No Romanian law has banned slot machines, yet most of them are going dark. Since 25 February 2026, under OUG 7/2026, the ONJN can renew a slot machine operating authorization only if the operator also holds a local authorization from the council where the venue sits. ONJN authorizations last one year, and by August 2026 only about 90 of roughly 3,100 localities had adopted a decision. Machines elsewhere simply drop out of the register when their authorizations expire. Online gambling is not affected.
How the ordinance was meant to work
OUG 7/2026 is an omnibus ordinance adopted on 24 February 2026 and published in Monitorul Oficial no. 146 the next day. Its gambling provisions rewrite parts of OUG 77/2009.
Before it, an ONJN license and operating authorization allowed a venue to operate anywhere in Romania. Now a physical venue also needs an annual local operating authorization:
- The council first decides, by resolution, whether gambling may take place in its territory at all.
- If it allows gambling, it adopts a local regulation setting the permitted zones, the procedure and an annual local tax calculated per square meter of the premises.
- Individual authorizations are granted by council resolution. The tax is due within 30 days of the grant.
- The operator must notify the local authority in writing at least five days before starting operations in the locality.
Under the amended art. 15 of OUG 77/2009, the ONJN can issue an operating authorization for a venue only to an operator that already holds the local one. Operators with valid ONJN authorizations on the effective date could keep trading until those authorizations expired, without owing the local tax for that period. Online gambling stays under the national license; our Romania licensing guide explains the two regimes.
The gap nobody closed
Councils had 60 days, to late April 2026, to adopt their resolutions. The deadline carried no sanction.
By early August 2026 only about 90 localities had decided: 35 banned gambling and 55 allowed it. Cluj-Napoca and Ploiești chose bans. Slatina announced it would phase out venues as authorizations lapse. In July 2026 all 98 local councils in Iași county voted to close slot venues, the first county-wide ban; ONJN said the last authorizations there expire in February 2027. Buzău, Focșani and Constanța prepared or announced restrictions, and Bucharest’s Sector 3 asked the General Council for a ban.
Everywhere else there is simply no regulation. Without one, no local authorization can be issued, and without that, ONJN cannot renew. The machines leave the market one authorization at a time.
The fiscal arithmetic
ONJN data reported by Profit.ro show the effect. In February to May 2026 the ONJN authorized 2,337 slot positions, against 18,981 in the same months of 2025. Authorization fees owed for that period fell from RON 485 million to RON 300 million. In August, 29,014 devices were in operation against 45,659 authorized during 2025.
An industry analysis by Frames, led by economist Adrian Negrescu, put the register at 19,723 machines with valid authorizations on 1 September 2026, down from 35,533 in March, and estimated state losses since spring at close to €400 million. On its projections the fleet would fall to about 7,200 machines in early 2027, and the direct revenue loss would reach €530–550 million a year, or more than €1 billion including suppliers such as landlords, telecoms, payments and security. The machine counts come from the public register; the revenue figures are industry estimates.
Local budgets collect nothing during the transition, and never in the localities that banned gambling.
Jobs that will not come back quickly
Frames estimated land-based private gambling employment at roughly 26,000–28,000 at the start of 2026 and about 19,600 by 1 July, and expects fewer than 10,000 jobs in early 2027. Reopening a venue now requires a council regulation, an application, a council vote and then ONJN authorization machine by machine. That discourages new leases and rehiring. Some operators have converted street agencies into service points with no betting or slots, handling deposits, withdrawals and support for online accounts.
Where the players went
There are three explanations, and probably all are partly true: some players stopped, some moved to unlicensed sites and back-street machines, and some land-based turnover was never ordinary consumer play. ONJN’s blacklist of illegal sites kept growing through 2026 and held 2,881 domains on 25 September. Sources close to the ONJN told the press in June that licensed online gambling had not grown enough to absorb the land-based decline.
A regulator in the middle of its own crisis
On 29 July 2026 anticorruption prosecutors (DNA) detained Ana-Maria Badea, deputy director general of the ONJN’s Gambling Authorization Directorate. Prosecutors allege she received €2,500 between December 2025 and May 2026 to speed up and favor authorization requests; she was placed under house arrest. Two inspectors were placed under judicial control over alleged smaller payments to avoid sanctions. All are presumed innocent. Our post on the ONJN corruption probe covers both DNA files.
On 21 August 2026 interim Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan dismissed ONJN president Vlad-Cristian Soare (Decision No. 283/2026) and appointed Valentin-Ioan Tomescu, previously head of the South-East territorial service and a director in Supervision and Control. Soare cited about 1,300 blacklisted sites and around RON 10 million in fines since April 2025.
The Court of Accounts’ audit of 2024 had found that ONJN did not monitor land-based operators’ monthly declarations, lacked real access to online mirror servers and had not assessed about RON 116 million in fees under OUG 82/2023. Whether those differences can now be claimed from operators who paid under ONJN’s own decisions is analyzed in the ONJN slot-machine fee reassessment dispute. The August 2026 follow-up recorded five-year retrospective controls, GGR-manipulation checks and full mirror-server access. Extending the national self-exclusion register to online operators still needs an emergency ordinance drafted in January 2026 and not yet adopted.
The fix that “only needs a signature”
Industry and the ONJN agree on the remedy: a short transitional rule that applies the local requirement only where a council has actually adopted a regulation, letting operators elsewhere keep trading under their ONJN authorization. The ONJN proposed such rules and the Ministry of Finance agreed, but the ONJN cannot adopt them administratively. Frames also proposed a model council regulation covering zones, tax levels and procedure.
The obstacle is political. The Bolojan government was dismissed by a censure motion on 5 May 2026 and has governed on an interim basis since. Under art. 26(3) of Law 90/2001, an outgoing government may adopt only acts needed to administer public affairs, which is widely read as excluding new emergency ordinances. Earlier nominations for prime minister, including Adrian Veștea’s in June, failed.
The legal front
On 6 March 2026 the Ombudsman referred parts of OUG 7/2026 to the Constitutional Court; the Ministry of Justice had given a negative opinion on the gambling provisions before adoption. The ordinance applies until the Court rules. Council resolutions can also be challenged in the administrative courts.
A study in the University of Bucharest law faculty’s Forum Juridic (no. 2/2026) argues that blanket local bans may breach proportionality, economic freedom under arts. 45 and 135 of the Constitution, and EU free-movement case law, especially where milder options such as opening hours or distance rules were not considered. It also notes the obvious limit: a council can close local halls but cannot stop residents playing online.
Is online next?
In May 2026 the association of remote gambling organizers warned that restrictions would spread from retail to online, and in September the press reported discussion of a new gambling law treating retail and online more uniformly. No draft is public. Online operators already carry the heavier regime of Law 141/2025, in force since 1 August 2025: a 30% authorization fee on GGR with a €480,000 minimum and higher withholding tax on players’ winnings, on top of the €300,000 annual license fee. Our Class 1 guide sets out the full cost. An earlier idea along the same lines is covered in the proposal to limit gambling to national tourist resorts.
For B2B suppliers and license holders
Land-based revenue now follows the ONJN register’s expiry dates, so churn is visible months ahead. Online clients are insulated for now. Build extra time into game approvals and authorizations while the Authorization Directorate works through the investigation and the leadership change. Suppliers renewing a Class 2 license should model the shrinking installed base; the renewal cycle itself is covered in the 2026 regulation update.
What applies now (October 2026)
The rule is unchanged: a land-based venue needs an ONJN license, an ONJN operating authorization and a local operating authorization, and ONJN cannot renew without the local one. The transitional fix has not been adopted. On 5 October 2026 President Nicușor Dan designated Luca Niculescu as prime minister, the fourth nomination since the May censure motion; as of 9 October his cabinet had not yet faced an investiture vote. We have seen no Constitutional Court ruling on the Ombudsman’s referral.
What to watch before year-end
- Whether a new government is invested and makes the transitional rule a priority.
- The Constitutional Court’s ruling on OUG 7/2026.
- How quickly large cities, Bucharest above all, adopt regulations or bans.
- How the new ONJN leadership handles renewals as the 1 October and 1 December expiry waves pass.
The closed venues and lost revenue will not come back on their own. The ordinance’s original purpose, local control with local revenue, can still be saved, but only by an act the current interim government is unlikely to adopt.
