Brazil's licensed betting and casino sites go dark: how unpaid balances come back

Brazil's licensed online betting market has switched off. From 00:01 on Tuesday 6 October 2026, the sites and apps of the operators Brazil had previously authorised for fixed-odds betting and online casino stopped operating under Provisional Measure (MP) 1.394/2026, which has banned both products since 25 September. Instead of a lobby, several brands now show a federal government page.

On Tuesday morning, the Brazilian domains of Betano, Superbet and EstrelaBet all redirected to `brasilsembets.gov.br` when Bonusjungle checked them. The page tells visitors, in Portuguese, that the platform they tried to reach is offline by order of MP 1.394, and then explains what happens to money still sitting in accounts.

The refund calendar

The withdrawal window has closed: operators had to keep their sites up for withdrawals until 23:59 on 5 October. For anyone who did not get their money out in time, the official schedule from the Justice Ministry (MJSP) and the Finance Ministry (Fazenda) runs like this:

• 7–8 October: operators report every unwithdrawn balance, broken down by CPF (the Brazilian taxpayer number), to the financial institutions they work with.
• 9–14 October: those banks return the balances to players automatically.
• From 14 October: money that cannot be returned, for whatever reason, moves to Caixa Econômica Federal, the state-owned bank, which then handles the refund. The government page tells anyone who has not been paid to contact Caixa from that date.

Some Brazilian coverage, including R7, gives the reporting step as 6–7 October. The dates above are the ones in the ministries' own announcement of 2 October. Either way, the reporting step is between operators and banks; players do not have to file anything during that phase.

"O recurso é sempre do apostador" ("the money always belongs to the bettor"), Finance Minister Dario Durigan said when the schedule was announced.

How much money is still waiting

According to Finance Ministry figures updated on 5 October and reported by R7, R$1.33 billion was still in player accounts at the deadline. That is R$775.6 million less than on 26 September, so a large share of players did withdraw. The number of CPFs with a positive balance fell over the same period from 28.9 million to 26.54 million.

Most of those balances are tiny. About 92% of accounts with money in them hold less than R$10, and more than 96% hold less than R$25. The money itself is concentrated: roughly 1% of accounts hold 80% of the total. On 2 October Durigan also said that 48 accounts held more than R$500,000 each and would be examined in detail.

In practice, that means the refund process is mostly about millions of very small amounts landing back in bank accounts, plus a small number of large balances that may take longer.

The redirect is being challenged

The switch to a government page was not part of the original shutdown announcement. According to O Globo, the Justice Ministry's National Digital Rights Secretariat sent operators an official notice on Friday 2 October ordering them to route all traffic from their domains to `brasilsembets.gov.br` from 00:01 on 6 October, and to disable the subdomains, IP addresses and APIs behind their branded apps. The ministries also said that 186 betting apps in the Apple and Google stores had been notified for removal by 6 October, and that eight platforms, including Google, Meta, TikTok and Telegram, had been told to take down betting advertising.

The industry association ANJL called the redirect order unlawful and, according to Valor, advised its members not to comply. ANJL and the Brazilian Institute of Responsible Gaming (IBJR) then asked Supreme Court Justice Luiz Fux for urgent interim relief, inside the constitutional cases they have already brought against MP 1.394. Their argument, as reported by Zona de Azar, is that Article 23 of the measure allows sites to be blocked or redirected to end access, but does not say that traffic must go to a federal government page. They also put the affected platforms' traffic at about 100 million visits a day and raised data-protection concerns about sending those visitors to a government domain.

No ruling on that request had been reported by Tuesday morning, and the Tuesday checks show that at least three large brands are already redirecting. Until a court says otherwise, the government's timetable stands.

What to do if you had an account

If you had money with a formerly licensed Brazilian operator, the official route is the automatic bank refund between 9 and 14 October, then Caixa from 14 October if nothing has arrived. Be wary of messages or sites offering to "recover" betting balances for a fee: the official process runs through the banks and Caixa.

The background to the ban is in our earlier pieces on the provisional measure itself, the ANJL and IBJR challenge at the STF, the attorney general's filing against the betting laws and the SPA ordinance on bank account freezes.

18+. If gambling has stopped feeling like a pastime, see responsible play. In Brazil, the government page points to help through the public health system (SUS) at gov.br/bets.