Swedish Licensed Gambling Turnover Rises 5.1% To SEK 7.4bn In Q2 2026
Operators holding a Swedish gambling licence generated SEK 7.4bn in turnover during the second quarter of 2026, Spelinspektionen said on August 26, 2026, a rise of 5.1% on the same quarter last year.
The Swedish Gambling Authority's preliminary figures cover April to June and mark the strongest second quarter recorded since the market's 2019 re-regulation. Turnover is defined as players' stakes minus winnings paid out, and the numbers may still be revised.
Online Casino And Betting Lead The Growth
Commercial online gaming and betting, the segment that includes online casino products alongside sports wagering, accounted for roughly SEK 4.9bn of the total, up more than 7% year on year. Spelinspektionen credited the growth to sustained demand in live casino verticals and betting turnover through the quarter.
Land-based commercial gaming, mostly slot and table games offered inside restaurants and bars under Sweden's local licensing regime, added a smaller SEK 73m, but that figure jumped almost 13% against the same period in 2025. Spelinspektionen did not attribute the land-based rise to any single cause in its release.
Player Protection And Market Context
The regulator also updated its player protection data alongside the turnover figures. At the end of the quarter, just under 138,000 people were registered as self-excluded from gambling through the national Spelpaus.se scheme, a fall of 0.7% compared with the previous quarter. Spelpaus covers every licensed operator in the country and lets a player lock themselves out of all regulated gambling in one action.
Spelinspektionen said the turnover data is compiled from two sources: figures for gambling for public benefit purposes are collected directly by the authority, while numbers for taxable operators are based on declared tax figures supplied by the Swedish Tax Agency, Skatteverket. Both data sets are described as preliminary pending final reconciliation.
The Q2 result builds on a softer start to the year. Spelinspektionen reported in May that licensed turnover reached SEK 6.7bn in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of only 0.8% year on year, meaning growth accelerated sharply through the second quarter. Full-year 2025 licensed turnover came in at SEK 28.2bn, the regulator confirmed in February.
Sweden re-regulated its gambling market in January 2019, ending the state monopoly held by Svenska Spel and opening it to competing licensed operators under Spelinspektionen's oversight. Every quarterly release since then has been watched closely as a proxy for how the licensed sector is performing against unlicensed competition, and for the pace of consumer protection tools such as Spelpaus and the deposit limits introduced during the market's early years.
Spelinspektionen said senior analyst Magnus Fahlen and press officer My Hamren were available to answer questions on the release, which can be read on the regulator's own site. The regulator's next scheduled update covers the third quarter of 2026 and typically lands in late November, based on this year's reporting pattern.
