Gibraltar’s relationship with online gambling regulation goes back further than almost anywhere else in the industry. The territory began issuing gaming licences in 1998, at a point when online gambling barely existed as a recognisable business category, let alone one most governments had thought to regulate.
The Early Years
Gibraltar’s appeal in those first years came down to a combination that’s still recognisable today: political stability as a British Overseas Territory, an English-speaking legal system with strong ties to English common law, competitive tax treatment, and a government willing to engage seriously with a new industry rather than dismiss it.
The Gambling Act 2005
That early, informal approach was formalised with the Gambling Act 2005, which gave Gibraltar’s regulatory framework a proper legal foundation and established the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner’s supervisory role in the form the industry came to know for the next twenty years.
Growth Through the 2000s and 2010s
As the online gambling industry expanded, Gibraltar became a genuine operational hub rather than just a licensing address. Major operators established real offices and staff on the Rock, drawn by regulatory credibility combined with a gaming tax that started at around 1% of gross gaming yield, no VAT, and competitive corporate tax rates.
Recent Reform, and the 2026 Duty Rise
Gibraltar’s own gaming tax was cut further to 0.15% of gross gaming yield in a later reform, and the government replaced the entire 2005 framework with the Gambling Act 2025, in force since 1 April 2026. The same date brought a separate, external pressure into view: the UK’s Remote Gaming Duty, paid by operators on UK-facing revenue, rose from 21% to 40%. That change doesn’t touch Gibraltar’s own tax rate, but it directly affects the many Gibraltar-based operators who also serve UK customers, and is already reshaping how some of them structure their UK operations. Nearly three decades after its first licences were issued, Gibraltar’s industry is adjusting to a second major shift in the same year: its own new Act, and a UK tax change happening at exactly the same time.