3garaat is an independent, UAE-based editorial guide to commercial gaming in the United Arab Emirates. We cover the regulated online and land-based gaming market that has emerged since the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA) was established in September 2023, with editorial recommendations limited to operators holding a current GCGRA licence.
The UAE’s gaming regime opened in stages between July 2024 and June 2026. The first national lottery licence was issued to The Game LLC in July 2024. The first land-based casino licence was issued to Wynn Al Marjan Island in October 2024. The first online casino and sportsbook licence was issued to Coin Technology Projects LLC (operating Play971 and TrueWin) in November 2025, with the platform going fully live in December 2025. Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025 then removed the gambling/betting chapter from the UAE Civil Transactions Law on 1 June 2026, making GCGRA-licensed gaming contracts enforceable in UAE civil courts.
That sequence is the editorial baseline for everything we publish. Our principal recommendation for UAE residents is to use only GCGRA-licensed operators — today that means UAE Lottery, Play971, TrueWin, and (from Q1 2027) Wynn Al Marjan Island. We list international operators in a separately partitioned section, clearly labelled and addressed to non-UAE-resident readers, with explicit warning that UAE residents face criminal exposure under Federal Decree-Law No. 31 of 2021 for participating in unlicensed gambling.
We don’t recommend offshore operators to UAE residents. We don’t recommend VPN workarounds. We don’t accept payment for editorial placement or for shifting rankings. We don’t advocate participation in gambling — we publish informationally about what is licensed and what the law allows. Gambling is maysir under Islamic jurisprudence; we acknowledge that context respectfully and leave the personal decision to readers who are aged 21 or above and comfortable with their choice within UAE law.
Every legal claim on the site is dated, primary-source-cited, and re-verified quarterly. Primary sources include:
We don’t cite other affiliate sites — they’re competitors, frequently out-of-date, and several have published material conflicting with current law. Our Verified Reality Brief is maintained as a living source-of-truth document and updated whenever the regulatory state changes.
We earn affiliate commission on referrals to the international operators listed in our partitioned section. We do not earn commission on referrals to GCGRA-licensed operators — those are pure editorial recommendations. Affiliate disclosure is published separately on the Affiliate Disclosure page and disclosed in-page beside every commercial recommendation.
Editorial is led by Khalid Al Mansoori, our editor-in-chief based in the UAE. Read about our editors for credentials, beats, and contact details.
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Editorial contact: via our contact page
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