Curaçao Gaming Licence Check & Validation: 2026 Guide

A Curaçao gaming licence check in October 2026 means reading a PDF. The Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA) publishes its register as four downloadable documents on cga.cw, and the one that matters for online operators, the Online Gaming License Registry, was last updated on 9 October 2026. It has no search box and no domain column. The CGA’s licensing portal, which also served the clickable digital seal, was taken offline after September’s portal data leak, and on 7 October the CGA announced it will not return.

We run this check before every partner introduction and every payment-provider application for a Curaçao gaming licence holder. This guide follows the register as it stands today, cell by cell, and says plainly what it cannot tell you.

What the CGA publishes, and where

Go to cga.cw by typing the address. The site’s browser title still reads “The Curaçao Gaming Control Board”, the regulator’s name before the National Ordinance on Games of Chance (the LOK) renamed it, so searches for a “Gaming Control Board licence check” land in the same place. Open License register. The page links four PDFs:

The landing page carries a disclaimer that anyone relying on the register should read once: the CGA says these overviews “do not guarantee the current validity of the licenses” and that no rights can be derived from them. The enforcement register adds that it “may not always be fully accurate or up to date”. The PDFs are the best public source there is, and the regulator itself tells you they are a snapshot.

How to check a licence, step by step

Step one: get the legal entity. A brand name is no use here, because the register lists companies. Take the operating company’s full legal name from the site’s terms and conditions or footer, and ask the operator for its licence number and its Curaçao Chamber of Commerce number.

Step two: find the row. Open the Online gaming (licenses) PDF and search for the company name. Every row has the same eight cells: row number, licence number, licensee, company type, company registration number, issued, expires and status. Match the name, the licence number and the registration number together. A name that is close but not identical is a different company.

Step three: read the type. B2C is an operator that contracts with players. B2B is a supplier. A casino that takes deposits under a B2B row is not licensed for what it is doing.

Step four: read the dates and the status cell. Licences on the current register run for six months at a time; a row issued on 10 October 2026 expires on 10 April 2027. An in-date row normally has an empty status cell. The other values you will meet are covered in the next section.

Step five: search the enforcement register. Paste the licence number into the second PDF. It lists status-affecting actions only, with the date each took effect. Of its 32 entries, 31 are revocations and one is a licence the CGA did not extend.

Step six: for anything with money attached, get it in writing. Because the overviews are not a guarantee of validity, a bank, PSP or acquirer should ask the operator to supply the CGA’s own confirmation of its licence status, sent from the regulator’s address.

Reading the status cell

The 9 October 2026 edition breaks down as follows. The counts are ours, taken from the PDF.

The second line is the one that surprises people. More rows carry “Assessment in progress” than carry no note at all. The register has no legend explaining the phrase, so we read it narrowly: the licence has not been marked expired, and it has not been shown with a fresh six-month term either. A partner who needs certainty should not treat that row as a clean pass.

Reading the licence number: valid vs legacy

• OGL/2023/… and OGL/2024/… are licences granted under the online gaming policy that took effect on 15 November 2023. They make up 626 of the 666 rows.
• CGA/2025/… and CGA/2026/… are the newer series, 40 rows so far. CGA/2025/2742/1367 is a typical example.
• 1668/JAZ, 8048/JAZ, 365/JAZ and 5536/JAZ are master-licence numbers from the model Curaçao ran from 1996. The operator in the footer held a sub-licence from one of four master licensees, and that sub-licence never sat on a public regulator register. None of these strings appears in the CGA’s PDFs.

An operator still quoting a JAZ number is not automatically illegitimate, since plenty of sites have stale footers. It does mean the footer proves nothing. The test is whether the operating company has its own row with an OGL or CGA number. Our Curaçao LOK and CGA licence guide covers the reform that closed the master-licence model, and the sub-licence transition guide covers what former sub-licensees had to do.

”Licence validation”: the old validators and the digital seal

Many people still search for a Curaçao eGaming licence validator. Under the master-licence model each master licensee ran its own validation page, and the seal in a casino footer linked to it. Those pages confirmed that a sub-licence existed on the master licensee’s list. They were never regulator records. When we tried the Curaçao eGaming and Antillephone validator addresses on 12 October 2026, neither responded.

The CGA replaced that with its own digital seal, served from the licensing portal, which let a visitor click through from a licensed domain to the regulator. That is what tied a website to a licence, because the register PDF does not. The portal went offline after the CGA found unauthorised access in September 2026, and on 7 October the CGA announced that the portal “will not be returned to service”. The same notice says:

• the discontinuation does not affect the validity of existing licences or operators’ obligations;
• because the availability of the current digital seal will be affected, the CGA will introduce an alternative mechanism for operators to demonstrate that a domain is licensed;
• licensing and supervision continue through alternative arrangements while an interim solution is put in place.

When we checked cga.cw on 12 October 2026, that alternative mechanism had not been published. Until it is, a seal that does not resolve is not evidence against an operator, and a seal that does resolve somewhere other than a CGA address is not evidence for one. Use the register.

Red flags of a fake or lapsed licence

• A “verify here” link baked into the certificate. Legitimate verification never depends on a link the seller controls.
• A lookalike regulator site. Odd spelling, a name that is almost “Curaçao Gaming Authority”, or a search form the real regulator does not have.
• A footer that only quotes a JAZ master number. Legacy at best.
• A licence number in neither format. Anything that is not OGL/year/… or CGA/year/… is not a CGA online licence number.
• A B2B row behind a player-facing casino. The company is licensed as a supplier.
• “Too new to be listed.” The register is reissued often; the edition we read was three days old and already listed licences dated 10 October.
• Government fees quoted far from the schedule. The published annual fees for a B2C licence total €47,450, plus a €4,592 application fee. We break the numbers down in our Curaçao licence cost guide.
• A mainstream payments stack. Stripe or PayPal on a gambling site is not reassurance; those processors either prohibit gambling or accept it only from merchants they have pre-approved. Genuine operators settle through an EMI or neobank, with the payment agent incorporated in Cyprus.

What the register does not prove

A clean row confirms that a named company holds a licence of a given type on the date of that edition. It does not confirm that the operator is solvent, that it pays out, or that it may take players from your country. A Curaçao licence is not market access, and Dutch traffic must be blocked; our countries and restrictions guide covers where the licence reaches. It also says nothing about whether the company meets the local-substance rules, which have their own deadline in April 2027.

Two of the other PDFs are worth a minute during diligence. The certificates list shows which test labs the CGA has certified (five on the 31 August 2026 edition, including GLI, eCOGRA and BMM) and which ADR bodies (seven), so you can check that the lab on an operator’s RNG certificate and the dispute body in its terms are ones the regulator recognises. The Curaçao licence requirements guide explains where each fits in the file.

If you are the operator

Pull your own row every time a new edition appears and before each major onboarding. Check the spelling of the company name, the type and, above all, the Expires and Status cells. If your row reads “Assessment in progress”, expect partners to ask about it, and have the CGA’s correspondence ready.

Portal deadlines have moved. The CGA’s notice of 2 October 2026 says deadlines for documents that had to be submitted through the portal are postponed until a replacement is available, and asks operators not to email portal submissions to the applications address in the meantime. Keep a dated copy of that notice in your compliance file, since a PSP reviewing you in six months will want to know why a filing is late.

Your seal may stop resolving. Tell your PSPs and platform partners before they notice, point them to the CGA’s 7 October announcement, and send the register row with it. When the CGA publishes its replacement mechanism, implement it promptly and make sure every live domain is covered.

Banking, PSP acceptance and B2B partnerships all depend on a licence that checks out cleanly. If you want a free check on a Curaçao licence you hold or have been offered, book a free consultation and we will go through the register with you.

Iryna H.

Gaming Licensing at Vantegris

Iryna H. is part of the Vantegris team, which prepares and files licence applications across 40+ jurisdictions. This article was reviewed by Vladyslav S. (Compliance & Legal).

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This article is for general informational purposes only and is not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before acting.