GRA, BCLB and the 2026 regulations

BCLB is gone. The Gambling Control Act No. 14 of 2025 commenced on 26 August 2025, repealed the Betting, Lotteries and Gaming Act Cap 131, and created the Gambling Regulatory Authority as its statutory successor. If you are reading a comparison site that still describes the market as regulated by BCLB under Cap 131, that page is more than a year out of date on the point it is using to establish its own authority.

The timeline

Date	What happened
26 August 2025	Gambling Control Act No. 14 of 2025 commences. Cap 131 repealed, GRA succeeds BCLB
2 October 2025	BCLB notice commences the transition, imposes a moratorium on annual licence applications, targets completion by end of February 2026. Existing licensees continue until expiry
29 to 30 June 2026	Gambling Control (Licensing) Regulations 2026 signed and published
3 July 2026	GRA begins operating under them
23 July 2026	High Court suspends the regulations, per reporting of the ruling
After that	The stay is narrowed to the Second Schedule on licence fees and the Third Schedule on capital requirements. Everything else remains enforceable

What stayed enforceable matters more than what was suspended. Application procedures, licence categories, technical standards, renewals, anti-money-laundering controls, consumer protection, player-fund segregation and data protection all continue to apply. Only the money schedules were paused.

The suspended fee schedule was steep: an online bookmaker or casino licence at 50 million shillings, land-based bookmaker renewal rising from 5,000 to 2.5 million, and a 6% approval fee on gambling advertising budgets. A substantive judicial review hearing was reported for early October 2026. That is single-sourced and we have not confirmed it, so treat the date as indicative.

The protections that apply to you

Prompt settlement. Reg. 24(1) of the Conduct Regulations requires licensees to settle winning bets promptly and in line with published rules.
Internal dispute resolution. Reg. 103 requires licensees to run a dispute mechanism approved by the Authority. Use it before escalating.
A 14-day payment penalty. Reg. 104(a) provides that a licensee failing to pay winnings within 14 days is liable to a penalty of 5% of the total winnings, payable to the Authority.
Virtual assets restricted for licensees. Reg. 86 prohibits anonymous gambling or use of virtual assets for gambling or withdrawal unless approved by the Authority in consultation with the National Treasury.

Two honest caveats on that list. We could not confirm whether the Conduct Regulations 2026 are gazetted and in force or still in draft, so treat those clauses as published text rather than settled law. And reg. 86 binds licensees, not players. Nobody should tell you crypto gambling is illegal for you on the strength of a rule addressed to licence holders.

What reg. 86 actually means for the market

It makes the crypto casino niche structurally offshore. A GRA licensee cannot offer virtual-asset gambling without specific approval, so you are never comparing a licensed Kenyan crypto book with an offshore one. The choice is between a licensed shilling operator with recourse and an offshore crypto operator without it. That framing is more useful than any operator toplist.

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How do I check whether an operator is licensed

Against the GRA register, not against a number printed on an affiliate site. We have seen two reputable Kenyan sites publish different licence numbers for the same operator, which is why we publish none of our own.

Does GRA help with an offshore operator

No. GRA jurisdiction runs to its licensees. An offshore operator is outside it, and that is the cost of the offshore route that never appears in the marketing.

How many operators are licensed

A figure of 99 licensed gaming companies for the 2025 to 2026 period circulates widely across Kenyan affiliate sites. We have not verified it against the register and neither, as far as we can tell, have they.