All 41 German standards,
organised by theme

The Glücksspielstaatsvertrag entered force on 1 July 2021 and for the first time creates a nationwide licensing regime for virtual slots, online poker and sports betting. It binds all 16 Länder, supersedes the earlier patchwork of state-by-state tolerance, and is the source of every downstream GGL rule. Section 32 requires the Länder to jointly evaluate the Treaty by 31 December 2026.

Sections 27a to 27q of GlüStV establish the Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder, headquartered in Halle (Saale) and fully operational since 1 January 2023. The GGL licenses virtual slots, online poker and nationwide sports betting, operates LUGAS and OASIS, enforces against the illegal market, and oversees advertising. It does not license online casino table games, land-based casinos, Spielhallen or state lotteries — those remain Länder responsibilities.

The GGL maintains a public, filterable whitelist of every licensed operator by vertical — sports betting, virtual slots, online poker, lotteries, horse-race betting. From 2024 the whitelist is an interactive online tool rather than a static PDF. Any operator not on the whitelist is by definition operating illegally in Germany.

Section 22a licenses online reproductions of terrestrial slot machine games, for an initial term of five years (renewable for seven). The licence is product-specific: table games, live dealer content, casino-banker poker variants and sports-betting side-products cannot be offered on a §22a licence.

Every virtual slot under §22a must cap the stake at €1 per spin, enforce a minimum 5-second cycle per spin, disable autoplay, and exclude jackpot and bonus-buy features (including progressive jackpots). These are hard product constraints, not guidelines, and are tested as part of Safe-Server certification.

Section 22b licenses non-banked poker (cash and tournaments). Banker-against-player variants such as Casino Hold'em and 3-Card Poker are excluded. A player may play a maximum of four tables simultaneously, and the operator must allocate seats randomly — players cannot pre-select table, stakes or opponents. Bots, CPUs and cloned personas are prohibited.

Sections 21 and 21a license fixed-odds betting on the outcome of sports events, online and retail. Betting on non-sports events — politics, entertainment, finance, secondary lotteries — is prohibited. Permitted bet types are listed in the GGL Ereignis- und Wettarten-Katalog; offering an off-catalogue market triggers enforcement and licence risk.

In-play betting under §21a is restricted to the final result of the event and, for selected low-scoring sports (notably football and ice hockey), the next scoring event. Handball, basketball and other high-scoring sports are effectively excluded from next-score markets. Betting on minor events (throw-ins, corners, bookings) is prohibited.

Virtual table games (roulette, blackjack, baccarat, live-dealer) and online casino are licensed by individual Länder, not the GGL. Each Land decides between a Spielbank monopoly model and a tender with up to as many concessions as it has land-based casinos. Cross-Land operation requires a separate licence per Land.

Schleswig-Holstein was the first Land to open a commercial online-casino tender; in September 2024 it awarded four private licences (Tipico, BluBet, Cashpoint, Skill on Net) plus one to Spielbank SH. Nordrhein-Westfalen has prepared a tender for up to five concessions, expected to run into late 2025/2026. Most other Länder remain Spielbank-monopoly.

OASIS, operated by the GGL, is the single national exclusion file. Every online licensee, land-based casino, Spielhalle and betting shop must query OASIS before onboarding a customer and before any session. Self-exclusion (§8a) runs for a minimum of three months with no upper bound; third-party exclusions (family, operator-initiated) run for a minimum of twelve months. The register held more than 350,000 active exclusions at the end of 2024, with 303,876 new requests that year alone.

Every licensed online gambling site must display a permanently visible panic button that, on a single click, triggers an immediate 24-hour self-exclusion via OASIS. The button must remain visible during game play, at deposit and at session.

Section 6h prohibits concurrent active play. LUGAS's Aktivitätsdatei brokers a single active session per player across every licensed site and every product vertical. An attempt to start a second session on another operator or another product must be blocked until the first session ends.

Section 6c imposes a hard €1,000 cap on deposits across all licensed operators combined per calendar month, enforced in real time via the LUGAS Limitdatei. Operators may permit up to €10,000 a month (or €30,000 in documented exceptional cases) only after enhanced affordability and solvency checks and active risk-monitoring.

A single authenticated session may only serve one vertical at a time. Slots, poker and sports betting cannot be consumed in parallel within the same session, and the LUGAS Aktivitätsdatei enforces the constraint across branded skins belonging to the same operator group.

Section 4(5) requires full identity verification before any real-money play. Acceptable methods include VideoIdent, eID, bank-account verification, or comparable e-ID schemes. Age must be confirmed as 18+ and the verified identity must be checked against OASIS at onboarding.

Section 6i requires operators to monitor player behaviour for early-warning indicators of problem gambling — chasing losses, session length, deposit-frequency spikes, cancelled withdrawals, nocturnal play — and to intervene with messages, limit reductions, cooling-off or referrals.

Every licensee must submit and operate a Sozialkonzept — a social concept covering problem-gambling awareness, staff training, player risk communications, self-assessment tools and signposting to help. The social concept is part of the licence file and must be kept current.

The player's cumulative net deposits and net loss for the current month must be clearly visible throughout the session. The data must reconcile with the LUGAS Limitdatei figures and must survive across sister-brand sessions.

Section 5(1) restricts TV, radio and mainstream internet advertising for virtual slots, online poker and online casino to the nine-hour window between 9pm and 6am. Sports-betting advertising is broader in tolerance but is also constrained around live event broadcasts.

Sports-betting advertising is prohibited on the same broadcast channel in the immediate run-up to and during the live sports event being shown. The aim is to break the direct link between viewing and betting.

Advertising for sports betting using active athletes, referees or other sports officials is prohibited. Retired athletes remain permitted. Kit and perimeter sponsorship by umbrella brand are still permitted; a full ban on sports sponsorship was proposed in 2024 and rejected.

Any advertising, affiliation or promotion of gambling operators that are not on the GGL whitelist is prohibited. The prohibition extends to affiliate networks, media buyers and influencers. Criminal exposure follows under §§284–287 of the German Criminal Code.

Creative that targets persons under 18, or that is disproportionately likely to appeal to them, is prohibited. OVG Magdeburg's December 2023 ruling clarified that influencer advertising is only permissible inside the 9pm–6am window and must be fully scripted and controlled by the licensee.

GGL guidance requires every bonus to carry prominent wagering, expiry and eligibility terms. Misleading 'free money' framing and any offer that induces chasing losses are prohibited. Bonuses counted against the €1,000 deposit limit must be treated consistently with LUGAS rules.

Affiliate, comparison and streaming partners are treated by the GGL as extensions of the licensee. Every partner's conduct — time-of-day, influencer, targeting, whitelist compliance — is attributable back to the operator.

Section 6d effectively limits deposits to SEPA direct debit and credit transfer, debit cards, and a narrow set of regulated e-wallets (PayPal, where supported). The operator must be able to tie every payment instrument back to the verified account holder.

Credit-card deposits are effectively prohibited for virtual slots and online casino. Cryptocurrency, prepaid anonymous vouchers and any other payment method that cannot be reconciled to a verified identity are prohibited for every GGL-licensed product.

Under §9(1) no. 4 GlüStV, the GGL may order banks and payment service providers to refuse transactions to or from unlicensed operators. The power was upheld by the Verwaltungsgericht Halle in 2024 and is now the primary enforcement lever for the illegal market, after IP-blocking was struck down.

The Safe-Server TR (currently v1.15, August 2023) specifies the data model, API interfaces, retention requirements and integrity controls for the operator-hosted Safe-Server. The GGL's Auswertesystem polls the Safe-Server to read session, deposit and event data.

The LUGAS TR specifies the real-time integration with the Aktivitätsdatei and Limitdatei — session-token exchange, deposit-registration protocol, error handling and failover. The GGL runs a test system that licensees must integrate against before production go-live.

Virtual slots and online poker builds intended for the German market must be certified by an accredited testing laboratory (such as GLI, iTech Labs or BMM) before launch. The certification demonstrates compliance with the §22a and §22b mechanic caps and RNG integrity standards.

Sections 36 and 37 of the Rennwett- und Lotteriegesetz impose a 5.3% turnover tax on virtual slot stakes and online poker rake/stakes. In force since 1 July 2021 as part of the reform package, the turnover basis is unusual in Europe and is under industry pressure to move to a GGR model.

Sports-betting stakes are taxed at 5.3% under the Rennwett- und Lotteriegesetz. The rate was harmonised with the slot/poker 5.3% rate in 2021 to remove incentives to arbitrage between products.

Section 9(1) gives the GGL broad powers to issue cease-and-desist orders against unlicensed operators. Fines reach €500,000 per infringement, and repeated breaches are escalated through administrative and criminal channels.

With IP-blocking struck down, the GGL has shifted its primary enforcement posture to host-provider takedown orders. Over 930 domains have been made inaccessible through this route since the shift, and takedown orders now arrive weekly.

Sections 284 to 287 of the German Criminal Code make it a criminal offence to organise or advertise gambling without a licence, with custodial exposure of up to five years. The provisions apply equally to directors and senior managers of the liable legal person.

The GlüStV evaluation report due end-2026 is expected to examine: overall channelisation versus the black market, the €1,000 deposit cap and uplift mechanism, the LUGAS parallel-play rule, the advertising framework including sports sponsorship, restoration of an IP-blocking legal basis, and the Ereignis- und Wettarten-Katalog for live betting.