By the BonusWithoutDeposit editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · How we review
When the Gambling Act 2005 came fully into force in 2007, the British market chose, in our view, a peculiar system for online gambling: an operator could advertise to British players without a licence from the Gambling Commission, provided that it was licensed in a country of the European Economic Area, in Gibraltar, or in one of the places admitted to the so-called "white list" (a list kept by the government). The expression "UK whitelisted casinos", which still circulates today, comes from those years, and it meant precisely this: casinos licensed "elsewhere", but allowed to address the British "public".
The list was short, and getting onto it, as we remember well, was not easy. In 2007 only Alderney and the Isle of Man were admitted (the government explained that they alone had shown a "licensing regime" strict enough), while more than a thousand gambling sites based elsewhere lost the right to advertise in Britain; Antigua and Barbuda and Tasmania were added in 2008, and the list stopped there.
The system was overturned by the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Act 2014, which received Royal Assent on 14 May 2014 and moved British regulation from the "point of supply" (where the operator is based) to the "point of consumption" (where the player is), a change we followed closely at the time. From 1 November 2014 (the date slipped by a month because of a judicial challenge brought by the Gibraltar operators) every operator serving players in Great Britain needs a licence from the Gambling Commission, wherever its servers and its company are located.
A hypothetical casino licensed in Alderney shows the difference better than any summary. In 2013 it could advertise in Britain on the strength of its Alderney licence alone, while from November 2014 it needed a British licence as well, and from 1 December of the same year it paid a tax of fifteen per cent on the profits made with British players, which until then it had not paid at all. The white list, in practice, lost its "function" overnight!
The licence of the Gambling Commission has since become one of the most demanding in the world, and if you play with a licensed operator in Britain you enjoy protections that the old white list did not imagine. Self-exclusion through "GamStop" (the national scheme) applies to every licensed site at once. The age of the player must be verified before he or she can even try the free versions of the games. The stake per spin on online slots has been limited since 2025 (five pounds from the age of 25, two pounds below), and since 19 January 2026 the wagering on a bonus may not exceed ten times, while the promotions that mix different products are prohibited.
The licence also gives you somewhere to turn, which is perhaps its least visible and most important feature. A dispute that the operator does not resolve can be taken to an independent "adjudication" service, and the operator answers to a regulator that, as the fines of recent years have shown (Betway's, in 2020, was among the largest), does not hesitate to use its powers.
The fifteen per cent of 2014 has grown considerably since then, and the subject is one we follow with professional interest. The "remote gaming duty" on online casino games rose to twenty-one per cent in 2019 and, after the Budget of November 2025, to forty per cent from 1 April 2026; online betting will move from fifteen to twenty-five per cent from April 2027, and the bingo duty has been abolished for the halls, while digital bingo now falls under the forty per cent of remote gaming.
It may seem a matter for operators alone (a question of "margins"), but it is not. A tax that nearly doubles on the operator's gaming revenue tends to reach the player in the form of less generous bonuses and, according to the analysts who follow the sector (and in our own view), of games with lower returns, so that whoever plays in Britain in 2026 should expect offers more modest than in the past, and read them, as we always suggest, with a pencil in hand.
Of the white list there remains, today, little more than the "name", which many players (and, we admit, some older pages of ours) still use when they look for a "safe" casino. For a player in Great Britain the only list that matters is the public register of the Gambling Commission, where every licensed operator can be found by name or by account number (Betway's, for example, is 39372). A casino that does not appear there is not authorised to serve British players, whatever it claims.
The operators listed on our pages address the international, "non-regulated" market, and they do not all hold a British licence. It is the player's responsibility to check, before registering, what the law of the country in which he or she is located allows; the British rules described here are informative, and they show how far a regulated market can go.
Casinos licensed outside Britain, in the European Economic Area, in Gibraltar or in a white-listed place (Alderney, the Isle of Man, Antigua and Barbuda, Tasmania), which between 2007 and 2014 could advertise to British players without a British licence.
Not in practice: since 1 November 2014 every operator serving players in Great Britain needs a licence from the Gambling Commission, wherever it is based.
On the public register of the Gambling Commission, where every licensed operator can be found by name or by account number.
The remote gaming duty on online casino games is forty per cent from 1 April 2026, up from twenty-one per cent. Online betting moves to twenty-five per cent from April 2027.
The story of the white list is, in short, the story of a market that passed from trusting other countries' regulators to licensing every operator itself, and then to taxing and supervising them more and more closely. For the British player the result is a market with fewer offers and more protections. For everyone else, the British licence remains a useful yardstick by which to measure the others. 18+, and gambling should remain entertainment.