PAGCOR Online Gaming Licence 2026: The 30% Share, the Minimum Guaranteed Fee and 59 Accredited Platforms

The short answer

There is no stand-alone online licence in the Philippines. PAGCOR accredits a Philippine company as a Gaming System Administrator (GSA), which runs the gaming system, the games and the online platform, and a licensed Gaming Venue Operator offers those games on site and online through it. Players must be in the Philippines.

Getting in as a GSA costs PHP 5 million per game offering in non-refundable accreditation fees, a cash deposit of PHP 25 million (one offering) or PHP 50 million (two or more), and a company with PHP 25 million paid-up capital. Once live, an e-casino platform pays PAGCOR 30% of gross gaming revenue (GGR) plus an audit fee of 10% of that share, 33% in all. Since 1 July 2026 there is also a monthly minimum, PHP 9 million for a platform with electronic casino games, whatever it earns.

Whether a newcomer can get in at all is a separate question. PAGCOR’s chairman told reporters on 27 August 2026 that a moratorium on new online gaming licences, imposed by board resolution in March 2024, will stay for now. PAGCOR’s own list of accredited GSAs as of 8 October 2026 has 59 names. We counted it; the numbers are below.

Our Philippines profile covers the wider regime and the end of offshore gaming. This page is what PAGCOR charges, read from its own frameworks, and who is on its list.

Who holds what

None of the PAGCOR frameworks and memos we read for this page uses the term “PIGO”, which most licensing guides still sell. The Regulatory Framework for the Accreditation of Gaming System Administrators (Rev. No. 0, effective 2 October 2025) sets out the structure in its first paragraph: the operator of a PAGCOR-licensed gaming venue “shall avail of the services of a Gaming System Administrator” that provides the gaming technology for play at the venue “or via mobile device through an adjunct online gaming platform”.

Role	What it does	What PAGCOR issues
Gaming Venue Operator	Holds the licence for a gaming venue and its game offerings; offers the games on site and online	Gaming licence per game offering
Gaming System Administrator	Provides the electronic gaming system, games and online gaming platform; delivers marketing, account management and staff training to the operators “on behalf of PAGCOR”	Certificate of Accreditation per game offering
B2B providers	Game content providers, aggregators, support services; the GSA may use only PAGCOR-accredited ones	Accreditation

Three conditions in the GSA framework decide whether the model fits a foreign group at all:

• Players in the Philippines only. The platform “shall not allow player registration and shall not accept bets emanating outside the Philippines in any way whatsoever”. Applicants file a notarised disclosure that every non-Philippine IP address is blocked.
• Infrastructure in the Philippines. Servers must sit in a Tier 1 data centre in the Philippines or run on cloud services, and live-dealer games must be streamed from a studio located in the Philippines only.
• A Philippine corporation. The applicant files its SEC registration, articles and by-laws, with PHP 100 million authorised and PHP 25 million paid-up capital stock.

What it costs to get in

From the GSA framework and PAGCOR’s Schedule of Regulatory Fees as of 2 July 2026. All figures in Philippine pesos.

Item	Gaming System Administrator	Gaming Venue Operator (standard licence)
Accreditation or application fee	5,000,000 per game offering, non-refundable	300,000 per offering for e-bingo, e-casino and traditional bingo (3 years); 200,000 for sports betting, specialty, numeric and online poker (2 years)
Renewal	none printed in the schedule	200,000 per offering, every two years
Performance cash deposit	25,000,000 for one offering; 50,000,000 for two or more	100,000 to 1,000,000 per offering (500,000 for e-casino)
Capital and funds	100,000,000 authorised, 25,000,000 paid-up capital stock; bank certification of at least 50,000,000	—
Other	20,000 to reprint or reissue a certificate	Inspection 50,000 and processing 50,000 per offering; extension 1,000 a day

So the fixed cash a platform puts up before its first bet is PHP 30 million for one game offering (5m fee plus 25m deposit) or PHP 60 million for two (10m in fees plus 50m), before the paid-up capital. The deposit is not idle money: unpaid minimum fees are deducted from it on the 20th of the month and must be topped up within 30 days.

Vendor pages print capital requirements of PHP 440 million or USD 440,000, and until today our own profile said “PHP 100M+ minimum capital”. The framework’s figure is PHP 25 million paid-up within PHP 100 million authorised. The PHP 50 million bank certification is a separate proof of funds.

The Unified Gaming License that PAGCOR approved on 2 July 2026 (PHP 1.2 million to apply, PHP 800,000 to renew, PHP 2 million deposit per venue) is not an online route. PAGCOR’s memo of 16 July 2026 says it “applies exclusively to land-based gaming venue operators. It does not apply to online gaming operators.”

What you pay every month

The PAGCOR share and the audit fee

The Regulatory Framework for the Fees and Rates on Gaming Venue Operations, Rev. No. 5, effective 8 January 2026, sets the PAGCOR share as a percentage of GGR (gross bets less payouts) for both on-site and online play, from the November 2025 billing period:

Game offering	PAGCOR share	With the 10% audit fee
Electronic casino games	30%	33.0%
Virtual sports; RNG-based specialty and numeric games	30%	33.0%
Electronic bingo	25%	27.5%
Traditional bingo	20% from January 2026 (25% in November 2025)	22.0%
Live sports; live-streamed specialty and numeric games	15%	16.5%
Online poker (on total rake and fees collected)	15%	16.5%

The audit fee is 10% of the PAGCOR share, charged on all games except on-site machines on a locally linked system, so it applies to everything online. The share is remitted every Monday for the week to Saturday, late payments carry 12% a year, and a negative week can be offset only within the same venue and never between on-site and online.

Integrated-resort licensees with an investment commitment of at least USD 200 million pay a reduced share of at most 22% on electronic casino and RNG games, “exclusive of the five (5.00%) Franchise Tax”. That rate is open only to the resorts.

The minimum guaranteed fee

PAGCOR’s board approved the minimum guaranteed fee (MGF) on 4 December 2025. The memo of 15 December 2025 sets the rule: each GSA “shall be assessed the higher of the prescribed MGF or the applicable percentage-based License Fee (LF) or PAGCOR Share (PS)”, reckoned monthly across the GSA and its operators.

It took three dates to start:

Memo	First tranche	Second tranche
15 December 2025	1 April to 30 September 2026	1 October 2026 onwards
30 March 2026 (“current economic crisis”)	1 June to 31 December 2026	1 January 2027 onwards
21 May 2026 (“sustained market contraction”)	1 July to 31 December 2026	1 January 2027 onwards

The 30 March memo is not internally consistent: it defers the MGF “for a period of two (2) months or until June 07, 2026”, while its own table starts the first tranche on 1 June. The 21 May memo replaced both dates, so the question no longer matters for billing.

Category	Minimum GGR a month	MGF from 1 July 2026	Minimum GGR from 2027	MGF from 1 January 2027
GSA with electronic casino games	30,000,000	9,000,000	35,000,000	10,500,000
GSA without electronic casino games	15,000,000	3,000,000	20,000,000	4,000,000

A GSA that offers e-casino alongside anything else pays the e-casino MGF. Offering e-casino without declaring it is grounds for suspension or cancellation.

Where the floor bites. For an e-casino platform the MGF equals a 30% share of exactly the minimum GGR, so above PHP 30 million a month it changes nothing. Below it, the minimum becomes the bill:

Monthly GGR	Pays from July 2026	Share of GGR	Pays from 2027	Share of GGR
10,000,000	9,000,000	90%	10,500,000	105%
20,000,000	9,000,000	45%	10,500,000	52.5%
30,000,000	9,000,000	30%	10,500,000	35%
35,000,000	10,500,000	30%	10,500,000	30%

PHP, e-casino GSA, PAGCOR share only. The memos compare the MGF with the share; they do not say whether the 10% audit fee is added on top of a month billed at the MGF, and we found no PAGCOR document that settles it.

The non-casino tier is the one to read twice. PHP 3 million on PHP 15 million is 20%, and PHP 4 million on PHP 20 million is 20% again. A platform offering only live sports pays a 15% share, which reaches PHP 3 million only at PHP 20 million of monthly GGR, and PHP 4 million only at PHP 26.7 million from 2027. Between the printed minimum and those figures the platform is on the floor while meeting PAGCOR’s own threshold. An e-bingo-only platform at 25% clears the floor at PHP 12 million and PHP 16 million.

The memo attaches consequences that matter as much as the amount:

• A newly accredited GSA has six months from approval to start operating; after that the MGF applies “regardless of operational status”. A GSA accredited earlier but without a Notice to Commence Operations had two months.
• Five cumulative months below the minimum GGR trigger a Final Warning and a review of the GSA’s suitability, which can end in cancellation with a 60-day window to return player deposits.
• A GSA that suspends operations pays an administrative fee of 50% of its MGF a month (PHP 4.5 million on the e-casino tier in 2026), for at most two months, after which the accreditation is cancelled.
• Billing goes out by the 10th, payment is due on the 15th, interest runs at 12% a year, and on the 20th any unpaid MGF is taken from the deposit.

Under amendments approved on 10 July 2026, a cancelled GSA must keep its platform open for withdrawals only, for at most 60 days, inside a 90-day post-operational period, and must swear that deactivation does not reduce its liability for player funds before the deposit comes back (Annex F to the GSA framework).

The register on 8 October 2026

PAGCOR publishes a list of accredited GSAs with their game offerings, brands and domains. The version on its site is dated “as of October 8, 2026”. We counted its numbered rows with a script on 13 October 2026, checking the three entries that run across a page break.

	Count
Accredited GSAs	59
Offering electronic casino games commercially	45
E-casino approved but not yet commenced	2
No electronic casino games	12
No game offering commenced at all	4

The previous list on the same page, dated 4 December 2025, has 65 GSAs. Eight names on it are absent from the October list: Bonne Chance Numbers and Gaming, Heilan International, Jade Entertainment and Gaming Technologies, JKS Tech Solutions, Megabet, NextStage Entertainment, Skybet Gaming and World Platinum Technologies. Two appear that were not on it: Kaizen Gaming Philippines and One Visaya Gaming Corporation, the latter with every offering marked as not yet commenced.

PAGCOR’s chairman gave a different figure. He told reporters on 27 August 2026 that the number of online gaming licensees “has fallen to 48 from 74”. Neither 59, nor the 55 GSAs with at least one live offering, nor the 45 with live e-casino is 48, and PAGCOR has not published what its count measures. Use the list, and date your count.

The list also cannot tell you who left because of the minimum fee. The December list predates the MGF memo by 11 days and the exits fall between the two lists, but neither list gives reasons.

The market the fees are charged on

PAGCOR’s quarterly industry data reports a line called “Electronic Games” among its other licensees.

Quarter	Electronic Games GGR (PHP)	Total industry GGR (PHP)	Electronic Games share
2Q 2025	59.29 billion	110.63 billion	53.6%
2Q 2026	36.25 billion	88.14 billion	41.1%

Electronic Games GGR fell 38.9% year on year, and total industry GGR fell 20.3%. Across 2025 the line went from PHP 59.29 billion in the second quarter to PHP 41.95 billion in the third and PHP 36.79 billion in the fourth, and it has stayed near PHP 36 billion a quarter in 2026. In June 2026, the month before the minimum fee started, it was PHP 11.53 billion. PAGCOR’s 21 May memo gave “sustained market contraction” as the reason for the last deferral.

What PAGCOR does not license

Offshore gaming. PAGCOR’s remote-operations page states that all internet gaming licensees and authorised providers “were cancelled effective December 15, 2024” under Executive Order 74, and that any website claiming a valid PAGCOR offshore licence “is fraudulent and unauthorized”. Republic Act 12312, approved on 23 October 2025, then made offshore gaming and supplying, hosting or leasing for it a crime, with six to twelve years and fines up to PHP 50 million, and repealed the offshore gaming tax law. PAGCOR’s 16 July 2026 memo adds that nothing in its recent issuances “authorizes, revives, or otherwise permits offshore gaming operations in any form”.

For a licence that serves players outside the licensing state, compare the cost of every licence we track and the easiest jurisdictions to enter.

What we could not verify

• The March 2024 board resolution behind the moratorium. Only the chairman’s account, as reported by The Philippine Star, is public; we could not see whether it covers GSA accreditation, venue licences or both.
• Whether the 10% audit fee is charged on a month billed at the minimum guaranteed fee.
• Whether the 5% franchise tax that the integrated-resort rate is stated to exclude also applies to non-resort GSAs and operators. We found no PAGCOR document that says so for online play, so it is left out of every figure above.
• How long accreditation takes. The framework sets steps (documents, fee, inspection and system walkthrough, probity check, board approval) but no deadline.
• A validity term for the GSA Certificate of Accreditation. The schedule prints no renewal fee for GSAs and we found no expiry in the framework.