Finland Grants 12 Online Gambling Licences, None Rejected
Finland's National Police Board has granted 12 online gambling licences and has not rejected a single application so far, giving the market its first official count since applications opened in March.
As of 26 October, 79 applications had been submitted, according to figures the board supplied in reply to an information request from the trade press and reported by iGamingToday.
Several companies, including Wildz Group and Hippos ATG, had already announced their own approvals. This is the first time the regulator itself has confirmed that licences are being issued ahead of the market opening to private operators on 1 July 2027.
The 12 Companies Named So Far
The licence holders listed by the board are Hippos ATG Oy, Sunflower Gaming Limited, Granturo Finland Ltd (the Wildz Group entity), Skill On Net Ltd, SuomiVeto Oy, Cloudberry Ent Limited, SixthSpin Limited, KuuFlip Limited, RocketLily Ent Limited, Nivei Ursi Limited, YTBlue Limited and Buccone Trading Limited.
The list names the companies that hold the licences rather than the consumer brands they plan to run, so it does not show which betting or casino sites will launch under them. The names above are as the board passed them on.
State-owned Veikkaus, which currently holds the monopoly, is not among the 12 confirmed holders even though it has applied. When the market opens, it will keep exclusive rights over lotteries, scratch cards and land-based gaming machines, while online gambling is opened to private competition, according to iGamingToday. We covered the operator's position in our report on Veikkaus returning to growth in the first half of 2026.
How The Application Count Has Moved
The 79 applications compare with 75 filed by 22 September and about 50 in June, as our earlier coverage of the roughly 50 licence bids and the 75-application update showed. Applications opened on 1 March, there is no deadline and there is no legal cap on the number of operators.
When the board had 75 applications on file in September, a spokesperson said it had not yet decided on any of them, and its target processing time had stretched to six to eight months.
Twelve approvals from 79 applications is roughly 15 per cent, and one company can file several applications covering different game types, so the filings do not map one to one onto operators.
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What A Licence Does Not Allow Yet
A licence granted now does not let an operator start offering games to Finnish players. Operation under the new system can begin only when the market opens on 1 July 2027, and until then the existing monopoly arrangements stay in place.
The Finnish Police say that from the beginning of July 2027 gambling services can be provided with a licence from the supervisory authority, and that legal gambling businesses will then be identifiable by their licence numbers.
For players, that means nothing changes on the ground yet. Anyone looking at offshore sites in the meantime should keep in mind that they sit outside Finland's licensing system, and our guide to responsible gambling covers the tools and support services available.
With 67 applications still to be decided, further approvals may be confirmed in the coming weeks and months, either by the board or by the companies themselves. The question of whether Veikkaus receives its own licence for the competitive part of the market is the most closely watched open decision.
