How to get a gambling licence in Montenegro: fees and steps

UIS keeps the register of organisers, approves game rules, runs the online supervision system and issues most approvals. Montenegro is not an EU member, so no EU-level body applies. The Ministry of Finance makes the rulebooks and inspects through its gambling inspectorate.

• Only companies may organise games of chance, not natural persons (Art. 21(1)).
• Anti-money-laundering work sits with the Financial Intelligence Unit, a unit of the police. Operators must give it real-time electronic access to the supervision system and five years of data (Art. 27(6), (8)).
• Advertising in the media is supervised by the ministry competent for media and “the regulatory body”, which the Law does not name (Art. 88(2)). The outdoor-advertising rule is the Ministry’s, enforced by its gambling inspectors.
• Credit institutions and payment providers must act at once on the supervisor’s request not to execute payments to unauthorised organisers (Art. 96).

Laws that apply

• Zakon o igrama na sreću (Law on Games of Chance), Sl. list CG 91/2025: published 6 August 2025, in force 14 August 2025, 108 articles; it repealed the 2004 Law the same day
• Zakon o izmjenama i dopunama Zakona o igrama na sreću, Sl. list CG 117/2026: in force 8 August 2026; only the new Art. 22a applies from 1 January 2027
• Ministry of Finance rulebooks: Sl. list CG 151/2025 (application forms and the register of excluded persons), 1/2026 (outdoor advertising), 27/2026 (monthly online record and fee proof), 67/2026; technical rulebook for online play, Sl. list CG 79/2024, 83/2024 and 89/2024, with Annex 1 (UIS transaction API v1)
• Zakon o sprečavanju pranja novca i finansiranja terorizma (AML Law), Sl. list CG 110/2023, as consolidated through 59/2026
• Zakon o porezu na dohodak fizičkih lica (personal income tax, Art. 37s and 50f; rate replaced by Sl. list CG 70/2026) · Zakon o porezu na dobit pravnih lica (corporate profit tax) · Zakon o porezu na dodatu vrijednost (VAT)
• AVMU rulebook on commercial audiovisual communications, Sl. list CG 121/2024, amended by 104/2025

Approvals are issued per type of game and per location. Online play is not a separate licence: the online decision sits on top of an approval for betting, casino games or slot clubs, and the online fees distinguish betting games from virtual casinos and virtual slots (Art. 83).

• Online, one decision covers the games listed in the application, but Art. 83 charges separate fees for betting online and for virtual casinos and slots online.
• An operator may have one initial website (IP address, website or domain) for online games (Art. 78(6)). The UIS list shows one domain per company (13 companies, 13 domains). Brands are not mentioned.
• No numerical cap on approvals is set. Premises are limited indirectly: 150 metres from schools (Art. 22) and, from 1 January 2027, 50 metres between lottery and special-games premises (Art. 22a) (land-based).
• Renewal is a new application, not automatic. For betting it is filed at the earliest 120 and at the latest 60 days before expiry (Art. 44(8)); the online right renews through the underlying approval, and the Law has no separate online renewal.
• A foreign licence gives no right to offer games to players in Montenegro (Art. 3, 21(1)).

Only a joint-stock company (akcionarsko društvo) or a limited-liability company (društvo sa ograničenom odgovornošću) with its seat in Montenegro, whose core activity is gambling and betting, may organise games of chance (Art. 21(1)).

• A branch of a foreign company is not among the permitted forms. A foreign legal person, from the EU, EEA or elsewhere, can only be a founder or member of the Montenegrin company, and the Law makes no distinction by origin of the owner.
• A foreign founder or member shows tax-compliance evidence from its own state, not older than 30 days, with register extracts and a list of owners. Foreign documents are translated by a court interpreter and notarised.
• A company that holds rights for several game types needs the prescribed capital for each (Art. 34(3), 50(3), 62(1)). The online decision has no separate capital figure. Whether capital must be paid up in cash is not stated.
• The company, its director, representatives, members, founder and beneficial owner must have no final conviction for the listed offence groups, no pending criminal proceedings against the founder and beneficial owner for professional activity, and taxes paid up (Art. 23(2)).
• No residency or nationality test for directors or the authorised representative is set. For a person who is not a Montenegrin citizen, criminal-record certificates are needed from the state of citizenship and from the state of residence of the last two years.
• Changes to management, representatives, capital holders or ownership are notified within 5 days with a request to keep the right; UIS decides within 30 days, and a decision can include revocation (Art. 25).
• After a revocation, the company, its founders, beneficial owners and directors face a two-year bar on a new application (Art. 86(5)-(6)).

UIS receives the application on the prescribed form: Obrazac 2 for betting and Obrazac 5 for the online decision, fixed by rulebook Sl. list CG 151/2025. Whether filing is on paper or electronic is not stated; supporting documents go in as originals or notarised copies (Art. 23(7)).

• Art. 23(4) lists 17 documents: registration extract; tax ID, name and seat; founding act; ownership list; extracts for corporate members; certified ID copies of the director, members and management; beneficial-owner data; a notarised statement on related companies; criminal-record certificates; proof of share capital; a three-year business plan; balance sheets and income statements for the last two years (or the founder’s audited statements); and proof that the administrative fee is paid. Evidence must be no older than 60 days.
• For betting, add the game rules, equipment, list of payment points, proof of the one-off fee and the guarantee (Art. 44(4)). For the online decision, add the name, tax ID and seat, the three-year business plan, and the list of games with their rules (Art. 78(3)).
• Source of funds is not named in the Law; any such check comes from the AML Law. No separate financial-projection document is listed.
• No third-party game or platform certificate is listed among the application documents. Technical fitness is checked after filing: before it decides, UIS checks that the conditions for connecting the online games to its supervision system exist, and the operator may not start before that (Art. 78(4)-(5)).
• There is no pre-application ruling on a company’s suitability. UIS does decide whether a particular game is a game of chance and approves game rules (Art. 13(1)(1)).
• The Law gives no separate list of refusal grounds. Against a UIS decision on betting or slot-club approvals an appeal lies to the Ministry of Finance (Art. 24(4)); the appeal deadline is not stated.
• No general application window applies: an application can be filed at any time.

The online decision itself carries no one-off fee. The up-front money sits in the underlying betting approval and in the monthly online fee.

• The guarantee is an unconditional first-demand bank guarantee from a credit institution seated in Montenegro, held for the approval period plus 90 days. For an online betting operator it is €30,000, plus €3,000 per shop. No refund provision exists; UIS calls it if the operator stops operating at a loss or does not settle a debt within five days of revocation.
• Each online fee category is a fixed €10,000 a month plus a variable 15% of stakes minus payouts. Example: €1,000,000 of stakes minus payouts in a month gives €150,000 of variable fee.
• No levy for responsible gambling or other charitable contribution is set, and no separate supervision levy falls on online operators. Operators connect to the UIS supervision system at their own cost.
• There is no B2B licence, so no B2B fee exists.

An online operator pays no tax on its gaming result as such. It pays a monthly games-of-chance fee to the state, in a fixed and a variable part, set separately for online betting and for virtual casinos and virtual slots (Art. 83). The fees go to the state and local budgets.

• The base is stakes minus payouts, a gross-gaming-revenue base. Art. 83 has no rule for a month in which payouts exceed stakes.
• Bonuses and promotional credits are not deductible. A bonus win moved to the record account counts as a stake when transferred, and again if staked from the record account (Art. 85(7)-(8)).
• The operator files a monthly record with the final result and proof of payment, electronically and in print, by the 15th of the following month. It is shown by game type and goes in through the UIS information system (rulebook Sl. list CG 27/2026).
• The winnings tax is on each win, less the stake that produced it, not on net annual winnings. Winnings from casino tables, slot machines and virtual casino or slot games are outside Art. 37s(1), except a global jackpot paid in money. A payer who fails to withhold faces a fine of €2,000 to €20,000.
• No national advertising or sponsorship tax on gambling and no other gambling-specific online tax was found. Art. 83 is the only online fee provision.
• The online right lasts only as long as the underlying approval, so an online operator also carries the fees of that approval: betting shops €750 a month plus 10% of the daily result, slot machines €75 a month plus 15%, casinos €100,000 a year plus 15% (all land-based).

No third-party platform certificate is prescribed. The operator’s system and its remote link to UIS must satisfy the standards the supervisor sets for as long as the right lasts (Art. 95(5)).

• The technical rulebook (Sl. list CG 79/2024, amended by 83/2024 and 89/2024) requires data to be sent to UIS in real time through the API, from one public IP address, over a VPN provided by UIS, in the Annex 1 format. During an interruption the operator stores the data and sends it on reconnection.
• The operator must give UIS a direct information link to its supervision system (Art. 27(5)), record all stakes, payouts and winnings in real time, and send them at intervals of no more than 10 minutes (Art. 27(9)). In the API, casino and virtual slot activity is sent as summaries every 300 seconds, plus a daily summary.
• API keys are collected at UIS’s premises against a signed record and a statement of accuracy (rulebook Art. 2(4)).
• No local or mirror server and no .me domain is required, and no article fixes where servers or hosting must be. Cloud hosting is not addressed in the instruments. Data must be kept at least five years, with UIS and the Financial Intelligence Unit able to access the last five years (Art. 27(8), (11)).
• Every online game is reported to UIS with its rules; UIS gives consent within 30 days if the rules comply with the technical conditions, and the operator may start only after that consent and the online decision (Art. 79).
• No return-to-player minimum or maximum, stake cap, jackpot limit or rule on autoplay, turbo play, spin duration, bonus-buy or demo games is set for online games. Free spins are not banned, but bonuses go only through a promotional account (Art. 85).
• No periodic independent security or system audit by the operator is prescribed, and no incident-reporting duty to UIS is set. UIS supervisors check the system and its documentation at least every three months as needed (Art. 95(1)).
• The law accepts only “the legal person authorised by UIS” for technical checks of land-based equipment, and UIS opened public calls on 15 January 2026 to select it. Which body was chosen is not published. No testing laboratory is named for online platforms or games.

The minimum gambling age is 18 (Art. 20(1)(1)), and operators must enforce it in the most effective way (Art. 5(2)). Identity is verified at registration and again at each deposit.

• A bonus may be given only through a promotional account the player cannot fund; its funds are used only for play and its winnings cannot be paid out from that account (Art. 85(3)-(6)).
• A deposit cannot be paid out unless it is part of winnings (Art. 84(2)). No withdrawal time limit is set for online play.
• The statutory exclusion grounds (Art. 15(1)) are a household member receiving material support, a person diagnosed with gambling addiction and a person in criminal proceedings for non-payment of maintenance.
• Operators must make available information on where to get help for excessive gambling (Art. 5(3)). No gambling helpline number is required on an operator’s website.
• Duties in Arts. 82, 84 and 85 and the exclusion duties are inside the transition window for existing operators, which runs 450 days from 14 August 2025, computed to 7 November 2026.

Gambling advertising is allowed within limits set by Arts. 16-19 of the Law, the AVMU rulebook and the Ministry’s outdoor rulebook. No regulator approval is needed before an advertisement.

• Every advertisement carries a warning that games of chance can cause addiction and that under-18s may not take part (Art. 17(2)). On television the text appears as a graphic at the end plus an “18+” symbol in the upper corner throughout; on radio the same words close the advertisement.
• Advertising may not offer money for taking part, free participation in money games or participation at a reduced price (Art. 17(3)(9)), and may not present participation as free of financial, social or health consequences.
• Sports: no gambling advertising on sports equipment in any category up to age 18 (Art. 20(1)(26)). An operator may not sponsor a programme for minors.
• Celebrity and influencer rules: the AVMU rulebook’s ban on well-known persons with influence among minors was replaced by an amendment in force 27 September 2025, and no replacement is published. The Law bans advertising in all media and at events intended for minors and young people (Art. 16(2)).
• The Law has no affiliate article: each person who advertises contrary to Arts. 16-19 is penalised directly, with fines of €5,000 to €20,000 for a company, €550 to €6,000 for an entrepreneur and €1,000 to €2,000 for a natural person.
• Rules on direct marketing by e-mail or SMS are not covered by the Gambling Law; a bonus offer sent that way is outside the permitted channels on its face.

Gambling organisers, online ones included, are obliged entities under the AML Law (Art. 4(2)(10)). Failing to follow it is a ground for revoking the approval (Art. 86(1)(10)).

• Customer due diligence applies when a stake of €20 or more is paid in, in one or several linked transactions (AML Law Art. 18(1)(8)). Registering a client in the gaming system is a business relationship.
• Politically exposed persons may not take part in games (Art. 20(1)(2)).
• Every transaction of €2,000 or more is reported to the Financial Intelligence Unit within three working days. Suspicious dealings are reported without delay, whatever the amount (AML Law Art. 66).
• An authorised person for AML and a deputy are appointed within 60 days of starting activity. The person holds an FIU licence, which goes only to a person with domicile or approved residence in Montenegro (Art. 69-72).
• Records are kept five years after the end of the business relationship or the transaction; the FIU can require up to five more years in individual cases (Art. 127).
• The Ministry of Interior’s list of indicators has a part for online gambling, including hidden location, a high-risk third-country IP, transfer of winnings to a third party’s account, prepaid cards and several accounts linked to one bank account (Sl. list CG 29/2024).

UIS can revoke an approval on 14 grounds (Art. 86). The Law has no regulator suspension of a licence; the operator may ask for its rights and obligations to be paused in force majeure (Art. 26).

• Misdemeanour fines run from €5,000 to €20,000 for a legal person, with €1,000 to €2,000 for the responsible person (Art. 99-102). In 2025 the Ministry reports 14 misdemeanour orders with fines of €34,900 in total.
• Unlicensed operators: UIS asked the electronic-communications regulator to block more than 450 IP addresses in 2025, and banks refuse card payments to foreign merchants with merchant category code 7995 (announced 30 April 2025). Unauthorised organising of games is prosecuted as a criminal offence, and inspectors seize machines and terminals.
• No player penalty was found in practice. The Law bans participation in foreign games for which stakes are paid in Montenegro, but for online gaming that ban applies to legal persons without an online approval (Art. 20).
• Pending as of 23 October 2026: no further bill was found after the 2026 amendment. Two initiatives to the Constitutional Court are on record, on Art. 106 and on Arts. 19(3), 23, 104 and 106; the Court’s decision is not published. About nine of the 25 planned rulebooks were still to be made at the Ministry’s last report.

The Law licenses only the gambling organiser. It creates no licence class and no register for suppliers, platform providers, game providers, aggregators or affiliates.

• The approval attaches to the operator and the game: UIS approves the operator’s list of games and the rules of each online game (Art. 78(3)(3), 79), not the supplier.
• The platform is the operator’s own supervision-connected system. The duties to link it to UIS and keep it compliant fall on the operator.
• No licence is needed for hosting providers, marketing agencies or affiliates. Payment providers are licensed by the Central Bank, not by UIS.
• The only supplier-side items are a manufacturer’s guarantee and certificate that slot machines and self-service terminals meet international quality standards, shown to the legal person UIS authorises (land-based equipment).
• Foreign B2B licences are not mentioned, and foreign gambling licences give no right to offer gambling to players in Montenegro.
• No official register of approved B2B providers exists. The registers the Law provides for are UIS’s register of organisers (Art. 21(6)) and the register of excluded persons (Art. 15(3)).

The online betting route, in the order the Law sets: a Montenegrin company, the betting approval, then the online decision. The approvals and the online decision are separate decisions from UIS.

1. 01

   Form the Montenegrin company

   AD or DOO with a seat in Montenegro; share capital €200,000 for betting

   Set up a joint-stock or limited-liability company seated in Montenegro whose core activity is gambling and betting. A foreign company can only be a founder or member. Prepare the ownership list, beneficial-owner data, criminal-record certificates and a three-year business plan.

2. 02

   Arrange the bank guarantee

   €30,000 for betting, from a credit institution seated in Montenegro

   The betting approval needs an unconditional first-demand guarantee from a credit institution seated in Montenegro, held for the approval period plus 90 days (Art. 44(3)).

3. 03

   File for the betting approval

   Obrazac 2; UIS decides within 60 days

   Submit the Art. 23(4) documents, the betting rules, equipment, list of payment points and proof of the guarantee to UIS. UIS decides within 60 days of receipt (Art. 24(1)), and the term is 8 years. An appeal against its decision lies to the Ministry of Finance.

4. 04

   File for the online decision

   Obrazac 5; UIS decides within 60 days

   Apply to UIS naming the existing approval, the game types, the website, the software platform and its location, and the registration and protection method, with the three-year business plan and the list of games and their rules (Art. 78). UIS decides within 60 days and first checks the connection to its supervision system.

5. 05

   Get the game rules approved and connect to UIS

   Rules consent within 30 days; API, VPN and one public IP address

   Report every online game with its rules; UIS consents within 30 days if they comply with the technical conditions. Connect to the UIS supervision system through the API and collect the API keys at UIS. You may start only after the rules consent and the online decision (Art. 79).

6. 06

   Operate: pay the monthly fee, report and renew

   €10,000 + 15% of stakes minus payouts; renew 120 to 60 days before expiry

   Pay the fixed part by the 15th of the month and the variable part by the 15th of the next, and file the monthly record. Keep data for five years, withhold the winnings tax, meet the AML duties, and renew the betting approval in the window before expiry because the online right ends with it.

Tier-ordered: official government first, then practitioner, then trade media. Every primary figure was read from the in-force text on 23 Oct 2026.