The Curaçao Gaming Control Board (GCB) is the sole licensing authority for online gambling operators based in Curaçao. Online gambling has been legal on the island since 1993 under the National Ordinance on Offshore Games of Hazard, making it one of the oldest gambling jurisdictions in the world — but the way it is regulated changed substantially in 2023 to 2025.
What changed: from four master licences to one authority
Until recently, Curaçao licensing ran through four separate "master licence" holders — Antillephone N.V., Curaçao eGaming, Curaçao Interactive Licensing (CIL) and Gaming Curaçao — each of which issued its own sub-licences to individual casino operators. This system was widely criticised for inconsistent oversight, since enforcement standards varied between the four bodies. New legislation (the Landsverordening op de kansspelen, or LOK) passed in November 2023 phased all four out: Gaming Curaçao stopped issuing licences in August 2024, Curaçao eGaming in October 2024, Antillephone in November 2024, and CIL — the last of the four — in January 2025. Every operator previously holding a sub-licence had to apply directly to the new, unified Curaçao Gaming Control Board to keep operating legally.
What this means for Canadian players
Curaçao remains one of the most common licences among the offshore casinos that accept Canadian players outside Ontario's regulated market. It is a lighter-touch regime than the UK Gambling Commission or Malta Gaming Authority — the application process is faster and the compliance bar lower — which is part of why so many casinos hold it. That makes it worth extra diligence: confirm an operator's licence is current and issued by the new GCB directly rather than a legacy master licence that no longer exists, and treat the licence itself as a starting point, not a guarantee. It is exactly why our own testing (real deposits, timed withdrawals, and a check of each operator's responsible-gambling tools) matters as much as the badge in the footer.
