Licence register explained
A licence register is the public list a gambling regulator keeps of every operator it has licensed, showing the legal entity, the licence number, what the licence covers and whether it is still in force. In Ireland that list is the register of gambling licensees provided for by section 90 of the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 and published by the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland (GRAI). Foreign regulators keep their own, and the Malta Gaming Authority’s licensee register is the one Irish readers meet most often.
What a licence register records
A register entry is built around the company that holds the licence, not the brand name printed on the casino’s home page, and that gap is where most confusion starts. One company can run a dozen brands, and the register will name only the company.
The Malta Gaming Authority’s register can be searched by licensee name, authorisation status, URL or gaming service, according to the MGA’s own description of the tool. Its entries carry a licence number in the form MGA/B2C/123/2018, which gives the licence class, a sequence number and the year of issue, along with the game types covered and a status field.
That status field matters more than the match itself. Surrendered, cancelled, expired and suspended licences stay on the MGA register, so finding a name there proves only that a licence once existed, and only an entry marked as licensed shows one currently in force.
The GRAI’s register is the Irish equivalent, and it can be browsed, filtered by licence type and downloaded.
The Irish register and the Act
Section 90 of the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 sets up the register of gambling licensees, and sections 84 to 89 define the licence categories that can appear on it: betting, gaming, lottery, charitable and business-to-business licences.
Not every category was switched on together, which is the point a reader most often misses. A commencement order effective from 5 February 2026 allowed the GRAI to accept applications for betting licences, and the first remote betting licences issued on 1 July 2026. Remote gaming licences, the category that would cover online slots and live casino, are phased for a later stage, and we found no commencement order for them when this entry was written.
So the Irish register can only ever show the categories that have been commenced.
An online casino serving Irish players while no remote gaming licence is available from the GRAI will be relying on a licence issued elsewhere, typically by the MGA, Kahnawake or Curaçao, and its entry will sit on that regulator’s register, not the Irish one. A foreign entry is not the same protection as an Irish one: the GRAI’s powers and complaints route attach to the licences it issues, while a Maltese licence answers to the Maltese regulator.
Checking an operator's entry
What I check first is whether the footer names a company and a licence number, because a brand name alone cannot be matched reliably to any register.
Go to the regulator’s own website and search the register yourself, rather than clicking a seal or link the operator supplies. Confirm that the legal entity returned matches the company named in the casino’s terms, that the status reads as licensed, and that the licence class covers what the site actually sells. A B2B licence held by a games supplier, for example, does not authorise that supplier to take bets from players.
The register is often confused with the National Gambling Exclusion Register, which the GRAI is also tasked with running under the Act. That one lists players who have excluded themselves from gambling, whereas the licence register lists operators, and the two answer different questions.
A register entry tells you who is licensed and by whom, but it says nothing about how an operator handles withdrawals or KYC checks.
