across 2027 and 2028	GRAI notice
Lotteries, charitable, B2B	2027 and 2028; “it is not envisaged that B2B Licensing will be amongst the first phases”	GRAI notice and phasing page

Until the relevant sections are commenced, the GRAI’s Existing Licensees page tells licensees to keep dealing with the old bodies: gaming licences with the Revenue Commissioners, gaming and lottery permits with An Garda Síochána, lottery licences with the District Courts. We have not assessed the position of a foreign online casino that serves Irish players while no gaming licence exists. That is a legal question, and the sources above do not answer it.

The register on 18 October 2026

The GRAI publishes a licence register as a CSV download. The page says it was last updated on 13 October 2026; we downloaded it on 18 October 2026 and counted the rows.

	Count
Licence rows	41
Companies and sole traders holding them (distinct account numbers)	39
Remote betting	36
Remote betting intermediary	4
In-person betting	1
Gaming, lottery or B2B	0

Two companies hold both a remote betting and a betting intermediary licence: Exchange Platform Solutions Limited (Betdaq) and Triplebet Limited (Matchbook, easybet). The one in-person betting licence belongs to an individual.

Issue dates show how the rollout went. Thirteen licences carry the commencement date, 1 July 2026. By month of issue the register shows 21 in July, 9 in August, 9 in September and 2 on 1 October, the last date in the file. Every licence on the register is valid for three years, which puts the first expiries on 30 June 2029.

Three things the register does not show. It carries no addresses or officer names: those columns exist in the file and are empty in all 41 rows, so it cannot be used to count where licensees are established. Several trading names are casino-style brands (Casinoin, PartyCasino and others), but each licence is a betting licence, and the register lists no gaming activity. And it contains an error: one licence number, for Dabble Sports UK Ltd, is printed as GRAI-0995-RB-26-000, one digit short of the pattern used for the other 40. Check any licence number against the holder’s name, not alone.

Term, renewal and the unpriced costs

Under section 108(1) of the Act a B2C licence lasts one year unless a longer period is prescribed. S.I. No. 38/2026, made on the same day as the fee regulation, prescribes three years from the date of issue. So the three-year term is a regulation, not a statutory right.

What sits outside the fee table:

• Renewal. Section 38(1)(a) allows a fee for renewal. The GRAI guidance says renewal fees are payable when a licence expires after three years, will be set by a later regulation, and will depend on what the GRAI learns about the industry from the application process.
• Operating charge. Section 41 lets the GRAI charge licensees to fund its operating costs, by reference to turnover among other factors (s. 41(3)). Section 40(1) has the Exchequer fund those costs for three years from the establishment day, and the GRAI’s notice on its first annual report says it was formally established in March 2025. On that reading the funding period ends in about March 2028. No charge has been prescribed. Once the GRAI sets one it must notify each licensee, who has 30 days to pay (s. 41(5)).
• Variations. The guidance says further regulations in 2026 will prescribe fees for adding premises or pool betting.

For a three-year budget the application fee is the only figure fixed in law today. A bracket-based estimate of the whole cost cannot be built from the sources until the section 41 charge exists.

Process

1. Register on the GRAI Operator Portal and submit the application there. The GRAI says its process checks that the applicant is fit and proper, has the financial capacity to provide gambling, and that winnings are funded from lawful means.
2. Receive the invoice. On submission the portal generates an invoice in the Fees and Charges tab.
3. Pay in full at submission. The fee is paid by bank transfer quoting the invoice number, and the application is not assessed until it is paid.
4. Wait. We found no statutory decision period for B2C licences on the GRAI pages; the fastest licences on the register were issued on the commencement date itself, and the rest over the following three months.
5. Licence. Three years, then renewal on terms not yet set.

The GRAI says the fee is non-refundable in all cases, including where the application is withdrawn or the licence is later lost.

How we counted

• Fee amounts: read from the Irish Statute Book text of S.I. No. 37/2026 and compared with the appendices of the GRAI fee guidance. 168 euro amounts, identical. The guidance PDF still carries a sentence saying it is draft until the regulation is made; the regulation was made on 9 February 2026.
• Bracket steps and percentages: computed by script from the tables.
• Register: the CSV behind grai.ie/register, downloaded on 18 October 2026, 41 rows. Counts by activity, account number, issue month and expiry were made by script.
• Term, charges and fees: Gambling Regulation Act 2024 as enacted (ss. 38, 40, 41, 108) and S.I. No. 38/2026.
• Not found, so not included: Irish betting duty rates, any GRAI statement of a decision period, and the legal position of unlicensed remote operators.

For the wider field see our cost comparison across jurisdictions, the step-by-step licensing guide, and the UK licence cost page. The Malta and UK profiles explain the other regimes these operators work under.