Dominican Gambling Law Takes Effect, With 12 Months for Operators to Register

Law 86-26 is in the Gaceta Oficial and the new regulator has an interim chief, but the decade-long licence freeze has not started. It begins only when a register of existing operators is published, more than a year from now, and the months before then decide who is inside it.

• Law 86-26, which regulates gambling in the Dominican Republic, was published in Gaceta Oficial 11263 on 2 October, having been promulgated on 22 September by Vice President Raquel Peña as acting head of the executive
• By Decree 684-26, Abinader named Teófilo "Quico" Tabar Manzur, who coordinated the regularisation of betting shops, as transitional director general of the new Dirección General de Juegos de Azar (DGJA)
• Licensed operators have 12 months to register with the DGJA and a year to swap old licences and state concessions for new ones; the council then has 90 days to publish the register, and only then does the ten-year ban on new licences begin
• Lottery shop licences run for five years and most others for ten, with casinos confined to hotels of four stars or more
• Until the tax authority can measure online turnover, each online operator pays a flat RD$5 million (approximately $83,000) a month in place of the 10% monthly tax Congress approved on 16 September

The Law Was Signed on 22 September and Published Ten Days Later

The Dominican Republic's first comprehensive gambling law since 1964 is in force. Law 86-26 appears in Gaceta Oficial 11263, dated 2 October 2026, and the official text held by the Consultoría Jurídica del Poder Ejecutivo records that it was promulgated on 22 September by Vice President Raquel Peña, "Encargada del Poder Ejecutivo", while Abinader was in New York for the UN General Assembly. Congress sent the bill to the executive on 18 September, and as late as 28 September Listín Diario reported that the government had not said whether it had promulgated it. Under Article 196 it takes effect on promulgation and publication, after the short periods set by the Civil Code.

On the day of publication, the presidency announced Decree 684-26, appointing Teófilo José Abrahán Leo Tabar Manzur as director general of the DGJA on a transitional basis. Tabar, administrator of the National Lottery, has coordinated the regularisation of lottery and betting shops since April, and now leads a body that Article 5 creates as an autonomous, decentralised regulator attached to the Ministry of Finance and Economy. That closes a debate that ran from a 2025 draft the industry called flawed and chaotic to a June bill that would have made the National Lottery itself the regulator. Under Article 185, until the DGJA's structure is in place, its director general exercises its powers provisionally under the supervision of the Consejo de Juegos de Azar, with the staff of the ministry's former Directorate of Casinos and Games of Chance, whose pending business passes to the new body.

The changeover has already slowed the system. The Ministry of Finance and Economy said in a notice that it had suspended new permit applications, inspection requests, closures and slot machine import, export and transfer requests until a director general was appointed and the new body was operating, keeping pending files open without decisions. It has not said whether Tabar's appointment lifts the suspension.

The Clocks That Start Now

Licence holders have three months under Article 184 to bring their platforms and operations into line. The president must issue implementing regulations within 90 days under Article 193, and the council must approve the DGJA's internal rules and structure within 120 days under Article 194. Within six months the DGJA and the tax authority, the DGII, must build a link to monitor play and collect tax (Article 183), and the DGJA must set new fees (Article 188). Within a year every existing licence and every state concession must be exchanged for a new DGJA licence, with acquired rights expressly preserved (Articles 181 and 182).

The registration clock is the one that matters most. Article 190 gives legally operating establishments 12 months to enter the DGJA's Single Registry System, extending that window to the lottery shops and betting outlets that joined the regularisation plan reactivated by Decree 197-26 in March. The council then has 90 days to publish the register of licensees, and Article 191 bars new licences for ten years from that publication, with casinos in hotels and tourist locations exempt. Operators that regularise can also expect a discount scheme for tax arrears accrued up to December 2025 (Article 192).

Lottery shop licences run for five years (Article 84), against two in the version the Senate first passed; Diario Libre reported that the Chamber of Deputies' amendments, which also dropped provisions on shop workers' social security, tilted the law towards shop owners. Sports betting shops (Article 87), casinos (Article 48), slot halls (Article 66) and online operators (Article 77) are licensed for ten years. Article 26 bans gambling premises within 500 metres of schools, hospitals, churches and other protected sites, and sets gaps of 500 metres between sports betting shops and 200 metres between lottery shops. Casinos are exempt from the distance rules, and Article 49 confines them to hotels classified four stars or above.

The Freeze Is Further Away Than It Looked, and the Register Decides Who Is Inside It

The ten-year moratorium was read in September as a freeze starting now. It is not: on the timetable in Articles 190 and 191 it begins between October 2027 and January 2028, depending on when the council publishes the register. That makes the next 15 months a scramble to get on the list in a country where the law itself counts more than 71,000 registered lottery and sports betting shops. Article 190 opens the registration route to licensed establishments that can show they meet the Article 26 distances, which, on a plain reading, leaves open what happens to shops already trading inside the 200-metre and 500-metre limits. Resolved against them, the freeze locks out some incumbents as well as newcomers; resolved for them, the distance rules will bind almost no one for a decade.

A Flat RD$5 Million a Month Is the Online Regime Until the State Can Count

The 10% monthly tax on online operations is the headline rate, but Article 186 replaces it, until the DGJA and DGII have built their monitoring link, with a flat RD$5 million (approximately $83,000) a month per company. A flat charge is easy to collect, but it is regressive: a small operator pays the same as the market leader, and an unlicensed one pays nothing. The blocking, payment suspension and published blocklist in Article 79 are what stop players drifting to the unlicensed sites, and they depend on a regulator that, for now, consists of an interim director general and the staff of a ministry department. A licensed online market whose entry price is fixed before its enforcement is working risks channelling fewer players than the law intends.

The Autonomous Regulator Answers to a Council of Ministers

Article 5 calls the DGJA autonomous, but under Article 40 every licence is decided by the council, on the director general's proposal, and the council is chaired by the finance minister and includes the ministers of tourism and of interior and police, the heads of INDOTEL, the DGII and the government technology office, and three members named by the president. The director general, also a presidential appointee, sits as its secretary without a vote. That is a design built for independence from the industry rather than from the government. For operators, the practical consequence is that the fees, licence conditions and internal rules due over the next six months will be settled at a table of ministers, not by the regulator's own executive.

The Dominican Republic has its gambling law. What it does not yet have is the register, the regulations or the regulator's own structure, and the operators who secure their place on that register in the next year will have the market to themselves for ten years after it.