Kenya raised the price of an online gambling licence from somewhere between KES 400,000 and KES 1 million a year to KES 50 million, and the High Court in Nairobi will decide on 2 October 2026 whether the schedule that set those figures was lawfully made. Operators have already paid, because the court allowed the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Kenya to start collecting the contested fees on 24 August 2026 against an undertaking to give the money back if the regulations are struck down. That leaves an operator holding a licence which depends on an instrument that may not survive 2 October, and a payment sitting in the accounts as though it were an ordinary cost of trading. Almost every operator licensed outside its home market carries some version of this exposure, and very few of them have anywhere to record it.
Key Takeaways
- The Gambling Control (Licensing) Regulations, 2026, published as Legal Notice 111 of 2026 on 29 June 2026 under Kenya’s Gambling Control Act (No. 14 of 2025), price an online bookmaker or online casino licence at KES 5,000,000 to apply for and KES 50,000,000 to hold, with a further KES 5,000,000 annual operating licence fee and KES 100,000,000 of gambling capital behind it.
- The Fourth Schedule gives an online gambling licence a term of one year, while casino and bookmaking licences run for three, so the KES 50,000,000 buys twelve months of trading rather than the three years that several accounts of the regulations have reported.
- Justice William Musyoka suspended the regulations on 20 July 2026 on a challenge that the fee and capital provisions were added without the public participation Article 10 of Kenya’s Constitution requires, narrowed that order on 7 August 2026, and on 24 August 2026 let the Authority collect the contested fees and clear 246 frozen applications on an undertaking to refund. Judgment is expected on 2 October 2026.
- Nigeria shows what happens when the instrument behind a licence fails. The Supreme Court decided A.G. Lagos State & Ors v A.G. Federation (SC/1/2008) on 22 November 2024, holding that the National Assembly could not legislate on lotteries generally, and licences issued by the National Lottery Regulatory Commission stopped being effective.
1. What did Kenya change, and what does a gambling licence now cost?
Kenya replaced its licensing regime in a single day. The Gambling Control Act (No. 14 of 2025) repealed the Betting, Lotteries and Gaming Act (Cap. 131) and created the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Kenya under section 6, in place of the old Betting Control and Licensing Board, and the pricing arrived on 29 June 2026 when the Gambling Control (Licensing) Regulations, 2026 were published as Legal Notice 111 of 2026 and commenced the same day.
The Second Schedule sets the fees. An online bookmaker or online casino pays KES 5,000,000 to apply and KES 50,000,000 for the licence itself, then a separate annual operating licence fee of KES 5,000,000, so the first year costs KES 60,000,000, a little over US$460,000. Renewal comes down to KES 2,500,000 to apply and KES 10,000,000 for the renewed licence, which with the operating fee puts the second year at KES 17,500,000. An online lottery licence is KES 5,000,000 to apply for and KES 20,000,000 to hold. Land-based licences are a different order of magnitude, and a casino or bookmaker pays KES 2,500,000 to apply, KES 5,000,000 for the licence and KES 1,500,000 a year to operate.
On top of the fees sits gambling capital, which regulation 2 defines as the working capital and equipment an operator must hold to keep its licence. The Third Schedule puts that at KES 100,000,000 for an online bookmaker or online casino, KES 50,000,000 for a land-based bookmaker and KES 2,000,000,000 for the national lottery. That is money tied up rather than money spent, which is a different line in the business case and a different conversation with a treasurer.
Advertising carries its own application fee of KES 50,000 and an approval fee set at 6 per cent of the budget, so a launch campaign is a licensing cost as well as a marketing one. Suppliers are licensed in their own right now too, and providing gambling software or a platform costs KES 200,000 to apply for and KES 1,000,000 a year, with the supplier required to name its data centre, its disaster recovery site and its operator clients.
Regulation 30 handled the changeover briskly. A licence issued under the repealed Act stayed in force for sixty days from the date of publication, so until roughly 28 August 2026, and its holder had to apply under the new regulations inside that same window.
2. Why is the fee schedule in court, and what is decided on 2 October?
Two petitioners, Thomas Buckley Opar Owuor and Ken Brance, say the fee and capital provisions were added after the consultation stage and so were never put to the public, and Article 10 of Kenya’s 2010 Constitution makes public participation a binding national value rather than a courtesy. The respondents are the Prime Cabinet Secretary, Musalia Mudavadi, the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Kenya and the Attorney General. The Association of Gaming Operators Kenya joined as an interested party, and so did Safaricom, whose mobile money service carries most of the deposits Kenyan bettors make.
Justice William Musyoka granted a conservatory order on 20 July 2026, days after the Authority opened its first licensing cycle, and enforcement of the whole instrument stopped. On 7 August 2026 the court narrowed that order so the Authority could receive and process applications, run due diligence and carry on with anti-money laundering and consumer protection work, while the increased licence fees and gambling capital requirements stayed suspended. Then on 24 August 2026 the court let the Authority collect the contested fees and clear 246 frozen applications, on its undertaking to refund the money if the regulations or the fees are later found unlawful, reasoning that licensing could not function with the fee provisions carved out of it.
Written submissions were due on 21 September 2026 and judgment is expected on 2 October 2026.
Set that timetable against the transition clock and the squeeze becomes obvious. The sixty-day window opened on 29 June and closed around 28 August, while the fees only became payable on 24 August, which left four working days in which paying was both possible and required. Any operator that had sensibly decided to wait for the litigation to resolve had run out of window to wait in.
3. How do Kenya, Brazil, Nigeria and Colombia compare when a charge is challenged?
These four markets give four different answers to one question, which is what happens to money an operator has already handed over when the instrument behind the charge is attacked in court.
| Market | What the operator pays | Legal status of the instrument | What happened to money already paid |
| Kenya | Online bookmaker: KES 5m application, KES 50m licence, KES 5m annual operating fee, one-year term, plus KES 100m gambling capital | Fee and capital provisions of Legal Notice 111 of 2026 challenged for want of public participation; judgment expected 2 October 2026 | Collected since 24 August 2026 under an undertaking to refund if the regulations are struck down |
| Brazil | R$30m authorisation covering up to three brands for five years, plus R$30m of paid-up capital and net worth | Fixed by Law No. 14,790/2023 and the Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas ordinances made under it, and not under challenge on the fee | Not refundable, and 85 operators held authorisations as at 22 September 2026 |
| Nigeria | State-level licence fees, set separately by each state that chooses to license | The National Lottery Act 2005 lost its general application when the Supreme Court decided SC/1/2008 on 22 November 2024 | Federal licences stopped being effective and operators relicensed state by state |
| Colombia | 19 per cent VAT on online gambling, imposed by Legislative Decree 1474 of 2025 as a tax rather than a licence fee | Suspended by the Constitutional Court on 2 February 2026 by six votes to two, the first time it has halted a presidential decree during review | Tax collection stopped, and the money already collected stayed with the state |
Brazil is the expensive case that nobody is arguing about, because the R$30 million sits in primary legislation passed by Congress rather than in a ministerial schedule, and an operator writing that cheque knows what it has bought. Kenya’s figure is smaller and much less settled, since it was set by a legal notice made by a Cabinet Secretary, and that is exactly the kind of instrument a constitutional challenge can reach.
Colombia answers the refund question in the least comfortable way available, because the Constitutional Court stopped the tax while the money already collected stayed where it was, so operators won the argument and kept the loss. Nigeria is the one to read twice. There the court did not touch the price at all. It removed the federal government’s power to regulate the activity, and the licences went with it.
4. What does a refund undertaking actually leave an operator holding?
A refund undertaking is a promise from a regulator that has just lost a case, with no date attached to it, so the payment behaves less like a prepaid licence and more like a receivable of uncertain timing. The KES 60 million is out of the business now, and getting it back depends on a state agency paying it over after an adverse judgment, with nothing in the reported order setting a timetable or attaching interest.
The petition attacks the instrument and not only its price, and a licence is only as durable as the thing that created it. Operators in Nigeria had paid the National Lottery Regulatory Commission in good faith, and when the Supreme Court found in November 2024 that the National Assembly had no power to legislate on lotteries outside the Federal Capital Territory, the regulator’s authority and the licences it had issued went together. A Kenyan judgment on 2 October that quashes Legal Notice 111 would raise the same question about every licence granted under it since July.
The one-year online term changes the arithmetic as well. An operator that models a KES 60 million licence over three years is spreading it across two years it has not bought, and the payback period for a Kenyan launch has to clear twelve months rather than thirty-six. The renewal price is at least known in advance, which is more than most markets offer.
Then there is the 6 per cent advertising approval fee, which quietly converts part of the marketing budget into a regulatory charge. A market entry model that treats licensing as a fixed cost and marketing as a variable one has the relationship the wrong way round in Kenya, because the bigger the launch, the bigger the licence bill.
5. What should an operator do before 2 October?
Build one licence record per market, and make it carry the money, the term and the legal risk together rather than in three separate places. Six things belong in it.
- Take the numbers from the schedules, not from the coverage. Read the licence term off the Fourth Schedule, the fees off the Second and the capital off the Third, then correct any internal model that has KES 50 million spread over three years.
- Record the whole first-year cash cost as one figure, with the application fee, the licence fee, the annual operating fee, the per-person key employee, director and shareholder licences and the advertising approval percentage all named separately underneath it.
- Write down the terms on which the money was paid: the date, the instrument it was paid under, the court order that allowed the Authority to collect it, and the exact wording of the refund undertaking together with which body gave it. If local advice supports paying under protest, say so in the covering letter so the claim does not rest on the undertaking alone.
- Move the payment out of ordinary prepaid licence costs and into a separately identified item with the legal contingency attached to it, and tell the audit committee before the auditors raise it.
- Put the quashing scenario on one page. Decide now what the business does on 3 October if the regulations fall, covering whether trading continues, which licence the business is then relying on, and who signs off the decision to keep taking bets.
- Run the same test across every other market. List each licence, the instrument that created it, the term as that instrument’s own schedule states it, whether the instrument is under challenge anywhere, and the date it is next in court.
Boardroom Questions
- What is the full first-year cash cost of each licence we hold, broken into application, licence, annual operating and per-person fees, rather than the headline licence fee we quote internally?
- Which of our licences rest on an instrument that is currently under legal challenge, and when is each of those cases next in court?
- If the Kenyan regulations are quashed on 2 October, do we keep trading, on whose authority, and who has already agreed to sign that off?
- What is the recorded wording of every refund undertaking we are relying on, and which body gave each one?
- How much of our capital is locked as gambling capital or security bonds across our markets, and what return are we assuming on it in the plan?
- Where in our market entry models does a licence term come from press reporting rather than from the instrument’s own schedule?
Sources
The Gambling Control (Licensing) Regulations, 2026 are quoted from the text published by Kenya Law. The orders of 20 July, 7 August and 24 August 2026 are taken from contemporaneous reporting and from Kenyan advocates’ notes on the proceedings, because the rulings themselves are not yet available on Kenya Law.
1. Kenya Law, The Gambling Control (Licensing) Regulations, 2026, Legal Notice 111 of 2026, published in the Kenya Gazette on 29 June 2026 and commenced the same day. Regulation 2 (gambling capital, significant shareholders), regulation 30 (savings and transitional provision), Second Schedule (fees), Third Schedule (gambling capital requirement) and Fourth Schedule (duration). https://new.kenyalaw.org/akn/ke/act/ln/2026/111/eng@2026-06-29
2. Business Daily, High Court allows gambling regulator to implement contested fees, 24 August 2026. https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/economy/high-court-allows-gambling-regulator-to-implement-fees-5569082
3. Techweez, High Court clears betting regulator to collect disputed gambling fees, 24 August 2026. The 246 frozen applications, the undertaking to refund, and the court’s finding that licensing could not function without the fee component. https://techweez.com/2026/08/24/kenya-betting-gambling-licensing-fees-court/
4. iGaming Business, Kenya High Court suspends new gambling licensing framework, 22 July 2026. The conservatory order of 20 July 2026, the petitioners, the interested parties and the public participation ground under Article 10 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010. https://igamingbusiness.com/legal-compliance/legal/kenya-high-court-suspends-gambling-licensing-framework/
5. iGaming Business, Kenya gambling licensing set to proceed following High Court ruling, August 2026. The narrowing of the stay, what the Authority was permitted to resume, and the 2 October 2026 judgment date. https://igamingbusiness.com/legal-compliance/kenya-gambling-licensing-to-proceed-high-court-ruling/
6. McKay Advocates, High Court varies but does not fully lift suspension of Kenya’s Gambling Control (Licensing) Regulations, 7 August 2026. Which provisions remained suspended and which became operative. https://www.mckayadvocates.com/post/high-court-varies-but-does-not-fully-lift-suspension-of-kenya-s-gambling-control-licensing-regul
7. Focus Gaming News, GRA launches Kenya’s first licensing cycle under sweeping new gambling regulations, July 2026. The sixty-day transition period and the additional requirements applying to foreign-based operators. https://focusgn.com/africa/gra-launches-kenyas-first-licensing-cycle-under-sweeping-new-gambling-regulations
8. Techweez, Kenya now licenses the software behind online gambling, not just the operator, 29 July 2026. The supplier licence categories, the hosting and certification disclosures and the operator’s duty to name its licensed suppliers. https://techweez.com/2026/07/29/kenya-now-licences-the-software-behind-online-gambling-not-just-the-operator/