Netherlands Gambling — Licence fees: What do the licences cost?

The Kansspelautoriteit's codification of a fine policy for illegal remote-gambling supply is the defining cost development: a base fine of EUR800,000, doubled on recidivism, capped at the statutory ten percent of relevant turnover under article 35a of the Wet op de kansspelen. This does not change the licensed-operator fee or tax structure directly, but it sharpens the cost gap between licensed and unlicensed operation by giving the regulator a pre-announced, materially sized penalty schedule to apply to non-compliant supply. For licensed operators, the practical cost lift sits in compliance rather than taxation: new Ksa guidance on verifying players' bank accounts and payment methods at registration adds a concrete onboarding-compliance obligation, following findings that some operators' existing checks were inadequate.

The kansspelbelasting rate under the Wet op de kansspelbelasting rose to 37.8 percent effective 1 January 2026, confirmed directly by the Belastingdienst. A joint Ministry of Finance and Kansspelautoriteit monitor published in June 2026 situates this within a two-step trajectory: 30.5 percent in 2024, rising to 34.2 percent in 2025, and to 37.8 percent in 2026, a cumulative rise of 7.3 percentage points across the two steps. This sits alongside the standing Kansspelautoriteit kansspelheffing, an annual levy on gross gaming revenue for online operators, split between the Kansspelautoriteit and addiction-prevention funding, with the regulator setting and increasing the assessment itself where a return is not filed. The tax-rate movement is the dominant driver of the operator cost picture this update; no change to the levy structure or to certification costs was evidenced alongside it.

From April 2026, the KSA's fee schedule for remote-gambling licensing rises materially: the application fee for a new licence increases from EUR48,000 to EUR61,300, and the fee for modifying an existing licence rises from EUR8,000 to EUR10,200. These procedural fee increases sit alongside, and are smaller in practical burden than, the substantive AML risk-analysis, exit-plan, and CDB technical integration-test requirements introduced by the Beleidsregels vergunningverlening kansspelen op afstand 2026. Operators budgeting for Dutch entry or renewal should treat the compliance-documentation and technical-integration lift as the larger cost driver, with the fee increase representing a smaller, more predictable component of the overall cost-to-operate picture for the 2026 renewal cycle.

Reporting from a single T3 source indicates that, from April 2026, the new remote-gambling licence fee rises from EUR48,000 to EUR61,300, and the licence-modification fee rises from EUR8,000 to EUR10,200 — an increase of roughly 28 percent on the primary fee. This is an administrative-fee adjustment rather than a change to gaming tax, and the claim is held at Uncertain confidence pending an official fee-schedule gazette citation, which was not obtained this cycle. Set against the parallel renewal-documentation burden (exit plan, compliance-history review, CDB re-integration testing, and a possible Wwft risk analysis), the overall cost-to-operate picture for the 2026 renewal cohort is rising on both the fee line and the compliance-lift line simultaneously, even though no single confirmed instrument yet anchors the fee figure at primary-source level.