Is online poker legal in Denmark? Licence, age, tax, clubs and the tournament calendar

Yes - poker is legal in Denmark, online and live, inside a licensing system run by Spillemyndigheden, the Danish Gambling Authority. An operator needs a Danish licence to offer gambling to Danish players, the minimum age is 18, and winnings from a Danish-licensed operator have already been taxed before they reach you.

Denmark's structure is unusual and useful: alongside seven land-based casinos, Spillemyndigheden issues a separate licence for public poker tournaments, and nine venues hold one. That makes the Danish register one of the few in Europe where the paperwork tells a poker player something real. The live calendar through to September 2027 is set out below.

Denmark at a glance

Legal status: Legal and licensed, online and live. Operators offering gambling to Danish players need a Danish licence and must display Spillemyndigheden's label, which the authority describes as a player's guarantee that the operator is licensed and supervised.

Regulator: Spillemyndigheden, the Danish Gambling Authority. It also runs the ROFUS self-exclusion register and the StopSpillet helpline.

Minimum age: 18. Spillemyndigheden's own guidance to licence holders requires the operator to make the player aware of the age limit of 18 years that applies to gambling.

Player tax: None to pay yourself on a Danish-licensed site. Spillemyndigheden states plainly that when you play with an operator holding a Danish licence, any winnings have already been taxed. A site with no Danish licence sits outside that arrangement, and outside its protections. General information, not tax advice.

Operators that serve the market: 888poker (888 Denmark Limited, for 888poker.dk), Unibet (Unibet Denmark Limited, for unibet.dk) and Betsson and NordicBet (Nordic Spil Limited), each holding a Danish licence in its own name in the register we read on 2 October 2026. PokerStars holds one too, through Reel Denmark Limited.

Live poker: Nine venues hold a public poker tournament licence; seven hold a land-based casino licence. Casino Copenhagen is the casino whose player-versus-player poker offer we have verified.

Is poker legal in Denmark?

Yes, within a licensing system run by Spillemyndigheden, the Danish Gambling Authority. Operators that want to offer gambling to Danish players need a Danish licence, and the authority publishes the full list of who holds one - we read it on 2 October 2026, as last updated on 20 August 2026. Licensed operators are legally required to display Spillemyndigheden's label, which the authority describes as a player's guarantee that the operator is licensed and supervised.

The gambling age is 18. The authority's own guidance to licence holders puts the obligation on the operator: the player must be made aware of the age limit of 18 years, which applies to gambling. Licence holders must also tell players about the StopSpillet helpline and about their option to register with ROFUS, the register of self-excluded players. This is general information about how the market is organised, not legal advice.

The Danish live calendar

Four dated festivals are on the board, and all of them are run by or with the two biggest poker operations in the country.

Dansk Poker Tour, Casino Munkebjerg - 19 to 22 November 2026. Eleven events in Vejle, with Main Event flights at 2,750 + 400 kroner, a Danish Championship in six-max Hold'em at 4,000 + 500, three late hyper turbos and a 100-kroner Flip/GO Madness at midnight on the Saturday.

Jule Tour, Casino Munkebjerg - 26 to 30 December 2026. The Christmas festival at Vejle.

Dansk Poker Tour, Casino Copenhagen - 19 to 24 January 2027. Ten events, the tour's second Copenhagen running: three Main Event flights at 2,750 + 400 across 160 seats each, a DPT HighRoller Championship at 10,000 + 800, a 650-kroner qualifier to open and a five-card Pot Limit Omaha Last Call to close.

DM i Poker, Casino Copenhagen - 14 to 20 September 2027. The Danish championship proper, which the casino calls the country's most prestigious live tournament. Buy-ins are not yet published.

Two things are worth knowing about how Danish schedules read. Buy-ins are quoted as a pair - 2,750 + 400 - with the second number unlabelled; by convention it is the tournament fee rather than prize-pool money. And DM is not one tournament but a set of national titles across formats, awarded at different venues through the year, so a player can hold a Danish championship in six-max without having played the Copenhagen championship. Casino Copenhagen also lists a Nordic Open for 5 to 10 May in week 19, but gives no year, and those dates match 2026 rather than 2027 - so the next edition is not yet dated and we have not guessed at it.

Where poker is actually played

Two licence categories matter, and they are not interchangeable.

Public poker tournament licences - nine venues. This category is granted for poker tournaments played between players, so the licence itself is the evidence. The holders are Aalborg Poker Room, Cardroom Esbjerg (at the IF 92 sports clubhouse), Casino Næstved - which despite its name holds this licence rather than a casino licence - Fredericia Poker Klub, Horsens Poker Klub (whose licensed address is the village hall at Tebstrup in the Skanderborg municipality), John Tøms Poker in Frederiksværk, Poker Bornholm in Nexø, Poker København in Kastrup, and Randers Card Room. Four of the nine are in Jutland outside the casino towns, and Poker Bornholm is the only licensed poker address on Bornholm.

Casino licences - seven venues. Casino Copenhagen, Casino Vesterport, Casino Aarhus, Casino Aalborg, Casino Marienlyst in Helsingør, Casino Munkebjerg near Vejle and Casino Odense. A casino licence covers table games in general and says nothing about whether poker is dealt between players, so we publish six of these seven with their poker offer marked unconfirmed. The exception is Casino Copenhagen, whose own pages set out a real poker lounge: Texas Hold'em and Omaha, cash games every day at 20:00 with registration from 17:00, a weekly Thursday tournament at 19:00 with four levels of late registration, and a seasonal ranking with packages of DKK 20,000. The Thursday fixture is a deep stack with one re-entry and a 20,000 starting stack, listed at 1,000 + 200 through November 2026 and rising to 1,250 + 200 on 3 December. Note that the same casino floor lists Ultimate Texas Hold'em, which is played against the dealer and is not poker against other players - a distinction worth carrying into any Danish casino.

Online poker and what players get

Several international brands hold Danish licences in their own right, which is checkable in the same register: Unibet (Denmark) Limited for unibet.dk, 888 Denmark Limited for 888poker.dk, Reel Denmark Limited for pokerstars.dk, and Nordic Spil Limited for betsson.dk and nordicbet.dk. Playing with a Danish-licensed site is not merely a formality. Spillemyndigheden makes the point plainly: when you play with an operator holding a Danish licence, any winnings have already been taxed. The flip side is that a brand with no Danish licence sits outside that system, and outside the protections and the tax position that come with it.

Where a welcome offer is mentioned anywhere on this site, note that offers of this kind release in stages as rake is generated - the released amount is what can actually be withdrawn, not the headline figure.

Responsible gambling

Denmark's tools are centralised and run by the regulator rather than by the operators. ROFUS is Spillemyndigheden's Register of Voluntarily Excluded Players: you can exclude yourself from gambling in Denmark for a shorter period or for a longer one, and licensed operators must respect it. StopSpillet is the authority's free helpline, open to players, relatives and professionals alike. Free treatment for gambling addiction is available at specialised centres across the country, several of which also treat online. If poker has stopped being a game you enjoy, those three are the places to start.

What is not on this page yet

We have not verified from a primary source the deposit and identity-verification rules Danish-licensed operators apply, or the tournament schedules and buy-ins at the nine licensed poker clubs. Rather than infer them, we have left them out; they are on the list to research.