Dutch parliament rejects total ban on gambling advertising, backs tougher illegal-market measures

The Dutch Tweede Kamer rejected a motion to impose a total ban on advertising for all games of chance on Tuesday 29 September 2026. The motion received support from 64 seats, twelve short of the majority needed. Lawmakers did approve a package of measures aimed at illegal operators and accepted a conditional route to raise the minimum age for the most risky games to 21 years once preset conditions are met.

What the vote means for gambling advertising and the focus on illegal supply

The defeated motion would have banned advertising for both online and land-based gambling across the sector. SGP MP Diederik van Dijk proposed the blanket prohibition to prevent operators from shifting marketing spend into channels or products that would fall outside a narrower ban on online advertising. The formal voting record from the Tweede Kamer confirms the motion was not carried; existing Dutch advertising restrictions therefore remain in place.

At the same time the Chamber backed other measures that tighten the state's response to illegal offerings. Those approved items include: penalties for platforms that continue to show illegal gambling adverts after a removal request; creation of a central list of illegal operators; and a pilot to disrupt the digital infrastructure of illegal providers. The Chamber also supported a proposal to warn users when they reach a DNS block for a gambling site and asked the Kansspelautoriteit to explore using an open risk model developed at the University of Amsterdam in its supervision.

Netherlands gambling advertising vote: conditional age rise to 21

A separate motion from Diederik van Dijk and Mirjam Bikker passed with support. That motion requires the government to set clear, verifiable objectives for tackling illegal supply and preventing consumer displacement before any increase of the minimum age for the most risky games to 21 years. The motion does not effect an immediate age increase; it places a conditional obligation on the cabinet to make the change "as soon as possible" once the conditions are demonstrably met.

Belgium already raised the minimum age for private games and sports betting to 21 years on 1 September 2024, while lottery products such as Lotto and EuroMillions remain subject to a different age threshold. The Dutch approach links the next regulatory step explicitly to measurable progress against illegal operators.

How the Dutch debate compares with Belgium's approach to gambling advertising

Belgian policy has been stricter in recent years. Since July 2023 Belgium enforces a principled advertising ban for private operators, with specific exceptions and transition rules. The Belgian framework treats the Nationale Loterij under a separate statutory regime, which is why some forms of promotional activity for the state lottery persist even as private providers face severe limits.

Belgium's regulator, the Kansspelcommissie, reported thousands of illegal gambling adverts to Meta in 2025 — more than 8,500 requests to remove content. Those notifications do not mean an equivalent number of permanent removals, but they illuminate the scale of enforcement work. Belgian public health bodies have also weighed in: the Belgian High Health Council (Hoge Gezondheidsraad) recommended a ban on all forms of gambling advertising alongside a minimum age of 21 in its advisory work on the topic.

Platform liability and enforcement priorities

The Dutch Chamber's approved measures shift some political attention away from a blanket ban and toward the digital channels that sustain illegal supply. Requiring platforms to act on removal requests and allowing sanctions where adverts persist aims to reduce the visibility of unlicensed providers.

The proposals that passed are political instructions rather than operational law. Implementing them will require statutory powers, regulatory guidance and technical cooperation with platforms. For regulators and compliance teams, two operational implications stand out:

• platforms and intermediaries are a target for enforcement; regulators want the ability to escalate against hosts that do not remove illegal adverts, and

• DNS-blocking will be paired with consumer-facing warnings and risk-scoring tools to assess whether blocks reduce harm or merely divert users.

Those items will inform future rulemaking and enforcement priorities for the Kansspelautoriteit in the Netherlands and are relevant to Belgian policymakers still assessing how their stricter regime performs in practice.

Other Dutch motions and the political balance

Several other proposals failed to gain majority support. A motion asking for the State to fully withdraw from offering and operating games of chance — which would directly affect Holland Casino and Nederlandse Loterij — did not pass. Motions proposing a duty of care for crypto-service providers and further study of regulation for prediction markets were also rejected. Proposals on a lower games tax and earmarked participation for charity lotteries were put on hold.

The overall outcome is therefore mixed: the Chamber dismissed requests for sweeping prohibitions but approved targeted political mandates aimed at curbing illegal activity and improving platform-level accountability.

What regulators and operators should track next

Regulators in both jurisdictions will need to show measurable results against illegal operators before political pressure for broader advertising bans or age increases dissipates. Belgium must evaluate how its July 2023 restrictions and the 1 September 2024 age change work in practice, including whether licensed operators see lower participation or whether players migrate to unlicensed sites. The Netherlands will monitor compliance with the new political tasks on platforms, the central illegal-operator list and the pilot for infrastructure disruption.

For compliance teams and vendors, the immediate priorities are tooling for detecting and documenting illegal adverts, processes to escalate removal requests to platforms, and systems to track outcomes from DNS blocks and risk-model pilots. The Dutch vote illustrates an enforcement path that targets the intermediaries connecting consumers to unlicensed supply rather than a wholesale ban on marketing by regulated firms.

"Once conditions for tackling illegal supply are demonstrably met, the minimum age for the most risky games should move to 21 years," the adopted motion states, tying policy change to verifiable milestones.

The voting record confirms the motion to ban all gambling advertising was defeated on 29 September 2026, with 64 votes in favour and no majority.