Italy Online Gambling Licence 2026: 52 ADM Concessions, the €7m Fee and the 22 October Payment Rules

The short answer: Italy is closed to new applicants until the next tender

Italy does not issue online gambling licences on request. Article 6 of Legislative Decree 41/2024 reserves remote gaming to the State and lets ADM hand it out as concessions, “all’esito di apposite procedure di gara pubblica”, for at most nine years “con esclusione del rinnovo” (art. 6(3)). The concession covers betting, pool betting, horse-racing games, skill and fixed-odds chance games (which is where casino and poker sit), peer-to-peer betting and bingo (art. 6(1)(a)-(f)). Lotteries and numerical games stay with their single concession holders, who may license them to online concessionaires (art. 6(4)).

The tender under that decree was launched by Determination 777860 of 17 December 2024 and published in the EU Official Journal on 18 December 2024. Applications ran from 31 March to 30 May 2025. While ADM completed it, the old concessions were extended twice, the second time to 12 November 2025 (Determination 504068 of 24 July 2025). ADM’s rule on opening game accounts under the new concessions took effect on 13 November 2025 (Determination 704968).

The result is on ADM’s register. We read it on 5 November 2026:

Measure	Count
Concessions listed	52
Concession codes	16000 to 16051, none missing
Companies holding them	46
Companies with more than one concession	4, holding 10 concessions
Holders with a non-Italian company form (Ltd, Plc, d.d., SA)	14

That count settles the figures in circulation. Press reports from November 2025 to January 2026 give “46 operators” and €364 million raised, and one headline turns that into “46 active licences”. 46 × €7m is €322m. The €364m only works with 52 concessions, which is what the register shows.

Our reading: for an operator outside the 46, Italy in 2026 is a partnership or acquisition question, not a licensing one. The decree gives no date for the next tender. A concession that started in November 2025 can run until late 2034 at the latest, and renewal is excluded, so a new round must come before then; ADM has not published one.

What changed on 22 October 2026: the cashier rules

Determination 675265/RU, signed by ADM’s Director of Games on 22 October 2026, implements article 13(5) of the decree and article 11(6)(b) of the concession agreement. It was prepared with the Treasury’s financial-system directorate, the Bank of Italy’s financial intelligence unit (UIF) and the Guardia di Finanza. It governs every euro that enters or leaves an Italian game account:

Article	Rule	What it means for the operator
1	Only instruments that guarantee traceability may debit or credit a game account; player funds sit in dedicated bank or post-office accounts in the concessionaire’s name, notified to ADM	Player money is ring-fenced and visible to the regulator
2	Any instrument from an Italian or EU payment-service provider that identifies payer and payee and records date, amount and reason: credit transfer, direct debit, payment card, prepaid card	Standard PSP rails are approved by definition and are outside the €100 weekly limit
3	Limited-network instruments (art. 2(m)(1)-(2), Legislative Decree 11/2010) qualify only if they meet six conditions: buyer identified and matched to the account holder, usable only for that holder’s account, irrevocable, top-up only by the holder, not transferable, holder identifiable	Each issuer files a sworn report by an independent AML or banking expert, submitted through a concessionaire; ADM forwards it to the Guardia di Finanza and the Bank of Italy
3(5)	Instruments of this kind already in use stay valid until 31 March 2027, by which date the report must be filed	160 days from adoption; 146 days from 5 November 2026
4	Top-ups at top-up points, by PSP instrument, by voucher and in cash are booked directly by the concessionaire or transmitted to it, in three separate ledgers	The weekly cash cap is policed from the concessionaire’s books
5	Withdrawals only to a payment account or instrument in the player’s own name, verified before payment; no withdrawals at top-up points or any retail point, even the concessionaire’s own	Shop cash-outs end; a mismatched name means refusal and a request for another instrument
6	E-wallets run by authorised, supervised intermediaries may move funds from the dedicated accounts and pay winnings, after notice to ADM naming the depositary bank that actually holds player funds	An e-wallet can be used for payouts, but only with a named bank behind it

The cash limit itself is in the decree. Article 13(5) allows top-ups at a registered top-up point in cash, or with instruments the player has not already registered with the concessionaire, up to €100 a week in total. The concessionaire must enforce that limit in the top-up point’s software. The determination adds that PSP instruments under article 2 and sworn-report vouchers under article 3 fall outside it. A top-up point must be on ADM’s register, which costs €100 a year; missing one year’s payment ends the registration (art. 13(2)). Registered points may never pay winnings (art. 13(3)).

The deadline that matters is 31 March 2027. Any voucher or closed-loop prepaid product an operator accepts today needs its issuer’s sworn report on file with ADM by then, or it stops being usable. If ADM finds the conditions missing or the report untrue, it informs the Bank of Italy, suspends the instrument and applies contractual penalties to the concessionaire (art. 3(4)).

What a concession costs

Article 6 sets three charges, and article 15 adds a fourth:

Charge	Amount	Rule
One-off price	€7,000,000 per concession: €4m at award, €3m at start of collection, which must begin within six months of grant	art. 6(5)(p)
Annual canone	3% of net margin, meaning stakes less winnings paid and the related taxes (or the concessionaire’s fee for untaxed games), in two halves by 16 January and 16 July	art. 6(6)(n)
Responsible-gaming spend	0.2% of net revenue a year on information campaigns, capped at €1,000,000	art. 15(2)
Gaming taxes	Set by game-specific legislation, not by Decree 41/2024	Not covered in this article

The canone is charged after tax, so it adds to the gaming tax rather than sitting inside it. Spread over the full nine years, the €7m price is €777,778 a year. At low net margins that fixed cost dominates:

Net margin per year	Canone (3%)	€7m over 9 years	Total	Share of net margin	Responsible-gaming spend (0.2%, cap €1m)
€5m	€150,000	€777,778	€927,778	18.56%	€10,000
€20m	€600,000	€777,778	€1,377,778	6.89%	€40,000
€50m	€1,500,000	€777,778	€2,277,778	4.56%	€100,000
€100m	€3,000,000	€777,778	€3,777,778	3.78%	€200,000
€500m	€15,000,000	€777,778	€15,777,778	3.16%	€1,000,000

The amortised price equals the canone at a net margin of about €25.9m a year. Below that, the entry ticket costs more each year than the running charge. The responsible-gaming cap binds from €500m of net revenue. The decree defines that base as “ricavi netti”, not the canone’s net margin, so the column uses the same figure only as an approximation. The tender documents also set a guarantee (art. 6(5)(l)), which is not reproduced here.

Penalties are capped too. Article 8 limits contractual penalties to 7% of a late or missing payment, €5,000 for documents more than 30 days late, and 0.5% of the previous year’s net take for other breaches. Internet providers that ignore an ADM blocking order face €30,000 to €180,000 per violation (art. 22).

Who holds the 52 concessions

Because every concession carries exactly one website, the companies with several concessions are the multi-brand groups:

Company	Concessions	Websites on the register
E-play 24 Ita Limited	3	eplay24.it, sportium.it, betwin360.it
Eurobet Italia S.r.l. Unipersonale	3	eurobet.it, bwin.it, giocodigitale.it
Azzurri Limited	2	starcasino.it, betsson.it
Goldbet Better Organization Italy S.p.a.	2	goldbet.it, lottomatica.it

The other 42 companies hold one each. Among them are Sisal Italia (sisal.it), Snaitech (snai.it), Betfair Italia, Hillside (New Media Malta) Plc (bet365.it), Leo Vegas Gaming P.l.c., William Hill Malta Plc, 888 Italia Limited, TSG Italy (pokerstars.it), Winamax SA, Stake Italy and the two municipal casinos, Sanremo and Venice. The highest codes, 16049 to 16051, belong to Mylotteries, Marathonbet Italy and Pintertotobet (gioca7.it).

The group cap is five concessions (art. 6(5)(p)), so no group can hold more than €35m of tickets. None of the four multi-concession holders on the register is above three.

What the next tender will ask for

The entry conditions in article 6(5) apply for the full term and will apply again. They rule out most new businesses before price:

• a capital company with its registered office in the European Economic Area (a);
• prior gaming experience in an EEA state under a valid licence there, with at least €3 million of revenue from that activity over the last two closed financial years (b);
• technical, environmental, social, innovation and cyber-security minimums, proven by an independent sworn technical report, plus a responsible-gaming policy, all scored in the tender (c);
• reporting of anyone holding more than 2% of capital, directly or indirectly (f);
• an investment plan with a third-party sustainability report (g);
• servers and the gaming hardware and software located in the EEA (n);
• one owned website on the national domain per concession, carrying the concessionaire’s logo, on pain of suspension (o).

The game account itself follows Italian law, with an Italian court and no arbitration (art. 6(8)(a)). Since 13 November 2025 an account can be opened with SPID or the electronic identity card (CIE) instead of copies of an identity document and tax code (Determination 704968). Winnings must be credited to the account within an hour of the official result and paid out within seven days of a withdrawal request (art. 6(8)(f)-(g)).

For a tender-gated market of similar size, see our Spain article and the Spain profile: Spain’s last call for general licences closed on 17 December 2018. Belgium is closed by caps rather than by a tender. The Netherlands still takes applications at any time. The payment-traceability rules sit on top of the AML duties covered in our AML guide for online gambling operators.

Method

The concession rules were read from the text of Legislative Decree 41/2024 on Normattiva (arts 6, 8, 13, 15 and 22). The payment rules come from ADM Determination 675265/RU of 22 October 2026, the account-opening rules from Determination 704968 of 11 November 2025, and the tender and extension dates from Determination 504068 of 24 July 2025, all as published on adm.gov.it. The register was read from ADM’s page of authorised remote-gaming concessionaires on 5 November 2026, all three pages, 52 rows. Gaming tax rates were not re-verified for this article and are not quoted. Derived figures (multiplications, the nine-year spread, shares, the break-even margin and day counts) were computed in a script.