Kazakhstan Casinos

Understanding online casinos in Kazakhstan

The legal status of online casinos in Kazakhstan

The Law on Gambling Business, adopted on 12 January 2007 and amended many times since, is the base of the whole system. You can read the current text on the official Adilet legal database. The law never had a licence category for internet casinos, and the amendments President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed on 8 July 2024 made the ban explicit: electronic and internet casinos are prohibited outright.

Organising internet gambling is a crime under Article 307 of the Criminal Code, punishable by up to two years in prison and by up to seven years with confiscation of property in the most serious cases. Websites of foreign bookmakers and totalisators without a Kazakh licence are banned as well.

What is legal: bookmakers and two casino zones

Land-based casinos may operate only in two designated gambling zones: the area around the Kapchagay reservoir, roughly two hours by car from Almaty, and the Burabay district in Akmola region. In early 2026 the government was reviewing proposals for more zones, but none had been approved.

Betting is the one form of remote gambling the law allows. Bookmakers and totalisators holding a Kazakh licence may accept bets online, on .kz domains registered with the tax authorities. Their advertising is tightly limited and has been banned on billboards, building facades, vehicles and other outdoor structures since the 2024 changes.

Since March 2026 every licensed bookmaker has had to run its business through the Unified Betting Accounting System, a state platform that records each bet, deposit and payout and checks whether a player is allowed to gamble at all. Payments go through Nomapay wallets, with the state postal operator Kazpost issuing the electronic money. When the system began verifying players, about 135,000 of roughly 433,000 users were restricted as debtors or self-excluded players.

Who may not gamble

The minimum age is 21. Raising it to 25 was debated in 2024 but dropped before the amendments passed, so the higher figure you still see in older articles is wrong. Age is only the first filter. Anyone listed in the Unified Register of Debtors, which covered more than 3.5 million people when the law was signed, is barred, and so are officials in responsible state positions, military and law enforcement staff, and people whose legal capacity a court has restricted because gambling left their family in serious hardship. Operators must refuse all of them.

How enforcement works

Enforcement goes after operators and the money flowing to them. According to the government, more than 10,000 websites advertising illegal gambling and betting were entered into the state Cyber Surveillance (Cybernadzor) system for blocking in 2024. In the first eight months of 2025 the Agency for Financial Monitoring added more than 17,000 casino-related addresses to its blacklist, most of them mirror sites of offshore brands.

The 2024 law also bars banks and payment institutions from processing transactions for unlicensed foreign bookmakers and totalisators. Between October 2025 and March 2026, Kazakh banks automatically rejected about 402,000 transfers to offshore gambling operators, working from a blacklist of 110 foreign companies and payment providers, and investigators have opened criminal cases against bank employees accused of helping operators get around the rules.

Self-exclusion and responsible gambling

Kazakhstan runs a national self-exclusion register. Anyone over 21 can sign up in the eGov Mobile app and pick how long the restriction lasts, up to ten years, and once it is submitted it cannot be withdrawn early. On 1 June 2026 the register held more than 224,000 active entries, and the betting accounting system checks it automatically.

If betting has started to cost more than you planned, that register is a solid first step, and so is telling someone you trust before the problem grows. Our responsible gambling guide covers warning signs and practical limits. Kazakh speakers who live outside the country can read about the rules that apply to them on our Kazakh language page.