The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025

What it does

The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 (Act No. 32 of 2025) does not regulate online money games. It prohibits them. It also prohibits their advertising and the banking that pays for them, and it reaches a service operated from outside India for players inside it. What it promotes is narrower: e-sports recognised under the National Sports Governance Act, 2025, and online social games played without stakes, both of which register with an authority.

An online money game is defined in section 2 as a game played by paying a fee or depositing money or other stakes in the expectation of winning something in return. The definition says that it does not matter whether the game is based on skill, chance or both. The old argument about skill and chance, on which a game of skill sat outside the State gaming statutes, no longer decides the matter.

Who it binds

Three prohibitions catch three different parties. Section 5 prohibits offering an online money game or service, and extends to aiding, abetting or inducing it. Section 6 prohibits advertising, in any medium, anything that promotes or induces a person to play one. Section 7 prohibits a bank, a financial institution or any other person facilitating a payment from engaging in, permitting or facilitating a transaction towards payment for such a service. An agency, a creator, a payment aggregator and a bank are each addressed by a section of their own.

Section 1(2) applies the Act to a service offered within India and to one operated from outside India. Section 11 deals with offences by companies, and an officer is liable where the offence was committed with consent or connivance or is attributable to neglect, with an exception for an independent or non-executive director not involved in the decision.

What has changed, and when

• The Act came into force on 1 May 2026. The Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules, 2026, notified by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on 22 April 2026, came into effect with it.
• The Online Gaming Authority of India is the body constituted under section 8 to determine whether a game is an online money game and to recognise, categorise and register online games.
• On 27 May 2026 the Supreme Court held that the stake, not the commission, is the measure of the tax on the years before the prohibition, according to the site's note.

What turns on it in practice

The punishments are set in section 9. A contravention of section 5 or section 7 carries imprisonment up to three years or a fine up to one crore rupees, or both, and a contravention of section 6 carries imprisonment up to two years or a fine up to fifty lakh rupees, or both. A second and later conviction under section 5 or 7 carries a minimum of three years, with a fine of at least one crore rupees. Under section 10, offences under sections 5 and 7 are cognizable and non-bailable, so arrest without warrant and bail from a court are the starting point.

A product team has to classify each game by what the player puts in. A game with an entry fee and a prize funded from entry fees falls within the definition whatever the skill. A game with no stake falls outside it, and a subscription or a one-time access fee is not a stake. A game that pays out in something other than money is not for that reason outside.

Registration under the Rules is a digital certificate valid for up to ten years unless suspended or cancelled earlier. It brings continuing duties, among them age verification, parental controls and time limits, a grievance mechanism, and retention of traffic data and metadata on computer resources in India. The Rules also require a bank or a financial institution to verify the determination order or the certificate before facilitating payments.

The liability that a closed platform leaves behind is the tax on the years before 1 May 2026, which survives the prohibition. The site's gaming and online platforms work reads the Act for operators, for advertisers and for payment providers, and for the directors whose board minutes will be the evidence of who decided what.