Gambling Regulatory News: Netherlands & Portugal — July 2026

What's changing with the Netherlands' gambling tax rate in 2026?

The Dutch gambling tax on gross gaming revenue has climbed in stages: 30.5% in 2024, 34.2% from 1 January 2025, and 37.8% from 1 January 2026. Add the separate 1.95% gambling levy operators also pay, and the effective burden on licensed Dutch operators now sits close to 40% of GGR. The government expected the 2025 increase alone to raise an extra €200 million a year — instead, the KSA's own research found 2025 gambling tax revenue came in lower than 2024, as higher tax pushed player activity, and likely some operators, toward the unlicensed market rather than generating more revenue from the licensed one.

Why it matters for link building: a tax rate this high squeezes marketing budgets across every channel, and a shrinking revenue base makes operators more selective about where that budget goes. Durable, compliant Dutch casino backlinks that keep paying off after the campaign ends look relatively better under that pressure than paid channels that stop the moment spend does.

Why is the Dutch KSA raising licence fees from April 2026?

Separately from the tax rate, the KSA confirmed in a Government Gazette notice that gambling licence application fees and certain licence-modification fees rise from 1 April 2026, following indexation tied to wage and price increases and the regulator's own 2026 budget assumptions. A new remote gambling licence now costs €61,300, up from €48,000, and modifying an existing licence rises from €8,000 to €10,200.

Why it matters for link building: rising entry and compliance costs concentrate the licensed Dutch market among operators with the budget to absorb them. Fewer, better-capitalised licensees generally means a smaller but higher-quality pool of genuinely on-topic Dutch publishers to build relevance-based links with, which raises the value of vetting Dutch inventory carefully rather than chasing volume.

What's happening with Portugal's centralised self-exclusion system?

Portugal's SRIJ launched a centralised self-exclusion portal in April 2026, replacing the old site-by-site system so a single registration now blocks a player from every licensed operator at once rather than one platform at a time. Registrations were already climbing before the launch — 309,100 at the end of Q1 2025 rising to 326,400 by the end of Q2, up around 27% year on year — and gaming law coverage of the rollout notes operators are still working through integration challenges months after go-live.

Why it matters for link building: a genuinely centralised exclusion system is a stronger compliance backstop than most European markets have, which makes SRIJ-licensed brands a comparatively low-risk placement target — but it also means content and links should never target or retarget anyone associated with the exclusion portal.

What enforcement action has Portugal's SRIJ taken this year?

SRIJ enforcement accelerated sharply through 2026. The regulator's first-quarter 2025 baseline was 54 closure notices, 129 ISP-ordered website blocks and five prosecutor referrals; by the second quarter of 2026 that had grown to 208 total enforcement actions, including 110 website blocks and 97 cease-and-desist notices, taking the cumulative total past 1,500 illegal sites blocked since Portugal's online market opened in 2015.

Why it matters for link building: that pace of blocking makes publisher vetting in Portugal a moving target — a domain that looked clean last quarter could now be sitting one step from an SRIJ block if it has drifted toward unlicensed-operator content. Check host domains against current enforcement activity immediately before a placement goes live, not just when a publisher is first added to inventory.

What's coming in Portugal's summer 2026 illegal-gambling legislation?

With roughly 40% of Portuguese online gambling activity still flowing to unlicensed platforms, Portugal's government confirmed plans for summer 2026 legislation specifically targeting illegal operators, expected to expand SRIJ's enforcement powers further. The measure sits alongside SRIJ's separate January 2026 consultation on updating sports-betting and online-slots technical rules, so Portugal is moving on both the legal and enforcement fronts at once this year.

Why it matters for link building: legislation aimed squarely at the illegal market — rather than at licensed operators or their marketing — is a rare regulatory move that only helps the compliant side of the industry. It's also a reason to make a licensed brand's regulatory standing part of the pitch in any Portuguese guest post or niche edit: being demonstrably, verifiably licensed is about to matter more to Portuguese readers, not less.

What this means for your link building this quarter

Two different mechanisms, one shared effect: the Netherlands is making the licensed market more expensive to operate in, and Portugal is making the unlicensed market harder to operate in at all. Neither restricts organic search or backlinks directly, but both push more weight onto the compliant, durable side of acquisition — exactly the channel relevance-first link building is built for.