Belgium Casinos

Introduction

Even though most people living outside of Belgium rarely connect the country with betting pastimes, it actually has a long-standing history with gambling dating back to the Middle Ages. In the 20th century, Belgium had a rocky relationship with this activity, but finally managed to establish a firm regulatory grip on it in the late 1990s. That happened thanks to this nation’s government passing the Federal Gaming Act, which went into effect in May 1999.

Twelve years after that occurrence, online gambling was formally introduced for operators holding a land-based license, and now, the Belgian Gaming Commission oversees this sector, giving Belgian players aged 21 or over a safe digital landscape where various measures like strict advertising and bonus bans provide carefree remote gaming.

Hence, today, Belgium has a modern online gambling industry limited to a small number of operators, monitored by a Gaming Commission that actively seeks to blacklist unlicensed sites. Yet, many residents still choose to use such platforms because enforcement of fines against those who do is practically non-existent. That means that you have many platforms to choose from by sticking to international hubs that allow Belgians to sign up, or by being creative. This means that to ensure that you do not pick a bad apple, you have to learn how to weed out questionable sites from quality ones. Follow our lead to discover how to track down the best Belgian online casinos on the Web.

Tips for Online Gambling in Belgium

Belgium's regulated market may be small, but the global online gambling space is vast and rich with options and pitfalls. Accordingly, for those new to this sphere, trying to navigate it may seem like a daunting task at first. Trust us, it is not. You just have to get the hang of a few things to guarantee that you land on trusted websites that pay out each time and keep your data secure. We shall take you through the most vital things to pay attention to when you are selecting casino sites, essentials you must take notice of and weigh most heavily.

Begin reading casino hub reviews.

The best way to land on a high-end gaming site is to take the word of experts who know virtually everything there is to know about online gambling. Once you have made your initial shortlist of brands that have caught your eye, you should then turn to professionals who analyze these sites for a living. These individuals are active in the industry, and they understand all its ins and outs and are easily able to convey problem areas and positives. The employees of WizardOfOdds have been doing just this for years, supplying thorough scans of platforms. Yet, if their opinion does not align with what you are seeing, you can also consult with these websites:

Trusted Portals

• LCB.org
• Casino News Daily
• World Casino Directory

Look through our blacklist

Yes, we have one. It is a collection of sites we think have treated their customers unfairly, and we continuously add to this list as we spot more nefarious casinos. Therefore, before registering with any seemingly alluring hub, do yourself a favor and check to see if it may have found its place on our blacklist, as a platform that does not have its users’ best interests at heart. Be sure that we have valid reasons for every site we have listed on our blacklist, and we investigate allegations made against hubs before putting them there. You, for sure, can trust it to get clues on what casinos to stay away from and why.

Soak in the Terms and Conditions well

What do we mean by this? Well, each casino has a T&C page, usually accessible through a footer link. There, it outlines its rules of service. We know that it can be laborious to go through the walls of text and legal mumbo-jumbo present there, but it is something that you must do, as conditions regarding what is allowed and not are laid out here. Payment stipulations, withdrawal limits, bonus constraints, VPN stances, and so on are presented on that page. That is why a careful analysis of it is so important. You do not want to fall into a trap that could have been easily avoided, do you?

Licensed and Regulated Belgian Casinos

Without question, a critical step in the casino selection process is looking to see if a platform is regulated or not. A site’s licensor and overseer will be listed on the T&C page, and customarily, its badge should also be embedded in the platform. It goes without saying that platforms licensed by the Belgian Gaming Commission will provide the highest level of protection for Belgian players. That is so because their operators can get held accountable in front of Belgian courts and face penalties from Belgian authorities.

The problem with these casinos is that there are not a great many of them. Only a limited number exist, and to discover these, you can visit the Belgian Gaming Commission website for the list. For games and promotions not found in the regulated Belgian market, you can explore websites regulated by bodies like the Curaçao Gaming Control Board or the Malta Gaming Authority, as well as ones based in regions like Anjouan, Mwali, Panama, Belize, Gibraltar, and Costa Rica. Many of these have been functioning for years, if not decades, and they have organizations that vet and monitor them. They do get punished for poor player treatment.

Casino Trust and Security

After the shortlist gets tighter with only brands regulated by established bodies, the next thing to do is verify that all potential gaming homes have the necessities in place for supplying fair and safe gambling experiences.

So, what are these necessities? One of the top ones is confirming that the operator undergoes RNG audits and has a valid RNG certificate from an agency like TST, iTech Labs, or eCOGRA. RNG stands for Random Number Generation, and this is a process through which online casino games produce their arbitrary results. The gaming products themselves feature algorithms that take a seed number and run it through various mathematical formulas to create a new one that no one can predict. That is how unbiased results get produced, and independent testing agencies ensure that these algorithms work properly and have not been tampered with.

Data security is also a massive point of interest concerning security. That is a given, and it gets ensured through state-of-the-art encryption, verification, and authentication tools, strong firewalls, and so on. Many of these measures remain under the hood, and players are never wise to them. But what is in your control to check is if the server certificate a site uses is valid and discover what kind of encryption is listed there, which you can do by clicking the lock icon in your browser’s address bar. Looking for two-factor authentication and login history in a site’s profile page is super beneficial to stop and spot unverified access.

Banking Options for Belgian Players

Belgian licensed casinos support local favorites like the Bancontact app and other debit-based methods. These, too, get widely used by many of the country’s gamblers who cannot utilize credit cards at home-based gaming websites. That restriction does not usually exist at offshore casinos, which not only accept credit cards but also are open to cryptocurrency transactions.

PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, and Paysafecard are also popular e-wallet choices at regulated Belgian casinos, with My Paysafecard accounts functioning both as a prepaid payment solution and a digital wallet. E-wallets get preferred by many players because they offer the fastest withdrawal speeds out of any fiat payment method, and by using them, site customers avoid direct oversight by banks and financial institutions.

Bank transfer is another widely available transaction pick, but the problem with it is that it is super slow, even though it is super secure. At the end of the day, the choice on how you put funds in your casino account and take them out rests entirely on you. Just remember to look through both the T&C and the payment page to see what limits and fees accompany each method, if there are any. Only after gathering this info can you make the smartest choice for you.

Depositing and Withdrawing when in Belgium

Funding casino accounts and getting payouts at Belgian gambling sites and international ones catering to Belgian players is fairly straightforward nowadays, especially for those who are a little online-savvy. Operators have done their part to make these procedures through streamlined interfaces that act like old installation wizards. If you are new to online casinos, we will give you a leg up in this section, quickly explaining how account funding and cashouts work at most websites.

To deposit, naturally, you will have to have created an account with a quality casino. If you have already made up your mind and signed up with a Belgian-based one, then you will have gone through its KYC policy, and to proceed on your gaming journey, you will need to have gambling credit in your balance next. To fill it, you must navigate to the Cashier/Banking window. The safest bet is to look for the Deposit button in the top navigation bar on the homepage, or find this window/section via the profile menu. When inside it, select your preferred transaction option, and then enter your deposit amount, going through an authentication step if necessary. All that should last two minutes at most if you are slow, and after you finish these steps, it is time to check if your funds have arrived and landed in your casino balance. In 90% of cases, that should happen immediately; if it does not, contact the support team.

To withdraw, you will have to go through a very similar process. At international sites, the KYC – Know Your Customer identity verification procedure usually comes before a withdrawal can be processed, and for the most part, it is also mandatory on these websites. That is, unless you opt to play with crypto and pick a no-KYC hub. For fiat gaming fun, it will almost always be necessary that you attach a photo ID issued by the government and proof of address. Before initiating your payout, you should also examine if you have completed wagering requirements tied to any bonuses you have claimed. It is vital to clear these playthrough stipulations for collecting any bonus-produced wins.

When sending in your withdrawal request through the Banking window, you will have to input amounts that fit within an allowable range. Please note that each payment method is likely to have distinct minimum and maximum payout limits, and they supply withdrawals at different speeds. Most will do this in two days or under, but card and bank transfers may take up to a week to process. Cryptos, on the other hand, which are only available at offshore casinos, can deliver a cashout in seconds when one uses coins like Solana or Ripple.

Best Casino Games & Software in Belgian Casinos

The beauty of the modern online gambling space is that it has games for everyone. Many international casinos now have lobbies that house over ten thousand titles, and these cover every game featured on any gaming floor on the planet. Licensed Belgian sites, too, have their share of high-end games from established providers like Play’n GO, Pragmatic Play, and Betsoft.

Many more famed studios have broken into the modern Belgian iGaming market, but the variety here is still not on par with what is present at offshore brands, some of which have such in-depth game pages that it would take years for anyone to play half their games. The top title categories offered at those platforms and Belgian-based ones are the following.

Online Slots

Virtual one-armed bandits are, without question, the most-played games at any online casino. Belgian players too love these products, as they only require the press of a button, with the game doing the rest of the work. Many options from this genre carry prizes that keep growing, getting fed by losing spins called progressives, which have rewards that go up into the millions, and act as major traffic drivers to hosting sites.

Those more interested in immersive gameplay than big wins too have a wide field of games to enjoy, like Gigablox, Megaways, Area Link, Hold & Win, and spinners with all kinds of different mechanics and engines. Studios like Sweden’s Nolimit City are too known to jam-pack their releases with a wealth of features to the point where most players have complained about them being overcomplicated. But there are slots for these people as well, as there is no shortage of 3x3 and classic fruit machines in the industry.

Table Games

Total novices to casino gaming often get confused about the meaning of the term table games, even though it is pretty self-explanatory. These are games played on green cloth tables, and are essentially the classics everyone is familiar with, such as blackjack, craps, roulette, and baccarat, along with casino poker variants like Three-Card, Pai Gow, and Caribbean Stud Poker.

Casinos have these in great variety, as they feature countless variations of these famous games, ones not available in physical venues. Furthermore, they provide table gaming in the RNG and live format, which we will tell you about below.

Live Dealer Options for Belgian Players

Live games popped up on the scene in 2003, when Playtech began experimenting with them. Nevertheless, it took around a decade for them to get a deeper hold in the sector, as this format had to wait for internet penetration and mobile hardware to catch up. Now it is all the rage everywhere, including in Belgium, with providers like Evolution and Pragmatic Play functioning as this category’s juggernauts.

Post-2017, this genre has expanded beyond table games, first branching off to wheel ones, and more recently into streaming presenter versions of renowned slots. That said, game show-type options, like iterations of popular TV shows like Deal or No Deal, seem to be all the rage, and there are also many picks that implement RNG-based rounds, blending different styles in different bonus rounds.

Online Casino Bonuses for Belgian Players

Promotions are one of the main enticements that online casinos use to lure new players in, and they play a paramount role in user retention. These offers get presented at sites’ Bonuses & Promotions pages, and their allure lies in that they supply on-the-house gaming entertainment. And who does not want that? A little bit of free gambling. The issue with this is that, most often, this does not come with no strings attached. In fact, there are quite a few strings in most cases.

The first one, and traditionally the most important one, is the wagering requirement. This is a bonus condition that everyone must be very careful with, as it essentially determines the value of a promo more than how much free-play funds or spins it gives out. How so? Well, it dictates how many times you must wager your bonus-activating deposit before you can take out any bonus-associated winnings. For example, there is a massive difference between a promotion with a 30x wagering requirement and one with a 50x one. There is also a deadline by which this stipulation must be completed, paired with rules like max bet and eligible games on which this condition can get met.

Casino bonuses come in many shapes and sizes. There are the mentioned free spins, rebates like cashback and rakeback, various types of contests, deposit matches, etc. Many divide them into two primary groups: promos for new players, also called sign-up offers or welcome bonuses, and deals for existing players. Deposit matches and free spins are customarily given out to newly registered users, while loyalty programs based on point collection and tier systems, along with refer-a-friend promotions, look to keep existing customers happy. These, too, have rules that govern if a player is eligible to get their perks or not, so reading their individual terms is a must also.

Problem Gambling in Belgium

Like all European countries that have legalized gambling, Belgium also takes self-exclusion very seriously. That is why it created its national self-exclusion register – EPIS, or the Excluded Persons Information System. In 2022, the Belgian government also, in an effort to lower gambling addiction rates, lowered the weekly deposit limit at home-based sites from €500 to €200, and forbade operators from marketing casino bonuses as incentives. These restrictions are not present at offshore casino platforms, which also promote responsible gambling, but rarely have any limiting measures like those described.

Belgium has heavily focused on restricting gambling advertising, out of fear that not doing so will cause a rise in youth gambling. Belgians suffering from a compulsion toward any gambling pastime are advised to reach out to e Pélican, Centra voor Geestelijke Gezondheidszorg (CGG), and SOS Joueurs or similar organizations, seek support from family and friends, and begin counseling and therapy.

Conclusion

The Belgian Gaming Commission has proven to be an apt regulator, one that has provided Belgians with a safe number of monitored online casinos they can use. Individuals 21 and over are free to join these, but they must stick to established weekly limits and other conditions. Because of this and the low number of these sites, many of which are not competitive with international gambling websites, some residents are exploring those, even though the Belgian Gaming Commission advises against this. Whatever platform you are thinking about using, use the tips we provide above to pick a secure one that will not only give you lots of games and bonuses, but also peace of mind!

Written by: Michael Shackleford