Mauritius Budget Scraps Hotel Casino Licences, Expands Digital Games and Casino Tax Monitoring

Mauritius is overhauling its gambling regulatory framework through the 2026/27 budget, retiring an entire licence category for hotel casinos while widening its newer digital games regime and pulling casino floors directly into the state’s tax-monitoring net. The changes arrive via amendments to the Gambling Regulatory Authority Act, detailed in the annex to the budget speech delivered to the National Assembly.

The most striking element is the repeal of hotel casino licensing altogether. The Act’s definitions of “hotel casino,” “hotel casino games,” “hotel casino gaming machine” and “hotel casino operator” will be deleted outright, with the government stating plainly that these will no longer be authorised activities. The bespoke regime, which for years let a hotel run a casino under its own dedicated licence rather than an ordinary one, will disappear. Any hotel wanting to keep offering casino games will instead need to qualify for a standard casino licence under the revised framework.

A Newer Category Gets Room to Grow

While one licence type is being eliminated, another is expanding. The digital games regime, introduced into the Gambling Regulatory Authority Act in 2025, will now be opened to limited payout machine operators as a third eligible category alongside existing casino operators and gaming house operators. The budget annex also inserts a statutory definition of “digital games” into the Act for the first time, and operators seeking to offer them will need to submit a certified copy of their rules of digital games to the Gambling Regulatory Board for approval. Digital games and platforms will additionally be required to carry certification from an accredited, independent gaming laboratory before going live.

Casino Floors Join the Tax Surveillance Net

The other major operational shift is the extension of the Mauritius Revenue Authority’s Central Electronic Monitoring System, or CEMS, beyond betting terminals and onto casino and Gaming House servers directly. Betting operators’ terminals were already required to register with the Director General of the Mauritius Revenue Authority and connect to CEMS; the 2026/27 measures now extend that same connectivity requirement to casinos and Gaming Houses, giving the state real-time fiscal visibility into activity that previously sat outside that monitoring layer.

Alongside the CEMS expansion, the Gambling Regulatory Authority itself is being restructured. The budget annex creates two new divisions within the Authority — a Responsible Gambling and Communications Division and a Finance and Procurement Division — and grants the Gambling Regulatory Board new powers to delegate certain functions to its Chief Executive and the Head of its Legal and Governance Division for more efficient day-to-day operation.

Fees and Compliance Tighten Across the Sector

The annex layers in a series of smaller compliance and fee changes that touch nearly every corner of the licensed gambling industry. The tax on amusement machines is being doubled, rising from Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 per machine, while the licence fee for a limited payout machine operator jumps from Rs 30,000 to Rs 100,000, with a new Rs 50,000 fee introduced for each limited payout machine outlet. Foreign employees and technicians contracted by licensed amusement machine operators must now register with the Gambling Regulatory Authority, and croupiers and dealers employed by any gambling operator will similarly need to register, with a non-refundable Rs 1,000 processing fee attached to that application. A new licensing requirement is also being introduced for any person who supplies a betting platform to a licensed bookmaker.

Bookmakers offering fixed-odds betting on local races through remote communication at their facilities will see their licence fee rise from Rs 50,000 to Rs 75,000, and the Authority is introducing flat non-refundable processing fees for new gambling licence applications and for relocating an approved bookmaker or totalisator premise. Licence fees more broadly will shift to a calendar-year basis running January through December rather than the current 12-month cycle.

Part of a Broader Push for Oversight

Mauritius has been building toward tighter gambling oversight since consolidating the Gambling Regulatory Authority Act in 2007, and this budget represents one of the most structural changes to that framework since. Once the Finance Bill and the accompanying Economic and Financial Measures (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026 complete the legislative process, the island nation will have simultaneously narrowed its licensing categories, broadened its digital games regime, and materially expanded the state’s fiscal line of sight into casino and gaming house revenue. For an industry already adjusting to real-time tax monitoring on the betting side, the message from this budget is that casinos and gaming houses are being brought into that same net — and that regulatory restructuring at the Gambling Regulatory Authority is meant to keep pace with it. Operators evaluating international casino markets will likely watch how Mauritius balances tighter fiscal control against maintaining an attractive licensing environment for operators.