Online Casinos in Bahrain

Gambling Is a Criminal Offence

Bahrain licenses no gambling. The prohibition sits in Chapter Six of the Penal Code, issued by Legislative Decree No. 15 of 1976, which the Legislation and Legal Opinion Commission publishes in full on its own site under the English title Legislative Decree No. (15) of 1976 with respect to enactment of the Penal Code, with the date 8 April 1976 and Official Gazette issue 1170.

Article 308 punishes anyone who gambles in a public place with imprisonment of up to three months or a fine of up to one hundred dinars, and on a repeat offence within a year of a final conviction with imprisonment of up to one year or a fine of up to five hundred dinars. The same article punishes any person who ran a public place for games of chance, or who participated in any capacity in organising the play, supervising it or preparing its means, with imprisonment of up to one year or a fine of up to five hundred dinars. It then defines a game of chance as any game in which the probability of winning and losing depends on luck rather than on factors that can be identified and controlled in advance.

That the article is live law, and not a dormant provision, is recorded by the prosecuting authority itself. Attorney-General's Decision No. 33 of 2007, on the organisation of criminal-record registers and the offences they cover, lists among those offences the consumption of intoxicants and gambling, at articles 306 to 308 of the Penal Code.

A Current Instrument Names Betting

The hostility is not only historical. The Regulation on the Organisation of Sports Professions, issued by Decision No. 8 of 2026 of the Chairman of the Board of the General Sports Authority, lists among the grounds for revoking a licence proof that the licensee has engaged in, or taken part in, any betting, directly or indirectly. That binds licensed sports professionals rather than the public, but it shows a Bahraini regulator treating betting as prohibited conduct in 2026.

What Is and Is Not Settled

What is settled is that Bahrain has a criminal gambling offence and no licensing route of any kind, so no operator is listed for this market. That is what this page's reading of the market rests on, and a reader should weigh it knowing its limits.

The limits are real and worth stating. Article 308 is written around gambling in a public place, and no Bahraini source read addresses remote or internet gambling in terms. Article 308 is quoted here as originally published in 1976, and it may since have been amended; this page does not claim to have checked. And nothing here is a statement about what a person in Bahrain does by using a site based elsewhere, in either direction.