Germany’s monthly deposit cap for online gambling has moved from a compliance footnote to one of the most litigated issues in the country’s regulated market. Three rulings handed down within the past few months – by the Munich I Regional Court, the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court and, most recently, the Munich Higher Regional Court – have converged on the same conclusion: operators who fail to enforce the limit remain liable for players’ losses, regardless of whether they hold a valid German licence.

The rule everyone is talking about

Since 1 July 2021, Section 6c(1) of the Interstate Treaty on Gambling (Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021, “GlüStV 2021”) has capped deposits across all German-facing online gambling products at €1,000 ($1,143) per calendar month – and that cap applies across providers, not per platform. Compliance is meant to be enforced through LUGAS, the centralised limit file that operators must query before accepting any deposit. If a player has already hit the ceiling, the deposit is supposed to be rejected outright.

Section 4(5) No. 2 GlüStV 2021 ties this obligation directly to licensing: an operator that does not actively monitor and enforce the deposit limit cannot lawfully hold a German permit in the first place. That link between the limit and the licence is what now drives the litigation.

Munich Higher Regional Court: The limit is a prohibitory statute

In a decision handed down on 19 June 2026, the Munich Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht München) dismissed a sports betting operator›s appeal in full and upheld an earlier Munich I Regional Court judgment in favour of a player. Between April and May 2022, the Malta-based operator had failed to set up any cross-provider deposit limit on the claimant’s account – a limit was only activated in mid-June 2022. During the unregulated period, the player lost €6,022.67.

The appellate court classified Section 6c(1) GlüStV 2021 as a prohibitory statute within the meaning of Section 134 of the German Civil Code (BGB): even though the provision is addressed to operators rather than players, the court held that its consumer-protection purpose can only be achieved if breaches render the underlying betting contracts void. On that basis, the player’s stakes were recoverable as unjust enrichment under Section 812(1) BGB.

Crucially, the court went further and confirmed that Section 6c(1) GlüStV 2021 also qualifies as a protective statute (“Schutzgesetz”) for the purposes of Section 823(2) BGB – opening the door to tortious damages claims in addition to restitution. The court rejected the operator’s defence that the LUGAS system was not yet fully operational at the relevant time, holding that fault is irrelevant to an unjust-enrichment claim, and it dismissed the argument that a “legacy customer” registered before the treaty’s entry into force fell outside its scope: what matters is the law in force when the deposits were made. 

Stuttgart: An appellate court confirms the protective-statute theory

The Munich ruling builds on an earlier landmark decision. On 27 February 2026, the Stuttgart Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart) ordered an operator to repay a player’s full losses – around €15,000 accumulated between January 2022 and April 2023 – after the operator repeatedly accepted deposits above the statutory limit.

The court held that breaching Sections 4(5) No. 2 and 6c(1) GlüStV 2021 constitutes a violation of a protective statute under Section 823(2) BGB, expressly independent of whether the operator held a licence at all. This was the first time an appellate-level German court had confirmed the protective character of the deposit limit, and it gave the numerous first-instance rulings that preceded it (Munich II, Osnabrück, Mainz, Heidelberg, Stendal, among others) authoritative backing.

Munich I: A six-figure award, and a direct break with the earlier Munich line

On 12 June 2026, the Munich I Regional Court (Landgericht München I) went further still, awarding a player more than €100,000.00 (case no. 40 O 12906/25). The claimant had deposited more than €140,000 with a licensed Maltese based operator in a single month in 2022, against the €1,000 statutory limit and suffered a net loss of more than €100,000.

What makes the case notable is that the court explicitly distanced itself from an earlier, operator-friendly ruling of the Munich Higher Regional Court dated 5 January 2026; in which that court had held that Section 6c GlüStV 2021 was not a protective statute and that enforcement of deposit limits was a matter for the gambling regulator alone, not for private litigants. Munich I instead sided with a competing line of case law from the Memmingen Regional Court, and the underlying legal question is now pending before the Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, case no. I ZR 4/26).

Read together, the picture is now clearer than it has been at any point since 2021: the Munich Higher Regional Court’s June 2026 decision effectively supersedes its own January 2026 position and aligns Munich with Stuttgart, while the Federal Court of Justice is expected to deliver the final word on the point in due course.

 What this means in practice

Deposit limit above €1,000/month. If an operator allowed you to deposit more than €1,000 in a calendar month without properly verifying and approving a higher individual limit, the resulting losses – potentially all deposits made during the affected period – may be recoverable, whether the operator was licensed or not.

Two separate legal bases. Claims can rest on unjust enrichment (Section 812 BGB, where the contract is void) and/or statutory damages (Section 823(2) BGB, for breach of a protective statute) – the latter available even where the contract was formally valid.

Limitation periods are tightening. Claims relating to losses from 2021 and 2022 may already be time-barred or close to it. Losses from 2023 generally become statute-barred at the end of 2026 under the standard three-year limitation period (Sections 195, 199 BGB); losses from 2024 remain open until the end of 2027. Enrichment claims may in some circumstances benefit from a longer, 10-year period under Section 852 BGB, though this depends on the facts of the individual case.

A licence is not a shield. All three courts confirm, in different ways, that holding a valid German gambling licence does not excuse an operator from enforcing the deposit limit – and does not protect it from liability where it fails to do so.

 Next steps for affected players

Players who deposited more than €1,000 in any month since July 2021 should gather account statements, deposit and withdrawal histories and any records of limit-increase requests. Given the approaching 2026 deadline for 2023 losses, an early legal assessment is advisable – pre-litigation demand letters rarely move operators; in practice, payment tends to follow only once litigation is genuinely on the table.

 Rechtsanwalt Cocron GmbH & Co. KG, with offices in Munich and Berlin, represents players nationwide in deposit-limit proceedings and has obtained several of the rulings referenced above, including the Munich I and Munich Higher Regional Court decisions.