Licensing and regulation: Can we get a licence?

The transitional period established by the 2022 amendments to Macau's Gaming Law ended on 31 December 2025, a durable statutory deadline rather than a discretionary administrative one. From this point, satellite casinos operating in Macau must either be directly operated by one of the licensed concessionaires or run under an excluded management or service-fee arrangement; the legacy satellite-operator model as such no longer exists. 2026 is also the first year in which the ten-year concessions running from 2023 to 2032 reach their statutory interim review point, a legally mandated checkpoint built into the 2022 amendment package. Corroborating legal commentary frames this as completion of a major structural transition rather than a new reform; the underlying legal basis remains the amended Gaming Law itself. Primary-source DICJ publication of the interim review's specific criteria was not reached this cycle, so the review's substantive scope and likely outcome remain to be confirmed against secondary legal-commentary summaries rather than a government release.