The Swedish Gambling Authority, Spelinspektionen (SGA), has outlined proposed changes to the nation's Gambling Act which seek to clarify which gambling entities are exempt from anti money laundering (AML) requirements.
As outlined as part of these changes, online gambling in the nation is to remain fully covered by the current AML / CTF related regulations in place in Sweden's Gambling Act, with this new regulation set to apply only to offline games. As such, all forms of retail lottery, amusement games and land-based casino games - including electronic table games and slots - will no longer be exempt from the AML requirements of the Gambling Act.
This law is set to take force from September 2026 and looks to close a previous loophole which allowed lottery systems to act as de facto payment accounts. Specifically, these changes will affect the 12 licence holders for land-based commercial casino gambling in Sweden, currently operating around 425 gaming venues across the nation.
Indeed, it has been clarified by the SGA that, in the wake of numerous recent land-based casino closures such as Casino Cosmopol, the authority upgraded the AML risk of its land-based industry from low to medium and is now seeking to further enforce AML laws on the sector.
As such, the regulatory landscape is now undergoing a broader adjustment to ensure player safety and crime prevention to align regulation with current risk levels.
This latest update falls in the wake of additional proposed player protection-related regulations in Sweden, as the nation proposed a blanket ban on credit gambling from April 2026 last month. More recently, The SGA also unveiled that the nation's regulated gambling market recorded a Q3 2025 turnover of SEK 6.7bn ($700m), up 0.5% year-on-year.
In Q1, an AGT report revealed that unlicensed betting continued to thrive in Sweden, despite significant recent changes to the market's structure
