Based on the Gambling Control Act, 2025 (No. 14 of 2025) and the Gambling Control (Licensing) Regulations, 2026 (Legal Notice No. 111, 30 June 2026), read against the repealed Betting, Lotteries and Gaming Act (Cap. 131)
Cross-Cutting Changes That Apply to Every Category
Before getting into individual licences, several requirements now sit above all of them and mark the clearest departure from Cap. 131:
• 30% Kenyan shareholding rule — every licensed body corporate must have at least 30% of its shares held by Kenyan citizens. Cap. 131 had no equivalent local-ownership threshold of this kind.
• Mandatory local bank account — all gambling monies must run through an account with a Kenya-registered financial institution.
• Security requirement — an insurance bond or bank guarantee is now a standard condition of licensing across most categories, sized to the licence type.
• Regulator swap — licences are now issued by the Gambling Regulatory Authority (GRA), not the Betting Control and Licensing Board (BCLB). BCLB’s assets, liabilities, and staff transferred to the GRA, but the licensing relationship itself is new.
• National vs county split — operators now need both a national licence (GRA) for the activity itself and a county trade permit for each physical premises, splitting a function that used to sit more with the national board alone.
• Existing Cap. 131 licences remain valid only for the 60-day transition window from the Regulations’ publication (30 June 2026) — after that, operating on an old licence is unlawful.
Category-by-Category
1. Table Games & Slot Machines (Casino)
What it contains: Authorises land-based or online casino-style operations — table games (roulette, blackjack, poker etc.) and slot machines.
What’s changed: Now explicitly split into land-based (3-year licence) and online (1-year licence) variants with very different fee and capital profiles — online carries a KES 50m licence fee against KES 5m land-based. Cap. 131’s “public gaming” licence covered similar ground but without a dedicated online variant or online-specific capital thresholds (online casino capital requirement is now KES 100m).
2. Bookmaker (on-course / off-course)
What it contains: Authorises taking fixed-odds bets, split by on-course (at a racecourse/sporting venue) and off-course (elsewhere), and now further split by land-based vs online.
What’s changed: This licence existed under Cap. 131, but the online variant — with its own KES 50m licence fee and KES 100m minimum capital — is new. The old regime treated a bookmaker’s operation largely as one undifferentiated activity regardless of channel.
3. Totalisator (on-course / off-course)
What it contains: Authorises pool-based betting systems (particularly horse racing) where winnings are calculated from the pool rather than fixed odds.
What’s changed: Existed under Cap. 131 in similar form; the new regime adds an online totalisator variant and raises the minimum capital to KES 50m (land) / KES 100m (online) — a substantial increase on historical BCLB thresholds.
4. Prize Competition
What it contains: Covers commercial and non-commercial promotional competitions — the “SMS to win,” in-store draw, or social-media giveaway model — for a fixed 90 or 180-day period.
What’s changed: This is now a clearly delineated, separately-licensed category with fees pegged to a percentage of the promotion/prize budget (10% for 90 days, 20% for 180 days) rather than a flat fee. Businesses running consumer promotions that would previously not have thought of themselves as “gambling” operators are now squarely inside the licensing net if the competition has an entry/chance element.
5. Bingo
What it contains: Authorises bingo operations, land-based or online.
What’s changed: Bingo now sits as its own distinct licence with online-specific capital requirements (KES 50m online vs KES 5m land-based) — a much sharper distinction, and much higher online bar, than existed previously.
6. Pool Betting Scheme
What it contains: Authorises pool betting products (distinct from totalisators — typically fixed-structure pools rather than pari-mutuel racing pools).
What’s changed: Existed under Cap. 131; now carries an explicit online variant and a KES 50m/100m capital split.
7. Public Lottery
What it contains: Authorises long-term, short-term, and online lotteries, plus separate incidental and private lottery sub-fees.
What’s changed: The long-term/short-term/online trichotomy with separate fee schedules for each is new structurally — Cap. 131’s lottery provisions were comparatively simpler. The National Lottery itself now carries a standalone, very high capital threshold (KES 2 billion) reflecting its distinct national character.
8. Online Gambling (Bookmaker / Lottery / Casino)
What it contains: A consolidated online licensing pathway covering the online variants of bookmaking, lottery, and casino activity, layered with the online-specific fee and capital figures noted under each category above.
What’s changed: Online gambling had no dedicated statutory licensing category under Cap. 131 — it was regulated, where at all, through analogy to land-based categories or through the separate Kenya Information and Communications Act framework. This is the single biggest gap the new Act closes.
9. Equipment Manufacture / Assembly
What it contains: Licenses businesses that manufacture or assemble gambling equipment (slot machines, terminals, etc.) for the Kenyan market.
What’s changed: Entirely new licence category. Cap. 131 did not license equipment manufacturers as a distinct regulated class.
10. Equipment Sale / Distribution
What it contains: Licenses businesses that sell or distribute gambling equipment to licensed operators.
What’s changed: New category, same rationale as above — closing a supply-chain gap.
11. Equipment Testing
What it contains: Licenses independent testing laboratories that certify gambling equipment and software for fairness/compliance.
What’s changed: New category. This function either didn’t formally exist in the licensing structure or was handled informally/by foreign labs without a domestic licensing requirement.
12. Gambling Software / Platform
What it contains: Licenses providers of the software and platforms that power online gambling products — a critical category given how much of Kenya’s gambling market now runs on third-party or white-label platforms.
What’s changed: Entirely new. This is arguably the most consequential new category for the tech side of the industry — platform and software vendors that previously operated purely as B2B technology suppliers, with no direct regulatory relationship with the BCLB, are now licensees in their own right.
13. Equipment Repair & Servicing
What it contains: Licenses businesses that repair or service gambling equipment post-installation.
What’s changed: New category, rounding out the full equipment lifecycle (manufacture → sale → testing → repair) under regulatory oversight.
14. Key Gambling Employee
What it contains: Individual licensing of employees in defined “key” roles within a gambling operation (e.g., senior management, compliance, gaming-floor supervisors), local and foreign, including fit-and-proper checks, police clearance, and work permits for foreign employees.
What’s changed: Individual employee licensing of this kind did not exist under Cap. 131, which regulated at the level of the corporate licensee. This is a structural shift toward personal accountability.
15. Directors / Significant Shareholders
What it contains: Individual approval/licensing of directors and significant shareholders (and by extension, scrutiny of beneficial ownership) of a licensed entity.
What’s changed: New. Cap. 131 assessed corporate fitness at entity level; the new Act pushes scrutiny down to the individuals controlling or owning the entity, with materially higher fees for foreign directors/shareholders (KES 200k vs KES 100k for local).
16. Cross-County Media Promotions & Advertising Authorisation
What it contains: A separate authorisation for advertising/promotional campaigns that run across county boundaries, with fees set at 6% of the advertising budget.
What’s changed: New category, and it interacts with the broader Gambling Control (Advertising) Regulations, 2026, which introduce stricter controls on how gambling is promoted generally (including likely restrictions relevant to media placements, influencer content, and reach into vulnerable audiences, an area worth watching closely given content and promotions work for clients in this space).
What This Adds Up To
The shift is less “new licences replacing old ones” and more “the same core gambling activities now sit inside a much finer-grained and much more expensive licensing lattice” split by channel (land/online), extended down the supply chain (equipment, software, testing), and pushed down to the individual (directors, key employees). For a firm advising operators, suppliers, or businesses running promotions with a chance element, the practical effect is that far more entities in the value chain now need to ask “do I need a GRA licence?” than did under Cap. 131.
