Gaming licences in India: what the states issue, and what they don’t

Why there has never been one Indian licence

Under the Constitution, betting and gambling are a state subject. Each state decides for itself, which is why India has never had a single gambling law or a single licence. The old central statute, the Public Gambling Act of 1867, predates the idea of a licensed casino entirely. What exists today is a small number of state regimes, each written for a specific purpose, and the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, which addresses online money games nationally. Our state gambling laws page covers the prohibitions; this guide covers the licences.

Goa and Daman: casinos on land and on water

Goa’s casinos operate under the state’s public gambling legislation, amended in the early 1990s to allow licensed casino games in five-star hotels and on vessels anchored offshore, which is why the famous floating casinos sit on the Mandovi river in Panaji. Daman, a former Portuguese enclave like Goa, has a smaller licensed land-based market. These are licences for physical venues: you walk in, show ID and play at a table. They have no online component for casino games.

If a licensed casino floor is what you’re after, our Goa casino guide and Daman guide cover the venues.

Sikkim: the state that tried online first

Sikkim is the most interesting case. It licenses land-based casinos in hotels around Gangtok, and in 2008 it passed an online gaming regulation act that allowed licensed online games. In practice that regime was confined to play within Sikkim itself, through licensed premises and networks, rather than open internet play across India. It is often quoted in articles as proof that “India licenses online casinos”; it doesn’t prove that, because its reach stopped at the state border.

Our Sikkim casino page describes the venues.

Nagaland: skill, not chance

Nagaland took a different route in 2016, with legislation that prohibited gambling but created licences for online games of skill, such as certain card and fantasy formats. Games of chance, which include casino slots, roulette and most of what this site covers, were outside its scope. The licence was used by skill-gaming businesses, not casinos.

Where the 2025 Act leaves the state licences

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, in force since 1 May 2026, prohibits offering, advertising and facilitating payments for online money games across India, while promoting e-sports and social games. It sits above the state regimes for online play. The land-based casino licences of Goa, Daman and Sikkim concern physical venues and continue on their own terms. The online side of the state regimes now has to be read together with the central Act. Our Online Gaming Act page sets out what it prohibits, and the legal guide puts all the layers together. None of this is legal advice.

What this means when a website shows a licence

Any online casino you meet from India will display a foreign licence, typically from Curaçao, Anjouan or, occasionally, Malta. That licence governs the operator under its own jurisdiction. It is not an Indian licence and does not claim to be. If a website ever tells you it holds “an Indian online casino licence”, ask which state issued it and for what: the honest answer, as this page shows, is that no state licenses open online casino play across India.

The short version

• Goa and Daman license physical casinos; there is no online casino licence attached.
• Sikkim licensed casinos and experimented with online play inside the state.
• Nagaland licensed online skill games, not casino games.
• The 2025 Act now governs online money games at the national level.
• Foreign licences regulate operators, not the law that applies to you in India.

Why the state model never scaled

It is fair to ask why, with Goa’s casinos running for decades, no state built a licence for internet casinos that the rest of the country could use. The answer lies in the constitutional split. A state can license activity inside its borders, but it cannot authorise conduct in another state that has banned it. An online licence from one state would have collided with prohibitions next door, which is exactly why Sikkim kept its online regime inside the state and why Nagaland limited itself to skill games. The national Act of 2025 resolved the question for online money games at the central level, in the direction of prohibition.

Land casinos: what a visit involves

For anyone curious about licensed play in India, the physical venues remain the clearest example of a state licence at work: photo ID at the door, age checks, published table rules and staff answerable to a state regulator. The floating casinos of Panaji are the best known; Daman and Gangtok are quieter. Our venue pages describe what to expect, and they are a useful reminder that a licence is, at heart, a promise of supervision you can see.

Whatever changes next, the principle on this page will hold: a licence is only as wide as the authority that issues it, and no Indian state authority has issued one wide enough to cover online casino play for the whole country.

Frequently asked questions

Editorial desk, IndiaCasino365 · page reviewed 2026-09-24 · how we test