Kingdom of Cambodia
Cambodia licenses land-based casinos and prohibits online gambling, and the two facts are connected. The online ban took effect on 1 January 2020, after the sector had grown rapidly on offshore demand, and the Law on the Management of Commercial Gambling followed later that year, promulgated on 14 November 2020 after adoption by the National Assembly on 5 October. The law created the Commercial Gambling Management Commission and a foreigner-only land-based model: Cambodian nationals, public officials included, may not gamble in the country's casinos. The regulator has since tightened supervision, including placing permanent offices inside licensed venues and suspending licences. Cambodia is also central to the regional scam-compound story, and enforcement against licensed casinos increasingly overlaps with enforcement against organised cross-border crime rather than with gambling policy as such. The regulator revoked 20 casino licences in August 2026, and has suspended others, so the licensed field is not stable. For anyone assessing counterparty risk, the licence list is a moving target rather than a stable register, and a licence held today is not evidence of standing tomorrow. Enforcement is being driven by international pressure on scam operations rather than by domestic gambling policy.
Law on the Management of Commercial Gambling
Licence revocations and suspensions are the thing to track. The regulator has shown willingness to withdraw licences at scale, which makes counterparty risk in Cambodia a live commercial question rather than a theoretical one.
Prime Minister Hun Manet has ordered a nationwide suspension of live online betting operated from casino premises, with licence revocation for anyone who ignores it. Play resumes only once the government has built the legal and digital controls it says are missing, and the order arrives days after the regulator began drafting a suitability test for licence renewals.
The Commercial Gambling Management Commission is building an integrity and quality evaluation framework that would set minimum conditions for holding a casino licence. It follows a year in which the regulator revoked 20 licences and suspended 29 more over links to online scam operations.