How to check a Curaçao casino licence

Click the seal on the casino’s own site

A casino licensed in Curaçao should show a seal from the Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA). Its certification policy, read on 4 October 2026, describes two seals:

• The Certificate of Operation seal is only for business-to-consumer (B2C) operators, on a player-facing website whose domain the authority has approved and registered.
• The License Certificate seal confirms that a company holds a licence, either to offer games to players or to supply other operators (B2B, business-to-business). It may appear on a corporate website and does not cover a casino site.

Clicking the seal on a casino site must take you to cert.cga.cw, the authority’s certificate site. Stop if the seal looks different in design, colour or format, or opens another website: the policy says such a site is not authorised by the authority.

Check that the certificate names your domain

A certificate of operation must show the exact domain you are visiting, the licensed operator and its current licence status. If it shows another domain, the policy says the site is displaying another operator’s certificate and should be considered unauthorised or fraudulent.

For example, the certificate for winshark.com, checked on 3 October 2026, names GBL Solutions N.V. (company number 155090) and licence OGL/2024/589/0556, granted on 14 April 2025, with the status “Active”. The company’s licence certificate lists 21 approved domains; a site that is not on that list is not covered by it.

A licence certificate is not a substitute for a certificate of operation: the authority says it is not domain-specific, does not authorise a player-facing website and that the two are not interchangeable.

Find the licence in the latest register

The authority also publishes its online licences as a dated PDF register on its licence register page, covering licences granted under the online gaming policy in force since 15 November 2023. Look up the licence number and read the status together with the issue and expiry dates. In the register dated 2 October 2026, 283 licences were marked “Assessment in progress” and 281 of them had an expiry date that had already passed; every licence with both dates ran six months from issue to expiry.

The licence behind winshark.com is one of them: row 297 shows an expiry date of 14 April 2026 and “Assessment in progress”, while the certificate still read “Active”. The register does not explain the difference, and the authority says its overviews do not guarantee that a licence is currently valid. Our Curaçao register data sets out every status with its count.

Match the company in the terms

The terms and conditions should name the company that runs the site, and it should be the company on the certificate. In the terms we read, that link was often missing: Winshark’s and TuffPuff’s describe an unnamed company in Cyprus with gambling services from an unnamed parent company in Curaçao (clause 1.1), so only the certificate connects the two domains to GBL Solutions N.V.. When the names differ or are missing, ask the operator in writing which company holds your account and under which licence.

Check the address in your browser as well as the brand name. For TuffPuff, the partner link we followed led to tuffpuffgo.com, a domain the licence does not list; our TuffPuff review sets out the record.

What a Curaçao licence covers, and what it does not

According to the authority’s online gaming page, online gaming licences have been governed since 24 December 2024 by the National Ordinance on Games of Chance (Landsverordening op de kansspelen), and the regulator formerly called the Gaming Control Board is referred to as the Curaçao Gaming Authority. The earlier ordinance on offshore games of hazard remains relevant through the new law’s transitional provisions. The certification policy says the authority monitors licensed operators’ domains, terms and conditions, responsible-gaming measures and the safeguarding of player funds in a segregated or federated account.

A licence does not settle a dispute: the authority says it does not handle individual complaints against gaming providers, so a complaint goes to the operator first, as our guide to complaining about an online casino explains. Nor is it permission to serve players in your country, which depends on your local law; our Ireland licence-check guide shows how to keep the two questions apart.

A quick checklist

• The seal opens cert.cga.cw, not another site.
• The certificate shows the exact domain in your address bar.
• The operator and licence number match the certificate and the latest register.
• The register’s status and dates make sense; if the expiry date has passed, ask the operator about it in writing.
• The company named in the terms is the one on the certificate.
• You know where a complaint would go before you deposit.

The other common offshore licence works differently: see how to check an Anjouan casino licence.