UK Gambling Commission referred 7.7 million illegal gambling URLs in Q3 2026

The UK Gambling Commission referred 7,700,000 illegal gambling URLs to search engines between July and September 2026 and reported 3,019,291 of those URLs were removed during the period. The Commission said 1,835 websites were referred to search engines for delisting in the same quarter, and it attributed the surge to expanded disruption activity after new funding arrived earlier in 2026.

Enforcement figures for July–September 2026

The regulator reported a sharp rise in reported URLs: 7,700,000 URLs were referred to search engines in Q3 2026. Of those, the Commission recorded 3,019,291 removals and 1,835 website referrals for delisting during the quarter. The number of URLs reported between July and September 2026 contrasts with 147,721 reported between April and June 2026.

"We’ve continued to push forward with our world leading approach to disruption and now, just over six months since the first £7m of the new funding arrived, we have been able to really start to scale up our capacity," said Sarah Gardner, acting chief executive, in the UKGC CEO Briefing. "There is more to do. These numbers only paint a picture of some of the activity we’re doing and some of what we need to do…but we are making progress here."

Six-month totals and related enforcement actions

Across April–September 2026 the Commission issued 1,005 cease-and-desist notices to advertisers and operators, compared with 741 in the previous financial year. During the first six months of 2026–27 the regulator reported 7,824,932 URLs to search engines in total, with 3,038,969 removed. It referred 2,201 websites for delisting in that six-month window, more than double the 1,068 referrals in 2025–26. The Commission also said 1,668 websites were shut down or geo-blocked in the six-month period.

Impact metrics and new monitoring tool

The Commission reported that around 77% of affected websites experienced reduced estimated traffic after enforcement action, and total estimated traffic across sites with sufficient data fell by 18%. The regulator has introduced an Illegal Gambling Index to measure consumer interaction with unregulated gambling pages; initial index data show 2.5% of respondents who gambled in the past year visited illegal gambling web pages in the past month, 1.5% visited in the past year but not recently, and 0.6% of all respondents reported visiting illegal online gambling sites during the last four weeks. The Commission said it will continue working with partners on intelligence and evidence-gathering to frustrate unlicensed operators. For regulatory coverage see regulation and for the Commission's data release see news.