Mauritius Kills Off Hotel Casino Licences and Puts Casinos Under Tax Surveillance in 2026/27 Budget

Key Points

• The hotel casino licence category is gone entirely, with hotel-based operations now required to obtain a standard casino licence going forward.
• Limited payout machine operators join casino and gaming house operators as eligible holders of digital gaming licences for the first time.
• Every casino and Gaming House server must now connect directly to the MRA’s Central Electronic Monitoring System, extending fiscal surveillance onto the casino floor.

Mauritius Kills Off Hotel Casino Licences and Pulls Every Casino into Its Tax Net

Mauritius has stealthily abolished one of the country’s oldest gambling licensing categories, expanded the online gaming system to the third operator category, and placed casinos’ servers under real-time financial surveillance, all through Mauritius’s 2026/27 budget annex without a specific legislative reform package.

Navinchandra Ramgoolam, Prime Minister and Finance Minister, announced the budget on 19 June 2026 without any mention of gambling in his statement. The meat is in Section 44 of the budget annex, which has no fewer than two dozen amendments to the Gambling Regulatory Authority Act. For an island that last restructured its gambling framework when the GRA Act was consolidated in 2007, the scale of what is buried inside that annex is considerable.

Hotel Casino Licence Deleted, Not Replaced

The most immediately visible change is what disappears. The budget annex directs that the definitions of “hotel casino”, “hotel casino games”, “hotel casino gaming machine” and “hotel casino operator” be deleted “as these will no longer be authorised activities”, with all provisions governing their licensing and operation repealed.

Hotels that currently operate under the dedicated bespoke licence framework will, if they continue at all, require an ordinary casino licence under the revised framework. The dedicated regime that allowed a hotel to run a casino under distinct rules simply ceases to exist. No transition period or grandfathering mechanism is mentioned in the annex text.

Digital Gaming Opens to a Third Category

Mauritius already licences digital gaming. Casino operators and gaming house operators became eligible to hold digital gaming licences through amendments made to the GRA Act in 2025. The 2026/27 budget annex adds limited payout machine operators as a third eligible category, and introduces a statutory definition of “digital games” into the Act for the first time. Every platform going live under the digital gaming regime will also require certification by an accredited independent gaming laboratory before it can begin operating.

Casinos Pulled Into MRA’s Monitoring System

The most operationally significant change is the extension of the Central Electronic Monitoring System, run by the Mauritius Revenue Authority. Betting operators have already been required to connect their servers and terminals to the GRA’s server. The 2026/27 measures extend that requirement further, now mandating that the servers of casino and Gaming House licensees connect directly to the MRA’s CEMS. The casino floor, previously outside the MRA’s real-time fiscal reach, is now inside it.

Alongside the CEMS extension, the annex creates two new internal divisions within the GRA: a Responsible Gambling and Communications Division, and a Finance and Procurement Division.

Bookmakers also see a practical change. The cap on betting terminals within approved premises rises from three to five, with one reserved exclusively for payouts. Horse race betting tax will be calculated on stakes net of winnings paid out, rather than on gross stakes, a shift that reduces the tax base for operators posting high payout volumes.

The Legislation Behind the Budget

The entire debate in Parliament regarding the 2026/27 gambling reforms will commence when the Finance Bill is presented in the National Assembly. The cabinet announced on 3rd July 2026 that an economic committee, headed by the Prime Minister, will draw up the bill with its first meeting scheduled for 8th July.

The 2026/27 legislation comes in light of the Anti-Money Laundering, Combatting the Financing of Terrorism and Countering Proliferation Financing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill which was enacted by the National Assembly in April 2026. Moving that bill on 31 March, Financial Services Minister Jyoti Jeetun told the chamber that amendments to the GRA Act, the Income Tax Act and the MRA Act would “require beneficial ownership details at licence applicant stage for gambling operators, introduce cash transaction limits and enhance fiscal investigation powers with carefully circumscribed search and seizure provisions and appropriate safeguards”.

The broader regulatory effort tracks back to July 2025, when Ramgoolam told MPs the government had “undertaken to restore public confidence in the Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA), particularly in regard to its oversight of the horse racing industry”, and would ensure “the GRA operates as a trustworthy regulator of the gaming and betting industry”.

A Regulator Under Pressure Before the Budget Arrived

The Mauritius GRA entered 2026 dealing with public scrutiny on two separate fronts. During January, a local news agency L’Express came up with an anonymous report of horse racing experts regarding structural dysfunctions, unpredictable rule implementation, inconsistent punishment and disciplinary investigations that were often seen as incomplete or unprofessional. This accusation was refuted by GRA stating that the organisation had never been informed about the issue by L’Express and issued a press release saying that it reserves its right to file lawsuits. The response does not touch upon any specific accusations.

Then in March, the GRA moved against a betting operator directly. On 4 March 2026, it issued a directive ordering Bet 593 Ltd to halt all local horse racing and international football betting services, including online platforms and retail outlets. The suspension followed an internal investigation into suspected money laundering, which resulted in a formal referral to the Financial Crimes Commission and the arrest of the company’s director on provisional money laundering charges. Bet 593 Ltd had only obtained its licence in summer 2025.

Both events are part of the same political framework that led to the budget changes, a government elected on the promise of restoring faith in its gambling regulator and gradually enshrining its promises into law, one statute at a time.

What Comes Next?

Once the Finance Bill and the Economic and Financial Measures (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026 complete the legislative process, Mauritius will have significantly expanded both fiscal oversight and regulatory supervision of its gambling sector. Licensing reform, enhanced tax monitoring, and strengthened compliance requirements will each land in sequence. The hotel casino category is already headed for deletion. Casino servers will be inside the MRA’s monitoring system. A new definition of digital games will sit in statute for the first time.

What is not yet clear is how quickly existing hotel casino operators will need to migrate to ordinary casino licences, and whether any will choose not to. The annex is silent on that detail. That question, along with the full scope of the Finance Bill once introduced, is where the next chapter of Mauritius gambling regulation begins.

Expert Analysis

Reforms in the Mauritius 2026/27 budget reflect the same rationale that has been used by regulatory bodies in well-developed markets for the past ten years, namely, plugging the licensing loopholes, incorporating all revenue streams within real-time monitoring, and incorporating AML requirements at the stage of license application. Pulling casino servers directly into the MRA’s CEMS is the most concrete signal that the government is not content with the GRA overseeing conduct while the revenue authority remains one step removed from the data. Whether the statutory framework that eventually passes the National Assembly retains all of Section 44’s provisions unchanged, or whether the legislative process softens some of the measures, will determine how much of what the budget proposes actually lands on operators.