Uganda

The unification of the betting and casino/gaming gross-gaming-revenue tax rate at 30 percent, effective 1 July 2026, removes the prior tax-rate arbitrage between product lines and narrows one avenue of margin-based market opportunity. Against this, ITHUBA Uganda Limited's unexplained cessation of its ten-year national lottery monopoly concession, only two years into its term, creates a distinct near-term concession-vacancy opportunity for a new national lottery operator, contingent on NLGRB's undisclosed transition process and any successor-appointment terms.

NLGRB's 2026 licence renewal window, open from 3 to 31 October 2025, introduced new conditionality layered onto the standing licensing framework under the Lotteries and Gaming Act, Cap 334. Casino operators must now complete Financial Intelligence Authority accountable-person registration as part of renewal. Operators introducing new games must submit game rules for regulatory approval prior to launch. Data-collection and processing systems used by operators require NITA-U certification. False documentation submitted during renewal triggers automatic disqualification and exposes the applicant to prosecution. The underlying statutory basis, the Lotteries and Gaming Act, remains durable primary legislation; the renewal notice detail itself rests on regulator-adjacent secondary reporting rather than a directly retrieved primary text, a gap the evidence register itself flags.

Entry to Uganda's licensed gambling market runs through the NLGRB under the Lotteries and Gaming Act 2016. The 2026 licence and renewal cycle opened via an e-licensing platform, with an application deadline of 31 October 2025, and applied heightened scrutiny to new games and casino applicants. A newly mandatory precondition requires entrants to register with the Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA) as accountable persons before licensing can proceed, layering an AML compliance barrier onto the standard licensing pathway.

No player-protection-specific instrument, such as self-exclusion, deposit limits, or reality-check requirements, was evidenced in Uganda this cycle; the general licensing, taxation, and AML tightening described elsewhere in this report proceeded without an accompanying dedicated player-protection development.

NLGRB's Operation Mashine Haramu campaign against unlicensed gaming machines escalated materially this cycle: over 80 machines were seized in Mbarara and Ibanda on 14 October 2025, and more than 6,000 machines have been confiscated nationwide since the campaign began. The Board's power to prosecute individuals or businesses operating gaming facilities without a licence is grounded in durable primary legislation, section 67 of the Lotteries and Gaming Act, Cap 334. The scale of nationwide confiscation indicates a substantial informal or grey gaming-machine market operating alongside the licensed sector prior to this enforcement wave, and the campaign's continuation suggests sustained rather than one-off regulatory pressure on that grey market.

Uganda was removed from the FATF grey list in February 2024, with an ESAAMLG mutual evaluation expected around 2028, a cycle in which casinos are newly emphasised as reporting entities. New casino operators must register with the Financial Intelligence Authority (FIA) as accountable persons and submit annual AML/CFT compliance reports before licensing, an obligation combining a durable enabling AML Act with fragile regulator practice and guidance.

Two technical-compliance developments feature this cycle. First, the 2026 renewal window introduced mandatory game-rule submission for new-game launches and required NITA-U certification of operator data-collection and processing systems, both binding conditions of the renewal process. Second, a National Central Electronic Monitoring System has reportedly been operationalised to track licensed-operator stakes for tax-compliance purposes, though this claim is sourced from a single lower-tier source and is not corroborated by NLGRB or Bank of Uganda primary material this cycle.

The Lotteries and Gaming (Amendment) Bill 2026 proposes a penal tax of double the gaming or withholding tax due, or 5,500 currency points, whichever is higher, for operators not integrated with the centralised gaming/betting payments gateway, creating a new mandatory technical-integration obligation backed by direct financial exposure.

Uganda's cost-to-operate picture tightened incrementally this cycle. Trade-press reporting, assessed at Probable confidence from a single Tier-2 source with no Tier-1 gazette text yet located, indicates that the Income Tax (Amendment) Act 2026 removed the winnings-tax exemption previously afforded to land-based casino player winnings, aligning their treatment with the 15% withholding tax already applied to online betting and gaming operators.

This widens the effective tax base rather than raising the headline rate itself: land-based casino operators must now model winnings-tax exposure on the same basis as online operators. The precise statutory citation and effective date of this provision remain unconfirmed at Tier-1 level, holding the claim at an Assessed confidence tier pending further corroboration. Separately, industry sources have raised practical difficulties in collecting the point-of-payout withholding tax from land-based casinos, an open item that could prompt further legislative amendment to the collection mechanism.

The Bank of Uganda's 24 May 2026 circular imposes over-the-counter cash-withdrawal caps of UGX 50 million per day for individuals and UGX 500 million per day for corporates, effective 1 January 2027, a fragile-durability instrument that will materially affect cash-heavy betting-shop and land-based casino payout and float operations. This cash-cap pressure compounds the proposed penal tax under the Lotteries and Gaming (Amendment) Bill 2026, of double the gaming or withholding tax due, or 5,500 currency points, whichever is higher, for operators not integrated with the centralised gaming/betting payments gateway, together pushing gambling-sector settlement toward electronic rails ahead of the gateway's mandatory adoption.

MelBet's (Fox Bet Limited's) licence revocation, effective 1 January 2026, and ITHUBA Uganda Limited's cessation of its national lottery monopoly on 1 July 2026 both remove significant incumbents from Uganda's gambling market within the same cycle. Simultaneously, joint NLGRB and Uganda People's Defence Force operations confiscated and destroyed more than 8,714 illegal gaming machines in June 2026, with a follow-on Operation Mashine Haramu seizure of 104 machines, reducing unlicensed competition alongside the two incumbent exits.

The Lotteries and Gaming (Amendment) Act 2026, unifying the betting and casino/gaming tax rate at 30 percent of gross gaming revenue, is intended effective 1 July 2026, though no primary Gazette text confirming final assent has yet been retrieved. The companion Income Tax (Amendment) Bill 2026, proposing a 15 percent withholding tax on winnings, was returned unsigned by President Museveni on 14 July 2026 over a disputed casino-winnings exemption clause (Clause 11), and remains pending Parliamentary reconsideration.

The two instruments have moved in opposite lifecycle directions within the same cycle: the gaming-tax Act has advanced toward in-force status while the winnings-tax bill has moved backward from passed to returned-unsigned, leaving near-term winnings-taxation treatment legally uncertain even as the underlying revenue-tax rate proceeds toward unification.