Outlook: What is coming?

Mexico's Secretaría de Gobernación has reportedly finalized its internal proposal for a new Ley de Juegos y Sorteos, intended to replace the 1947 statute, and forwarded it to the Gabinete de Seguridad Nacional, the stage immediately preceding Congressional submission. The draft decree is understood to address money laundering, tax evasion, administrative corruption and gaps in the regulation of digital gambling, though no published text is yet available and the reform has not been submitted to Congress. Current indications point to possible Congressional submission around the first quarter of 2027, though this timing has not been confirmed by a primary government source. No instrument has yet changed as a result of this process, and the procedural advance to the Gabinete de Seguridad Nacional represents the most advanced stage this reform has reached to date without altering the licensing or product-classification status quo.

Two distinct reform tracks are advancing in parallel. SEGOB has completed internal review of a reform to the 1947 LFJS aimed at casino and betting-centre money laundering, which now awaits Gabinete de Seguridad approval before transmission to the Congreso de la Union; its stated aim is to strengthen coordination between Gobernacion, the UIF and SAT. Separately, a Chamber of Deputies initiative from Diputado Erik Isaac Morales Elvira would expand SEGOB's authority over digital games, raffles and virtual platforms, and is presented and pending committee process. Neither reform has reached the statute books, and the full text of the SEGOB-led bill is not yet public, limiting the detail available on its eventual compliance implications beyond the AML and inter-agency coordination framing already disclosed.

Legislative reform is proceeding on two distinct tracks moving at different speeds. SEGOB's amendment to the 1947 Federal Law of Games and Lotteries, targeting AML and tax-fraud gaps, is substantially concluded within SEGOB and is awaiting Security Cabinet review before formal submission — the more advanced and AML-focused of the two tracks. Separately, the Ley Federal de Juegos con Apuesta y Sorteos, a replacement bill filed in October 2025 by Deputy Ricardo Mejía Berdeja that would create a national gaming institute, has had its committee review deadline pushed to 31 August 2027, ahead of the 2026 World Cup, suggesting the more expansionary sports-betting modernisation agenda has been deliberately deprioritised. The mixed pace across these two tracks — a fast-moving AML/tax reform and a slow-moving structural reform — is itself the key reform-horizon signal this cycle.

Mexico's reform horizon is defined by three uncoordinated tracks converging on the 1947 Ley Federal de Juegos y Sorteos, none of which has been enacted. SEGOB is preparing an executive-branch technical draft to replace the statute, explicitly framed around anti-money-laundering sanctions and investment certainty; the initiative has not yet been sent to Congress. Separately, Diputado Ricardo Mejía Berdeja filed a federal bill on 7 October 2025, the Ley Federal de Juegos con Apuesta y Sorteos, which would replace the 1947 statute wholesale and create a new Instituto Nacional de Juegos y Sorteos. A third track, introduced by Dip. Alberto Martínez Urincho in the Mexico City Congress on 11 August 2026, would amend Articles 1 Bis and 3 of the LFJS to define ludopatía as a public-health disorder and impose digital-platform verification, health-warning, and predictive-betting restrictions; it must first pass local commission before being remitted to the Congreso de la Unión for potential national effect.