Estonia is considering allowing relatives and courts to initiate gambling restrictions as its national exclusion register approaches 21,000 people. The proposal will form part of a wider Gambling Act review planned for 2027 and could create new compliance, verification and dispute-handling duties for licensed operators if adopted.
Estonia will examine family-initiated and court-ordered gambling restrictions during its 2027 Gambling Act review.
Restrictions on games of chance currently cover 20,628 people.
Any resulting legislative changes could take effect around mid-2028.
No formal amendment has been presented, meaning the current system remains voluntary.
Licensed operators could eventually face additional verification and dispute-handling requirements.
Estonia’s Ministry of Finance is considering expanding the country’s player-protection framework as participation in its national gambling restriction system continues to increase.
According to Estonian public broadcaster ERR, the ministry plans to review the Gambling Act in 2027, including the rules governing who can initiate a restriction. Any resulting legislative changes could take effect around mid-2028. Estonia’s current framework only allows individuals to add themselves to the restriction list. However, officials will examine whether family members or courts should be permitted to initiate the process in certain circumstances.
Rainer Osanik, head of the Financial Information Policy Department at the Ministry of Finance, said the voluntary system may be insufficient when someone experiencing gambling-related harm is unwilling to request a restriction.
Osanik said:
No one else can currently add them to the list, but family members of a gambling addict often suffer. The system should allow a person to be added to the list on certain additional grounds, either at the initiative of a family member or by court order. Estonian law does not currently allow this. We will now begin analysing how this could be done.
The ministry will now analyse how third-party restrictions could operate under Estonian law, including the necessary evidence, legal grounds and safeguards. No formal amendment has yet been introduced.
The number of people using Estonia’s restriction system has risen considerably since 2023, when the register contained 17,203 individuals.
Restrictions covering games of chance currently apply to 20,628 people. Sports-betting restrictions cover 9,767 people, while 5,968 are restricted from lottery products. Sports-betting restrictions have increased by 348 since the beginning of 2026. These figures cannot be combined into one total because individuals can restrict themselves from multiple gambling categories. The Estonian Tax and Customs Board allows people to establish separate restrictions for games of chance, sports betting and traditional lotteries.
Restrictions remain in place indefinitely and do not expire automatically. Applicants must select a waiting period of between six months and three years before they can request removal from the register.
Jekaterina Nikitina, head of the Excise Department at the Estonian Tax and Customs Board, said the increase suggests that public awareness of Estonia’s player-protection tools is improving.
Nikitina said:
People are increasingly aware of the player protection mechanisms we have. These mechanisms work very well.
The continued growth of the register indicates that self-exclusion is becoming a more widely recognised safeguard across Estonia’s gambling market.
Licensed operators are responsible for preventing registered individuals from accessing the gambling categories covered by their restrictions. This responsibility is established under Estonia’s Gambling Act, which requires operators to prevent anyone without the legal right to participate from gambling. If an operator permits a restricted individual to gamble, it must return the money that person lost. The reverse also applies: winnings obtained in breach of a restriction must be returned by the player.
Estonian officials said failures by licensed operators to enforce the register have so far been isolated. Introducing family-initiated or court-ordered restrictions could require operators to update their account-verification processes, exclusion databases and customer-dispute procedures. Policymakers would also need to determine what evidence could justify a non-voluntary restriction, who would assess an application and how an affected individual could challenge the decision.
The proposed review comes amid broader scrutiny of Estonia’s gambling controls.
A 2025 supervision project by the Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority examined 230 gambling advertisements across 15 brands. It found that 104 advertisements, or 45%, breached the Advertising Act. As Ace Alliance previously reported in its review of Estonia’s gambling advertising rules, the violations included misleading content, non-compliant safer-gambling warnings and advertisements for games of chance appearing in prohibited locations.
The government has not committed to a blanket prohibition on gambling advertising. Instead, officials are considering how to balance commercial freedoms with consumer safeguards as part of a broader modernisation of the Advertising Act. The high non-compliance rate, combined with the proposed expansion of the restriction register, indicates that operators could face closer scrutiny across both marketing and player-protection procedures.
Estonia’s exclusion proposal is one part of a wider period of regulatory change for the country’s gambling industry. Earlier in 2026, parliament reinstated the 5.5% online casino tax after a legislative drafting error temporarily removed remote games of chance from the tax framework.
The country has also debated plans to reduce its remote gambling tax gradually to attract more international operators. However, the Finance Ministry and opposition politicians raised concerns about the proposed tax cuts, including their potential effect on public revenue and regulatory workloads. These developments demonstrate the challenge facing policymakers: making Estonia more competitive as an international remote-gambling jurisdiction while strengthening consumer protection and regulatory oversight.
The Gambling Act review remains at an early stage. Its impact will ultimately depend on whether the government moves beyond the existing voluntary framework and establishes a legally workable route for intervention by families or courts.
