Responsible gambling in Germany

The Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder — the GGL — is a public-law institution in Halle (Saale), set up under the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021, which has been in force since 1 July 2021. Before it, online slots, poker and casino games sat under a general prohibition.

Here is the distinction. The GGL licenses virtual slot games, online poker, sports betting and horse race betting, nationwide. It does not license online casino games — roulette, blackjack, baccarat and live-dealer table games. Under § 3(1a) and § 22c(1) GlüStV 2021, only an individual federal state may run those itself or grant a limited number of concessions, capped at the number of land-based casino concessions that state could have issued as at 17 January 2020. The GGL states plainly that it issues no permits for online casino games and does not supervise them.

The practical scale of that: as at 26 May 2025, Schleswig-Holstein and Bavaria had granted five online casino concessions between them. Everything else calling itself a German online casino is either a virtual slots licensee using the wrong word, or unlicensed.

Germany gives you the fastest check of the six, and you can do it from the address bar. A holder of a German permit may use a .de domain only, and the GGL states that an offer on any other domain is always unlicensed in Germany. No lookup required.

If it is a .de address, two further steps. Every licensed operator must state on its homepage that it holds a German permit and is supervised by the GGL, and may display the official GGL seal. And the Whitelist can be filtered by game type, which is where you confirm the permit covers the product you are actually being offered.

Two numbers make good sanity checks on any site claiming a German licence: a cross-operator deposit limit of €1,000 per calendar month, enforced across all operators through the LUGAS file, and a maximum stake of €1 per spin on legal virtual slots. Both are statutory defaults with a defined exceptions procedure. A site that simply ignores them is not German-licensed.

OASIS is the nationwide, cross-product exclusion system, operated by Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt on behalf of all federal states under §§ 8 to 8d GlüStV 2021. It is queried by arcades, betting operators and brokers, land-based casinos, online poker and virtual slot operators, lotteries drawn more than twice a week, and gaming machine operators in bars. The query returns one of two answers against your name and date of birth: blocked, or not blocked.

You can apply at any operator or directly at Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt. The requirements are a signed application and a copy of an identity document — a driving licence is not accepted. Player enquiries go to spieleranfragenoasis@rpda.hessen.de, and there is a service line on +49 6151 12 8611, Wednesdays 09:30 to 11:30 and Thursdays 13:00 to 15:00.

The duration is the detail most summaries get wrong. One year is the default minimum. You can ask for a shorter individual minimum, but it cannot fall below three months: Regierungspräsidium Darmstadt gives the example directly — ask for two months and it is accepted and then raised to three by operation of law.

And an exclusion never ends by itself. Removal requires a written application by the excluded person, which can only be filed once the minimum period has expired; one filed early is void and has to be resubmitted. If nobody applies, it continues indefinitely.

A third-party exclusion — a Fremdsperre — can be requested by an operator’s staff or by relatives and partners, with evidence of one of the statutory grounds: risk of gambling addiction, over-indebtedness, failure to meet financial obligations, or stakes out of proportion to income or assets. The person concerned is given a chance to comment first, and a Fremdsperre always runs for at least a year.

Check dein Spiel is the national service: free and anonymous on 0800 1 37 27 00, with a self-test, online counselling, and a section specifically on getting yourself blocked. It is run by BIÖG, the Bundesinstitut für Öffentliche Gesundheit, which replaced the BZgA on 13 February 2025. Material still crediting “BZgA” is out of date; the service behind it has not changed.

The GGL keeps a directory of regional counselling services, which is the route to face-to-face help near you. Glücksspielhilfe, run by IFT, is a further national resource.

OASIS binds the operators legally required to query it. An operator without a German permit is not on that list, has no access to the system, and is not obliged to look.

There is a second German-specific gap worth knowing. Because the GGL does not license online casino games, a site advertising roulette or live-dealer tables to German players is almost certainly outside the licensed system even if it holds a GGL permit for slots — and the deposit limit, the stake cap and the OASIS check come with the permit, not with the brand.

If you are in OASIS and a site still opens an account for you, that is the answer to whether it is licensed here. A device-level blocker works independently of any permit, which is why it is the tool for that situation.

One limitation of the complaints route, stated by the GGL itself: its whistleblowing system handles unlicensed supply, unlawful advertising and irregularities at licensed offers, but not disputes about your own transactions with an operator.