Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025, the UAE's new Civil Transactions Law, came into force on 1 June 2026 and replaced the 1985 code. Among the things it did was delete the civil code's chapter on gambling and betting. A number of affiliate sites have written that up as the UAE legalising gambling. That is not what happened, and the gap between the two readings is large enough to matter.
What the law actually did
The most-cited legal analysis of the change comes from Greenberg Traurig, published on 20 January 2026 and syndicated by the National Law Review. The firm's reading is that the new law deletes Articles 1012 to 1021 of the old civil code without replacing them. Those articles dealt with the invalidity of wagering and betting contracts, restitution where money had changed hands, and whether gambling losses could be recovered through the courts.
Greenberg Traurig frames the deletion as the removal of duplication, now that the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority holds primary oversight of gaming in the UAE. The firm also flags that the Penal Code, Federal Decree-Law 31/2021, and the Cybercrime Law, Federal Decree-Law 34/2021, may later be amended to align with GCGRA rules. The operative word is "may". As of today, they have not been.
One sourcing note. The firm gives the range as Articles 1012 to 1021. Several trade and affiliate write-ups give 1012 to 1019 instead. We follow the law firm and attribute the figure to it, rather than present either range as settled.
Why deleting those articles matters at all
The change is real, and dismissing it as nothing would be as wrong as calling it legalisation. It operates in private law rather than criminal law, which is why it is easy to misread.
Before 1 June 2026, a gaming contract in the UAE ran into a civil-code rule that made wagering agreements void. That is an uncomfortable foundation for a licensed gaming market: a regulator can issue a licence, but if the underlying contract between operator and customer is void as a matter of civil law, the enforceability of that relationship is in question. With Articles 1012 to 1021 gone, gaming contracts are no longer automatically void under the civil code.
For a GCGRA-licensed operator, that is the practical effect. It is a structural repair to the legal scaffolding of a regulated market that the UAE has been assembling since 2023. It is not a permission granted to anyone new.
What the law did not do
It did not decriminalise gambling. Gambling by individuals remains an offence under the UAE Penal Code, Federal Decree-Law 31/2021, with penalties of up to two years' imprisonment and a fine. Expatriate residents can additionally face deportation. That provision sits in a different statute from the one that changed, and it was untouched on 1 June 2026.
It did not create a licence for anyone. The GCGRA remains the only body that can license gaming in the UAE, and the licensed list is short: the national lottery, one online sportsbook and iGaming operator, and the Wynn Al Marjan Island resort in Ras Al Khaimah, which has not yet opened.
It did not change the position of offshore casinos. A site licensed in Curaçao or Anjouan was outside the UAE's licensed perimeter before 1 June 2026 and is outside it now. Nothing about the civil code's wagering articles ever conferred legality on those operators, so removing those articles cannot have conferred it either.
How to spot the wrong version of this story
The misreadings tend to share a few tells. They treat a civil-code amendment as if it were a penal-code amendment. They describe the UAE as having "legalised betting" without naming which statute now permits it, because none does. They report the article range as 1012 to 1019 without attribution. And they follow the claim with a list of offshore casinos, which is the part that gives away what the article is for.
If you read a page claiming the UAE legalised gambling in June 2026, check whether it names Federal Decree-Law 31/2021 at all. The ones getting it wrong generally do not, because mentioning the Penal Code would undercut the headline.
What this means if you play from the Gulf
Nothing in your legal position changed on 1 June 2026. Gambling by individuals in the UAE is still an offence, and our UAE online casino guide sets out that position alongside the offshore brands it covers, all of which are licensed outside the UAE. If you want to know what is genuinely licensed under UAE supervision, our UAE licensed casinos page tracks it, and our news archive carries the rest of the 2026 regulatory record.
