Casinos Without a Danish Licence: Law, Tax and ROFUS

A casino without a Danish licence is an online casino that holds no licence (tilladelse) from Spillemyndigheden, the Danish Gambling Authority. If such a site directs its games at Denmark, it is offering gambling illegally under the Danish Gambling Act (lov om spil). For you as a player, the main consequences are practical: ROFUS self-exclusion does not apply, the site can be blocked in Denmark, Danish complaint bodies cannot help, and winnings can be taxable as personal income when the operator is outside the EU/EEA or the game fails the conditions set by the Danish Tax Agency.

This guide explains the rules as of October 2026: how Danish licensing works, what “without a Danish licence” means for you and for the operator, tax on winnings with worked examples, ROFUS, DNS and payment blocking, complaint routes, how to check a licence and the 2025 to 2026 enforcement figures. We do not list or recommend any casino on this page. You must be 18 or over to gamble in Denmark. If gambling is becoming a problem, StopSpillet, the national helpline run by Spillemyndigheden, answers on 70 22 28 25 (Monday to Thursday 9.00 to 21.00, Friday 9.00 to 17.00), and the call is confidential.

1. 1
   bolt

   Fast payout casinos

   How withdrawal times really work and what slows a payout down.

   • Identity checks and processing times explained
   • Which payment methods pay out fastest
   Read the guide
2. 2
   id

   No account casinos

   Pay-and-play explained: bank ID registration and instant deposits.

   • How MitID-based registration works
   • What still gets checked behind the scenes
   Read the guide
3. 3
   bank

   Trustly casinos

   Paying straight from your bank account, and how payouts come back.

   • Deposits and withdrawals by bank transfer
   • Limits, fees and timing
   Read the guide
4. 4
   gift

   Welcome bonuses

   Wagering, maximum bets and time limits worked through with real maths.

   • How to calculate the true cost of a bonus
   • Terms that cap or void winnings
   Read the guide
5. 5
   star

   New casinos

   What to check before trusting a site that launched recently.

   • Licence and company checks
   • Warning signs in the terms
   Read the guide
6. 6
   shield

   Responsible gambling

   Limits, self-exclusion and free, confidential help lines.

   • Self-exclusion registers and blocking tools
   • ROFUS and StopSpillet 70 22 28 25
   Read the guide

The cards above link to our general guides by topic. They are not lists of casinos for Danish players, and nothing on this page invites you to play at a site without a Danish licence. Our method for researching operators elsewhere on the site is described in how we rate casinos, and the editorial policy explains how we keep commercial relationships apart from facts like these.

The short answer

How Danish gambling regulation works

Denmark partly liberalised its gambling market on 1 January 2012, when the Gambling Act (Act No. 848 of 1 July 2010) came into force. Before that, betting and online casino were reserved for the state-owned Danske Spil. Since 2012, private companies may offer online casino and betting if Spillemyndigheden grants them a licence. Lotteries remain a monopoly held by four providers, with exceptions for charitable lotteries, and land-based bingo has been open to licensed providers since 1 January 2025.

Spillemyndigheden is an agency under the Danish tax ministry. It issues licences, supervises licence holders, runs ROFUS and StopSpillet, and acts against illegal gambling. Gambling duty is collected through the Danish Tax Agency (Skattestyrelsen): online casino operators pay 28 % of their gross gaming revenue, meaning stakes minus winnings paid out.

The licensed market in numbers

Online casino became the largest gambling segment in Denmark in 2025. That growth is one reason the government and parliament agreed new measures in late 2025, described in the enforcement section below.

What a Danish licence requires

A Danish licence comes with player-protection rules that offshore sites usually do not follow. The ones you notice as a player:

• Identity before play. Licensed operators verify you with an approved electronic ID, in practice MitID, which replaced NemID.
• A deposit limit. Before you can gamble online you must set a deposit limit, and the operator has to offer daily, weekly and monthly periods.
• ROFUS check. The operator must check the register and refuse anyone who has excluded themselves. It must also refer to ROFUS in its marketing.
• Bonus rules. A wagering requirement may be at most 10 times, every game that counts towards it must contribute 100 %, and no new wagering may be attached to winnings already won from a bonus. Bonuses may not be offered because a player has been inactive.
• Age 18. Operators may not accept stakes from anyone under 18.
• Complaint handling. Licence holders must deal with complaints, and tell you within 14 days when a decision is expected if the matter is not resolved by then.
• Certified games. Games and systems must be tested and certified before they go live.

Licensed Danish sites display Spillemyndigheden’s licence mark, which links to the authority’s register. That mark is the quickest way to tell a licensed site from one that only looks Danish.

Online games without NemID or MitID

A common reason players search for casinos without a Danish licence is sign-up without MitID (or NemID, in older guides). Licensed sites must identify you before you play, so a site that lets a Danish resident play without any electronic ID check is almost certainly not licensed in Denmark. Skipping the check does not make anything anonymous in practice: offshore operators still ask for passport, proof of address and sometimes proof of the source of funds, usually at the moment you want to withdraw. The difference is timing. A licensed site verifies you before you deposit; an offshore site may take your deposit first and verify you when you try to get money out, which is where most payout disputes start.

What “without a Danish licence” means in law

When a game is offered in Denmark

Spillemyndigheden’s 2025 report on illegal gambling sets out its test. A game is offered illegally if it is offered without a licence and the operator directs it at the Danish market. An online offer counts as directed at Denmark if one or more of these appears on the site:

• Danish language
• Danish currency
• Payment methods that only work in Denmark, such as Dankort
• Danish customer service
• Access through the Steam gaming platform
• Denmark, Danish or +45 prefilled in the registration form
• A selection of games aimed at Danes, such as betting on lower Danish football divisions
• Automatic redirects to sites that offer gambling illegally

An offer can also be directed at Denmark without any of these, for example when it is marketed directly to Danish players. A court ruling of 6 February 2018 also held that skin-betting sites using a Steam login are directed at Denmark.

For the operator and its promoters

Offering gambling without a licence, mediating participation in it and advertising it all breach the Gambling Act. Mediation covers any activity meant to establish or spread participation in illegal gambling, such as links to unlicensed sites; advertising includes taking sponsorship from an illegal operator. Section 65 of the Act also bans payment intermediation of stakes and winnings to and from an illegal gambling provider, and transmission of information on a communications network to an illegal gambling system.

Spillemyndigheden’s tools escalate. It contacts the people behind the site and asks them to stop; it can issue orders (påbud) and reprimands (påtale); it can ask the court to have the site blocked by Danish internet providers; and it can report breaches to the police, who then take over.

For you as a player

The enforcement described in Spillemyndigheden’s reports is aimed at operators, promoters, sites and platforms, not at individual players. What changes for you is protection and money: no ROFUS, no mandatory limits, no Danish complaint route, possible tax, and a site that may be blocked or may stop serving Danes at short notice. If the site is blocked while you hold a balance, getting it back depends entirely on the operator.

An EU licence does not give a right to target Denmark

A licence from Malta, Estonia or another EU country is not a Danish licence. Spillemyndigheden’s test asks only whether the operator has a Danish licence and directs its offer at Denmark. EU law allows this: on 16 April 2026 the Court of Justice of the EU confirmed in case C-440/23 that member states may make online casino games subject to their own national permission, and that a licence from another member state does not replace it.

Tax on winnings from casinos without a Danish licence

Skattestyrelsen’s rules for players are short. Winnings from an online provider with a Danish licence for betting or online casino are tax-free. Winnings from a provider in another EU/EEA country are also tax-free, but only if all four conditions are met: the provider is based in an EU/EEA country, it holds a licence, the game is approved and controlled by a public authority, and the same game may legally be offered in Denmark. If the provider and game do not meet all the requirements, the winnings are taxable.

Only the net winnings are taxable. Skattestyrelsen defines them as the full prize minus the expenses incurred to win it, and gives the example of a DKK 1,000 prize won with DKK 100 in participation costs, which leaves DKK 900 of taxable income. You report taxable gambling winnings yourself in box 20 (anden personlig indkomst, other personal income) of the annual tax return, or in field 250 of the preliminary assessment (forskudsopgørelse) if you expect them in advance. A foreign casino does not report anything to the Danish authorities for you.

Worked example

Say you place a DKK 200 spin on a slot at a Curaçao-licensed casino and it pays DKK 15,200. The net winning on that game is DKK 15,000, and that is the amount to report as other personal income. It is taxed at your own marginal rate together with the rest of your personal income, so the bill depends on your total income for the year. The same win at a Danish-licensed casino would carry no income tax at all, because the operator has already paid gambling duty on its revenue.

Keep records whatever the licence: account statements, deposit and withdrawal history, game history for large wins, the operator’s legal name and licence number, and the exchange rates used if the account is in euros. Without them, proving the net amount or the EU/EEA conditions to Skattestyrelsen is hard. If you are unsure whether a foreign game meets the conditions, ask Skattestyrelsen before you file.

What is ROFUS?

ROFUS (Register Over Frivilligt Udelukkede Spillere) is Spillemyndigheden’s register of voluntarily excluded players. Registering excludes you from online gambling, betting in physical shops and land-based casinos with Danish licence holders. You can choose a 24-hour pause, one, three or six months, or permanent exclusion. Permanent exclusion means you can leave the register at the earliest after one year.

Use is growing every year. At the end of 2025, 68,026 Danes were registered, up from just under 56,000 a year earlier, and on 1 August 2026 the figure was 73,500. Of those registered on 1 January 2026, 79 % were men.

ROFUS does not apply to casinos without a Danish licence. An offshore site does not check the register and is not bound by it, so a Danish self-exclusion has no effect there. If you joined ROFUS and now find yourself looking at unlicensed sites, that is a reason to call StopSpillet on 70 22 28 25 rather than a reason to look for a workaround.

How Denmark blocks illegal casinos

DNS blocking through the courts

When an illegal offer does not stop, or Spillemyndigheden cannot reach the people behind it, the authority asks the district court to declare the site illegal, and Danish internet providers then block it at the DNS level. Visitors see a page saying the site is illegal and blocked. In 2025, three sweeps run with the Danish Tax Agency’s anti-fraud unit put 695 websites under supervision; 334 were found illegal by the district court and blocked, and 36 more removed or changed their offer after contact. On 8 July 2026 the court in Frederiksberg ordered a further 98 sites blocked, bringing the total since 2012 to 870.

Blocking works, though not completely. After 178 sites were blocked in June 2025, Danish visits to them fell by about 34 % in the following six months compared with the six months before, according to traffic data the authority analysed.

Mirror sites

Illegal operators often copy a blocked site to a new domain. Under an updated agreement with Teleindustrien, the Danish internet providers’ association, Spillemyndigheden can now have such mirror sites blocked without a new court order, because the court has already found the content illegal once.

Payments, apps and platforms

Payment intermediation of stakes and winnings to and from an illegal gambling provider is not permitted under section 65 of the Gambling Act, so a card or bank payment to an unlicensed site can fail or be stopped. Spillemyndigheden also works with Apple and Google to remove illegal gambling apps from the Danish App Store and Google Play, and with Meta, Google (including YouTube and sponsored search links) and Twitch to remove illegal offers and promotion. The authority reports growing sharing of illegal gambling in closed groups on Discord and Telegram.

What changes next

On 24 October 2025 the government presented a broad political agreement, Spilpakke 1, to curb gambling problems and protect children and young people. For illegal gambling it gives Spillemyndigheden powers to block referral sites whose purpose is to channel Danish players to unlicensed sites, widens the promotion ban to cover all mediation to operators without a Danish licence, and funds a tool to monitor marketing on digital services automatically.

Complaint routes

At a Danish-licensed site

1. Complain to the operator first. If the complaint is not resolved within 14 days, the operator must tell you when to expect a decision.
2. Take it to Mæglingsteamet for Forbrugerklager, the mediation team for consumer complaints. Mediation is a precondition for the next step.
3. Appeal to Forbrugerklagenævnet, the Consumer Complaints Board, which issues decisions.
4. Go to the ordinary courts as a last resort.

Spillemyndigheden is not a complaints body and cannot decide disputes between you and an operator, but it welcomes reports and can require a licence holder to change its practice.

At a site without a Danish licence

None of the Danish steps above helps against an operator that has no Danish licence. You can still report the site to Spillemyndigheden, which feeds blocking, but that will not recover a balance. What remains depends on the foreign licence:

How to check a casino’s licence yourself

1. Look for Spillemyndigheden’s licence mark and click it. It should open the authority’s own register.
2. Search the register of licence holders on spillemyndigheden.dk by company or domain. Only the domains listed there are covered.
3. If there is no Danish licence, find the foreign licence number and company name in the footer or terms, and check them with the regulator: the MGA verification page, EMTA’s list of legal gambling operators, cert.cga.cw for Curaçao, or the seal ID for Anjouan (a bare-domain lookup always returns “invalid”).
4. Read the restricted-countries list. If Denmark is excluded, the casino can close your account and withhold winnings under its own terms.
5. Read the bonus terms in full before you deposit: wagering, maximum bet, time limit, maximum conversion, excluded games and payment methods.

Registers are not always online. The CGA confirmed unauthorised access to its portal on 17 and 22 September 2026, the portal was still offline on 2 October 2026, and the CGA says existing licences remain valid. If a register is down, wait rather than trust a screenshot sent by the casino. Our guides to safe online casinos and legal online casinos cover these checks in more detail.

Understand the casino bonus rules and free spins

Bonuses are the other big reason people look abroad, because Danish rules cap wagering at 10 times. Offshore offers look larger, but the maths usually favours the house more. Compare a DKK 1,000 bonus under two sets of terms:

The expected-loss line is simple arithmetic: required play multiplied by the house edge (4 % at 96 % RTP). With 35x wagering, the expected cost of clearing the bonus is larger than the bonus itself, before any maximum-bet rule, time limit or cap on winnings. Free spins follow the same logic: check the spin value, the eligible game, any wagering on winnings and the maximum you may withdraw. Our guides to welcome bonuses and free spins bonuses explain the terms line by line.

Jackpots, RTP and game choice

Older guides claimed that slots at sites without a Danish licence “often mean huge jackpots”. The jackpot size is set by the game studio and the pooled network, not by the Danish licence, and many network jackpots run at licensed sites too. What a licence changes is the testing regime: Danish-licensed games must be certified, and the average payout ratio for online casino in Denmark was 95.36 % in 2025. Offshore sites can run the same studio game with a lower RTP setting where the studio offers several versions, so check the RTP shown in the game’s information screen rather than a casino’s headline.

Enforcement in 2025 and 2026

Red flags

• Danish text, DKK prices, Dankort or Danish support with no Danish licence: these are the signals Spillemyndigheden uses to find illegal offers.
• A “new” domain that looks exactly like a site that was blocked in Denmark.
• A licence badge without a number or company name, or a number missing from the regulator’s register.
• Sign-up without any identity check, combined with strict identity demands at withdrawal.
• Wagering of 35x or more, short deadlines, a low cap on winnings from a bonus.
• Requests for a further deposit, “tax” or “verification fee” before a payout.
• Claims that winnings are tax-free for Danes at a casino licensed outside the EU/EEA. Under Skattestyrelsen’s rules they are taxable.

Licensed vs unlicensed: a comparison

Safer play and help in Denmark

StopSpillet is Spillemyndigheden’s national helpline on gambling problems, for players, relatives and professionals. Phone 70 22 28 25, Monday to Thursday 9.00 to 21.00 and Friday 9.00 to 17.00; chat is open Monday to Thursday 17.00 to 21.00 and Friday 14.00 to 17.00. The advice is confidential, and information from the conversation is not passed to other authorities. In 2025 the line received 727 contacts, its busiest year since it opened in 2019; online casino was the main problem game in 62 % of contacts.

• Register with ROFUS for a break from all Danish-licensed gambling at once.
• Set a deposit limit you can afford, and treat every deposit as spent.
• Ask your bank about blocking gambling payments on your card.
• Never chase losses or deposit again to “release” a withdrawal.

Our responsible gambling page lists further tools. Players in Sweden can read the same guide for their market: casinos without a Swedish licence.

UK players

This page is written for people resident in Denmark. In Great Britain only operators licensed by the UK Gambling Commission may offer gambling (Gambling Act 2005), and GAMSTOP self-exclusion covers only UKGC-licensed sites. Nothing on this page is aimed at UK residents.

Frequently asked questions

Is it illegal to play at a casino without a Danish licence?

The Gambling Act makes it illegal to offer, mediate or advertise gambling directed at Denmark without a licence, and Spillemyndigheden’s enforcement targets operators, promoters and sites. For players the risks are practical: no ROFUS, no Danish complaint route, possible tax and blocked access.

Do I pay tax on winnings from a casino without a Danish licence?

Winnings from a provider outside the EU/EEA are taxable as other personal income, on the net winnings. An EU/EEA provider’s winnings are tax-free only if it is licensed, the game is approved and controlled by a public authority and the same game may legally be offered in Denmark.

Where do I declare gambling winnings in Denmark?

Report taxable net winnings in box 20, other personal income, of your annual tax return, or in field 250 of the preliminary assessment. Net winnings are the prize minus the expenses incurred to win it.

Does ROFUS work on foreign casinos?

No. ROFUS binds operators licensed by Spillemyndigheden. A casino without a Danish licence does not check it, so registering has no effect there.

How long can I exclude myself in ROFUS?

You can choose 24 hours, one, three or six months, or permanently. A permanent exclusion can be lifted at the earliest after one year.

Why are some casino sites blocked in Denmark?

Spillemyndigheden asks the courts to declare illegal sites unlawful, and Danish internet providers then block them at DNS level. In 2025, 334 sites were blocked, and 870 have been blocked since 2012.

Can I complain about an unlicensed casino in Denmark?

You can report it to Spillemyndigheden, but Danish bodies cannot decide your dispute or recover money from an unlicensed operator. Use the casino’s own process and the complaint route of its foreign licence.

What is the StopSpillet phone number?

StopSpillet answers on 70 22 28 25, Monday to Thursday 9.00 to 21.00 and Friday 9.00 to 17.00. The advice is confidential, for players and relatives.