Romania Gambling Licence 2026: ONJN Class 1 and Class 2 Costs, the 30% Tax and the EUR 1.28m Annual Floor

What changed on 1 August 2025, and what did not

Romania does not have a gaming tax with that name. It has an annual exploitation authorisation, and the tax attached to it is set in the annex to OUG 77/2009 as a percentage of “gambling revenue”, which art. 1^1 defines as amounts staked less prizes paid. For remote gambling Class 1 (and the Class 3 state lottery), OUG 82/2023 set that percentage at 21% with a EUR 400,000 annual minimum from 6 October 2023. Law 141/2025, the fiscal package published in Monitorul Oficial 699 on 25 July 2025, rewrote letter J of the annex: 30% of gambling revenue, and not less than EUR 480,000 a year, for tax due from 1 August 2025. Authorisations already running on that date were recalculated at the new level for the rest of their term.

The rest of the stack did not move in 2025, which is why so many guides carry a mix of old and new figures. The table is the history as the instruments record it.

Date	Instrument	Change
1 January 2019	OUG 114/2018 art. 53	2% monthly tax on all participation fees (deposits) collected by online organisers
18 July 2022	OG 15/2022	5% promotion tax on advertising contracts; contracts notified to the ONJN within five working days
6 October 2023	OUG 82/2023	Class 1 licence tax EUR 300,000 a year (previously banded by turnover, EUR 15,600 to 312,000 per Chambers); authorisation 21%, minimum EUR 400,000; responsible-gambling contribution EUR 500,000 (Class 1) and EUR 15,000 (Class 2); guarantees banded for 2024, fixed from 2025
28 April 2024	Law 107/2024	Outdoor gambling advertising panels above 35 square metres banned (art. 1^2(1))
1 January 2025	OUG 82/2023 art. 29(8)	Guarantee fixed at EUR 2,000,000 (online other than casino) and EUR 5,000,000 (online casino) regardless of revenue
1 August 2025	Law 141/2025 art. LXII	Authorisation 30%, minimum EUR 480,000; Class 2 geolocation, blocking and monthly reporting duties; player tax 4% / 20% / 40% by bracket
18 December 2025	Law 239/2025	Class 2 service ban extended to operators offering content in any international language or taking deposits in crypto-assets
25 February 2026	OUG 7/2026 art. III	Annual local council authorisation and per-square-metre local tax for physical venues (new art. 18^1); remote gambling untouched

Two of these are the ones the guides miss. The 2% on deposits has been in force for seven years and was upheld against a constitutional challenge in October 2025 (HP 232/2025); CMS and ICLG state it, Chambers and the consultancy pages do not. And the responsible-gambling contribution is a separate EUR 500,000 line under art. 10(4), payable to the ONJN and enforceable on its notification, not the licence tax. Our own page carried “EUR 500,000 annual licence fee”, which is that contribution wearing the wrong label.

The full stack, priced at three sizes

Take a Class 1 casino and betting operator and price the year. Licence tax EUR 300,000 (annex, pt 1 I J). Contribution EUR 500,000 (art. 10(4) i). Authorisation tax 30% of gambling revenue with the EUR 480,000 floor, which means the floor binds up to EUR 1.6 million of GGR. Deposit tax 2% of participation fees; the ratio of deposits to GGR depends on product and hold, so the table assumes deposits at four times GGR, a common enough ratio for a mixed book, and states it rather than hiding it. Corporate income tax, at Romania’s standard 16% rate, comes after all of this, on profit.

Annual GGR	Authorisation tax	Licence + contribution	2% of deposits (4 × GGR)	Total to the state	Share of GGR
EUR 1,000,000	EUR 480,000 (floor)	EUR 800,000	EUR 80,000	EUR 1,360,000	136%
EUR 2,000,000	EUR 600,000	EUR 800,000	EUR 160,000	EUR 1,560,000	78%
EUR 5,000,000	EUR 1,500,000	EUR 800,000	EUR 400,000	EUR 2,700,000	54%
EUR 10,000,000	EUR 3,000,000	EUR 800,000	EUR 800,000	EUR 4,600,000	46%

Below EUR 1.6 million of GGR the licence costs more than the business earns. Between EUR 2 million and EUR 5 million the fixed charges still weigh more than the percentage. Only above about EUR 10 million does the 30% become the number that matters, and even there the state’s share is closer to half than to a third. Our cost calculator applies the 30% rate and the fixed charges and lists the deposit tax as an unknown, because it cannot be computed from a GGR input; use the ratio you actually run.

Three smaller items complete the picture. Advertising contracts for billboards, street media and television carry a 5% promotion tax paid by the 25th of the following month (art. 1^2, OG 15/2022), and outdoor panels above 35 square metres have been banned since Law 107/2024 (art. 1^2(1)). One per cent of every gambling tax goes to the Romanian Olympic Committee and 0.2% to the Paralympic Committee, out of the amounts above, not on top of them (art. 13(3)). And the ONJN charges administrative fees per application that advisers put at EUR 3,500 for the file review and EUR 10,500 for issuance, with EUR 250 per request to integrate or recertify online games; the ONJN’s own forms and FAQ pages sat behind a JavaScript challenge on 15 September 2026, so I hold those three figures as reported by Chambers, ICLG and CMS rather than as read from the regulator.

Class 2: the licence affiliates and studios actually need

Art. 20(6) and the annex require a Class 2 licence from every business around the operator: platform management and hosting providers, gambling software producers and distributors, payment processors, affiliates, certifiers, auditors and conformity-assessment bodies. It costs EUR 20,000 a year per category, runs 10 years, carries an annual responsible-gambling contribution of EUR 15,000 (which Chambers reports the ONJN applies per licence held), and asks for no Romanian permanent establishment and no guarantee. For a game studio or an affiliate network that is a EUR 35,000-a-year door into a market where the operators pay forty times that.

The price of the door went up in 2025 in obligations rather than euros. Since 1 August 2025 a Class 2 licensee may not provide any ancillary service to an operator that offers gambling reachable from Romania without a Class 1 licence and a valid authorisation, including anything on the ONJN blacklist, a ban Law 239/2025 widened on 18 December 2025 to operators publishing in any international language or taking deposits in lei, other currencies or crypto-assets (art. 1(5^2) to (5^4)). Software, platform and payment licensees must run their own geolocation of players, independent of what the operator’s platform tells them, block Romanian access on unlicensed sites, and file a report with the ONJN by the 10th of each month listing the players blocked and the unlicensed domains involved (art. 1(5^5) to (5^8)). The ONJN blacklist is the reference list. A supplier that keeps serving a blacklisted brand is not fined; it loses the licence.

Guarantee, company and the 30-day clock

The guarantee is a fund, not a fee. Art. 29(8), as rewritten by OUG 82/2023, sets it at EUR 2,000,000 for online gambling other than online casino and EUR 5,000,000 for online casino activity from 1 January 2025, regardless of revenue; 2024 was banded by revenue from EUR 500,000 to 2,000,000 and from EUR 1,000,000 to 5,000,000. It secures the operator’s obligations to the budget and is drawn by the tax authority if those go unpaid, after which it must be rebuilt before the next payment date. Land-based operators outside casinos post EUR 1,000,000, which is the figure our old page had mistaken for the online requirement.

The applicant is a Romanian company or a legal person from an EU or EEA member state or Switzerland that has registered a permanent establishment in Romania under art. 8 of the Fiscal Code, to which all revenue from gambling is attributed (art. 1(2)). Gambling must be its main object of activity, its legal representatives and shareholders need police clearance, and it declares that it has not been offering gambling to Romania without a licence (art. 15). A foreign organiser appoints an authorised representative domiciled in Romania (HG 111/2016 arts. 124 and 125). Player funds sit in a Romanian bank account, the platform is certified, a mirror server reports to the ONJN, and every document is filed in Romanian.

The clock is short by statute: art. 1(4) gives the ONJN 30 days from a complete file to decide on a licence or an authorisation. Chambers records that the deadline is exceeded in practice; CMS puts the whole route at about three months of preparation and a month of review, with the licence taking effect on the first day of the month after the Supervisory Committee approves it and the licence tax is paid. Against Spain, where no application has been possible since December 2018, Romania is the fast door into an EU market; against Estonia’s four-to-six-month statutory decision it is faster still. The price of the speed is in the previous section.

OUG 7/2026: what moved, and why the online rows did not

OUG 7/2026, published on 25 February 2026, is the decree the Romanian press has covered all spring, and it is worth being precise about what it does. Art. III redefines a licensed operator as one holding the ONJN licence, the ONJN authorisation and, for activity in physical locations, a functioning authorisation from the local public administration (art. 13(1)). A new art. 18^1 lets each local council decide whether gambling may be carried on in its territory at all, and where it may, requires an annual local authorisation granted or refused by council decision, in zones the council designates, against a local tax set per square metre of premises. Ana-Maria Baciu described it as a radical change for slot halls and betting shops in a JURIDICE.ro interview on 16 April 2026.

Nothing in art. III touches remote gambling: the rates, the classes, the guarantee and the 30-day clock are as above. For an online-only operator the decree is context; for an omnichannel brand with retail agencies it is a second licensing layer with every local council as a regulator. Players, meanwhile, are taxed at source on each payout under Codul fiscal art. 110 as amended by Law 141/2025: 4% up to RON 10,000, RON 400 plus 20% of the excess to RON 66,750, and RON 11,750 plus 40% above that, for income paid from 1 August 2025.

Who Romania fits, and what to read before filing

Romania fits an operator that will run Romanian-language casino and betting at a scale where EUR 1.28 million of fixed annual charges is a line item, and that wants a licence granted on application rather than by tender. It fits suppliers and affiliates at EUR 35,000 a year with the 2025 duties priced in. It does not fit a toe-dip: below EUR 2 million of GGR the fixed charges are most of the revenue, and nothing in the licence reaches beyond Romania. Great Britain needs a UK Gambling Commission licence of any operator taking GB customers, and every other EU market needs its own, as the comparison table shows for each of the eight licences on it.

Before filing, read three documents rather than any guide, including this one: the consolidated OUG 77/2009 on the Portal Legislativ, dated 25 February 2026, for the classes, the guarantee and the 30-day rule; art. LXII of Law 141/2025 in the ANAF PDF for the current annex letter J and the Class 2 duties; and art. 53 of OUG 114/2018 for the 2% on deposits. The ONJN’s licensee register and blacklist are the places to check a counterparty. Then budget the year at the floor, add the deposit tax at your own ratio, and treat the guarantee as capital that stays on the balance sheet.