Romania’s local slot bans cut gambling tax revenue from 485 million lei to 300 million lei in 2026

Romania’s OUG nr. 7/2026 handed city halls the power to ban gambling locally, and the first numbers show why operators and PSPs should care: machine approvals have collapsed, active supply has shrunk, and public revenue tied to the sector has fallen hard. The catch is that the regulatory shift is still being implemented unevenly, so the operational map is changing faster than the legal one.

1. Under OUG nr. 7/2026, local councils can prohibit gambling activities in their own jurisdictions. The law gave municipalities 60 days to issue decisions, but that deadline has passed and only about 90 of Romania’s roughly 3,100 municipalities have acted.
2. Of those 90 municipalities, 35 have chosen to ban gambling permanently. For operators, that means the market is no longer being shaped only by national licensing rules; local political decisions now directly affect where machines can stay on the floor.
3. The effect on slot authorizations has been immediate. Between February and May 2026, the authorities licensed only 2,337 slot machines, compared with 18,981 licenses in the same four-month period a year earlier.
4. The broader market has also contracted sharply: Romania had 45,659 legally authorized gaming machines in 2025, while only 29,014 are now in active commercial operation across the country. That is the number operators, suppliers, and payment providers should use when thinking about footprint, routing, and exposure.
5. Tax and fee intake has fallen with the machine count. Budget revenue directly linked to gambling taxes and fees dropped from 485 million lei ($106.7 million) in 2025 to 300 million lei ($66 million) in 2026.

The National Gambling Office remains able to provide technical support to municipalities that ask for it, but it no longer has the power to make regulatory decisions. In practice, Romania has moved part of gambling governance from a single national gatekeeper to 3,100 local ones, which is exactly the sort of setup that makes merchant coverage, venue rollout, and compliance planning more awkward than anyone would like.