Curaçao retires breached portal; licence seal affected

The Curaçao Gaming Authority (CGA) will not bring back the online licensing portal that an outsider used for about nine months, and it says the digital seal that casino sites display to prove a Curaçao licence will be affected. In a notice dated 7 October 2026, the regulator said the portal "will not be returned to service" and that its discontinuation "also entails the conclusion of the associated service arrangements supporting the platform". It is moving to a new regulatory platform.

Many online casinos, crypto casinos among them, hold a Curaçao licence, so the change reaches well beyond the island.

What the CGA says stays the same

According to the notice:

• Existing licences remain valid, and licensed operators' obligations do not change.
• Licensing, compliance and supervision continue "through alternative arrangements" while an interim solution is put in place to keep licences and other regulatory matters moving.
• Details of those arrangements were "currently targeted for no later than October 9, 2026".
• The CGA's response to the unauthorised access "including containment of the data leak" continues.

At the time of writing (10 October), the CGA website still shows a notice that the portal is offline and lists no publication after the 7 October notice, so the promised details on the interim arrangements are not yet on its site. The old portal address now redirects to the CGA homepage.

According to the Curaçao Chronicle, the move ends the regulator's contract with Maltese gambling adviser Mario Galea and his company Random Consulting, which have advised the Curaçao government on the online gambling reform since 2022.

How the portal got here

The portal was already offline before the 7 October decision. In a notice on 2 October, the CGA told applicants not to email documents meant for the portal, because they could not be processed any other way, and postponed portal filing deadlines until the portal was available again. The portal will now not return, and revised submission timelines have not yet been published.

The background is the breach we covered in September. The CGA said an account registered in December 2025 under a false identity had access to the applicant side of the portal until September 2026. The German security researcher Lilith Wittmann published her own account of the access together with Follow the Money and other European media. For the details, see our report on the unauthorised portal access.

What the seal is, and what is affected

Curaçao issues two kinds of seal. Under the CGA's certification policy, a B2C casino must show a Certificate of Operation Seal on its player-facing site. Clicking it must lead to cert.cga.cw, and the page there must show the exact domain you are on, the licensed operator and its current licence status. If the page shows a different domain, the CGA says the site is using another operator's certificate and should be treated as unauthorised. A separate License Certificate Seal confirms that a company holds a licence, but it is not tied to a domain and does not authorise any particular casino site.

The 7 October notice says the "availability of the current digital seal will be affected" and that the CGA "will shortly introduce an alternative mechanism through which operators can demonstrate that a domain is licensed by the CGA".

What this means if you play at Curaçao-licensed casinos

The seal is the main way a player can check a Curaçao licence, and the CGA says its availability will be affected.

• A seal that does not load, or a certificate page that is down, is not by itself proof that a site is unlicensed. The CGA says licences remain valid while the seal is affected.
• A seal that does load should still show the exact domain you are on. If it shows a different domain, the CGA's own policy says to treat the site as unauthorised.
• A company licence certificate is not the same as a domain certificate. It does not show that the casino you are using is covered.
• When the CGA publishes the replacement mechanism, that becomes the way to check.

A Curaçao licence does not make a casino licensed in countries that run their own licensing systems, such as Germany or the Netherlands.

For more on Curaçao's rules for crypto operators, see the CGA's crypto policy deadline.

18+. If gambling has stopped feeling like a pastime, see responsible play.