The GRAI licence: how to read Ireland's gambling register

Four letters, one authority

GRAI stands for the Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland. It was created by the Gambling Regulation Act 2024 and formally set up in March 2025, after years in which gambling here was overseen through a patchwork of statutes dating back to the 1930s. The Act gives one body the job of licensing betting, gaming and lotteries, in shops and online, and of enforcing the conditions attached.

The legal background is covered on our page about gambling regulation in Ireland. This guide looks at the licence from the other end: what you, as a player, can do with the information the authority publishes.

What went live on 1 July 2026

Licensing is arriving in stages. The first stage, announced by the authority on 30 June 2026, covered remote betting and betting intermediaries: from 1 July, operators taking sports bets online from Irish customers began appearing in the register. By the update of 21 September 2026 the file held thirty-five business-to-consumer entries, all of them remote betting.

Gaming licences, which cover casino games such as slots, roulette and blackjack, together with lottery and business-to-business licences, are scheduled to open for applications during 2027 and 2028. That timetable is the single most useful fact on this page. It means that in September 2026 no online casino game is licensed by the GRAI, whoever offers it, and a casino cannot yet show you a GRAI gaming licence because none has been issued.

Reading a register entry, column by column

The register can be downloaded as a spreadsheet from the authority's website. Open it and each line tells you more than a footer badge ever will.

1. Licensee. The legal company that holds the licence. This is the name that will appear in the terms and conditions of the site, and it is often nothing like the brand on the adverts.
2. Trading names. The brands operated under that licence. Several well-known names share a single licensee, which is how you discover that two apparently rival bookmakers are one business.
3. Licence type. For now, remote betting or betting intermediary. A line reading 'gaming' will only appear once that category opens.
4. Licence number and date. The reference to quote in any complaint to the authority, and the date from which the licence runs.

Our comparison pages quote these entries for the big betting brands, bet365, William Hill, 888, Betway, BetVictor and Unibet among them, if you want to see real lines rather than a description.

What a licence obliges the operator to do

A GRAI licence is not a certificate hung on a wall; it is a list of conditions the operator can lose its licence for breaking. Among the obligations the Act sets out:

• Restrictions on inducements. Free bets, targeted offers and VIP-style schemes are curbed rather than left to the operator's judgement.
• No gambling on credit cards. Deposits by credit card are prohibited for licensed operators.
• Advertising rules. Broadcast gambling adverts are kept to a late-evening window, and marketing aimed at children is prohibited.
• Age and identity checks before anyone can play.
• Enforcement with teeth. The authority can suspend or revoke licences and impose financial sanctions; the Act allows fines of up to €20 million or 10% of turnover, whichever is greater.

What that means for you in practice

If you bet on sport with a licensed operator, you have a named company, a licence number and a regulator with statutory powers standing behind the account. If something goes wrong, the first complaint still goes to the operator, in writing, through its own procedure; the register entry is what you cite if you take it further.

For casino games, the picture in 2026 is different. Because gaming licences are not yet open, sites offering slots and live tables to Irish players do so under licences issued elsewhere — most often in Britain, Malta or Curaçao. Our guides to the UK Gambling Commission, the Malta Gaming Authority and Curaçao explain what each of those means for you, and the full set is on casino licences explained.

What will change when gaming licences open

Once the gaming category opens, casino operators that want an Irish licence will have to apply, meet the Act's conditions and appear in the same register. Expect casino promotions aimed at Irish players to be shaped by the rules on inducements, and expect the register to become the first place to look when you are weighing up a new site. Until then, the checks in our guides to the other authorities are the ones that matter, and the games themselves are covered on popular casino games.

A note on what the register is not

It is not a quality ranking. A licence says an operator met the conditions on the day it was granted and remains answerable for them; it says nothing about how generous its odds are, how quickly it pays or how good its app is. Treat it as the floor, not the ceiling, and read the rest of an operator's terms with the same care you would give the register.

The five casinos we cover

A separate matter from the register above: these are the casinos this site writes about, with their welcome offers as checked in September.