Is online gambling legal in Poland: the statute, article by article

The short answer and the three exceptions

Poland regulates gambling through the Gambling Act of 2009, the ustawa o grach hazardowych, and the article that decides the online question is art. 5 ust. 1b: running gambling games through the internet, with the exception of betting and promotional lotteries, is covered by the state monopoly. The monopoly is exercised by a wholly state-owned company, which in practice is Totalizator Sportowy Sp. z o.o., and its casino product is Total Casino, launched in 2018 and described on its own pages as the only online casino in Poland with a Ministry of Finance licence. Private companies can hold a permit for online betting and for promotional lotteries; the Ministry's list of legal operators names Total Casino as the monopoly casino and a set of licensed bookmakers alongside it.

So the honest one-line answer is: online slots, roulette, card games and live tables are legal in Poland only at Total Casino; online betting is legal at a bookmaker with a Polish permit; everything else that a Polish reader can open in a browser is offshore, licensed elsewhere and unlicensed here. The rest of this guide is about what that word unlicensed carries with it.

Art. 5: what the monopoly covers and who runs it

Art. 5 ust. 1 of the act reserves number games, cash lotteries, telebingo and slot machines outside a casino to the state; ust. 1b, added for the internet, extends that to online gambling as a whole with the two carve-outs above; ust. 2 says the monopoly is run by a company wholly owned by the state. The consolidated text the Ministry cites has not been amended on this article since the consolidation it names, and the Ministry's own page on the gambling system restates the position: the internet monopoly is exercised by Totalizator Sportowy, gambling is restricted to people of full age under art. 27 ust. 2, and there is a general ban on advertising and promoting gambling backed by art. 110a of the Fiscal Penal Code.

Two consequences follow for a player. A casino is not partly legal in Poland because it holds a licence somewhere respectable; the act does not recognise foreign licences for casino games at all. And the offshore brand you open is not breaking a rule it could fix by applying: there is no application, because the category is closed to private companies. The legal versus offshore comparison sets what the one legal casino gives against what the offshore brands give, without pretending either side is the other.

Art. 15f: the register and what an entry does

Art. 15f gives the minister responsible for public finances a public register with a long formal name: the register of domains used to offer gambling contrary to the act. Anyone may read it, and the criteria for an entry are a domain used to offer gambling without a licence, or to advertise it, that is accessible to internet users on Polish territory; a Polish-language site or one advertised in Poland is the textbook case, and a site in English is not by itself outside the criteria. The Ministry counts over 55,000 entries and about 700 new domains a month, most of them mirror variants of a few hundred brands.

An entry triggers two duties on third parties. Under art. 15f ust. 5 an internet provider must remove the listed domain from its DNS within 48 hours and redirect the connection to a Ministry notice page, which lists the register, the legal operators and a warning about the player's fiscal-criminal liability; under art. 15g a payment service provider may not serve a listed domain and must stop within 30 days of the entry. Both face fines of up to 250,000 PLN under art. 89. The domain holder can file an objection within 2 months. What the entry does not do is decide anything about the player: it is an administrative fact about a domain, and the register guide shows how to search it and what a hit means for a BLIK deposit.

Art. 89 and art. 107 KKS: the two penalties written for the player

Most English pages stop at the register. The act does not. Art. 29a ust. 2 prohibits taking part in online gambling run by an entity that neither exercises the state monopoly nor holds a permit, and the Ministry's own page confirms participation from Polish territory is prohibited. Two penalties attach to that.

The first is administrative. Art. 89 ust. 1 pkt 6 makes a participant in gambling run without a concession, permit or notification liable to a monetary penalty, and ust. 4 sets it at 100% of the winnings obtained, not reduced by the stakes paid in. That wording matters: a player who staked more than they won still owes the whole win. The penalty is imposed by the head of the customs and tax office, not by a court, and the only participants exempt are those in promotional, audiotext and raffle lotteries and charity bingo.

The second is fiscal-criminal. Art. 107 § 2 of the Kodeks karny skarbowy penalises taking part in a foreign gambling game while on Polish territory with a fine of up to 120 daily rates, and art. 109 adds the same ceiling for taking part in gambling run contrary to the act; in a minor case the act is treated as a fiscal misdemeanour. A daily rate is set by the court between one thirtieth of the minimum wage and 400 times that amount, and the minimum fine is 10 rates. At the current minimum wage of 4,806 PLN the lowest rate is 160.20 PLN and the highest 64,080 PLN, so the range for 120 rates runs from 19,224 PLN at the floor to a ceiling no court would apply to a private player; the court fixes the rate by income and circumstances under art. 23 KKS.

What stays legal for a private player

Participation is legal with an operator that holds a permit or works under the state monopoly, and the act names the categories. In practice a private player in Poland can, without any of the exposure above, open an account at Total Casino, which keeps balances in PLN, takes deposits from 10 PLN by Przelewy24, card, BLIK or Skrill without a fee, verifies within 15 minutes through online banking and pays to a Polish bank account with no minimum and no fee within up to 7 business days; bet with any bookmaker on the Ministry's list of licensed online betting operators; and enter promotional lotteries. Reading about casinos, comparing them and opening a demo on a studio server is not participation in a game.

What the act does not make legal is a foreign licence, a VPN, a mirror domain or a euro account. Each of those changes whether a page loads or a payment clears; none changes what art. 5 and art. 29a say. Tax follows the same line: the PIT exemption for casino winnings in art. 21 covers operators licensed in an EU or EEA state, and the tax guide explains why a Curacao or Anjouan brand sits outside it.

What has changed and what has not

The monopoly article has not moved, and no bill to open online casinos to private licences could be found as enacted or formally tabled; English pages promising an imminent Polish licensing regime trace to no primary document. The Ministry's stated position is unchanged: the monopoly stands, participation in unlicensed online gambling is prohibited, and the advertising ban is general. The one shift that reached players came from the payment side rather than the statute: BLIK's operator now checks every transaction's domain against the register before authorisation, with the approval of the President of the National Bank of Poland, so a listed domain fails before your bank app is asked. The BLIK page shows what that looks like in a cashier. A bill to criminalise influencer promotion of illegal gambling reached the Sejm; its later stages could not be confirmed and it concerns promoters, not players.

The Ministry's own estimate of the online grey market fell from 58.6% to 29.1% between the two years it cites, and a business think tank surveyed by EY found that 51% of respondents believed casinos other than Total Casino operate legally in Poland. That last figure is the reason this guide exists: half the readers who search the question have been told the wrong answer.