Romania licenses poker clubs as their own category — and has issued exactly one licence
Romania is one of the few European countries that licenses poker clubs separately from casinos, which means its regulator publishes exactly which addresses may run a card room. The September 2026 register shows a single poker-club licence holder, POKER TM S.R.L., covering three rooms — in Bucharest, Iași and Craiova. The same register lists two licensed casinos, both in Bucharest, neither of which holds a poker-club licence.
Most countries make you guess where live poker is actually legal. Romania does not, and the answer turns out to be smaller than the country's size suggests.
The Oficiul Naţional pentru Jocuri de Noroc, Romania's gambling regulator, publishes its land-based licence lists monthly in four categories: fixed-odds betting, slot machines, casinos, and — unusually for Europe — poker clubs as a class of their own. The September 2026 poker-club list contains one entry. POKER TM S.R.L., registered in Timișoara, holds licence L1223966D001392, valid to 31 March 2032, covering three addresses: the basement of the COCOR complex on Bulevardul I.C. Brătianu in central Bucharest, a lower-ground room on Strada Anastasie Panu in Iași, and unit F010 of the Promenada centre on Calea Severinului in Craiova.
That is the entirety of Romania's licensed poker-club estate: one operator, three rooms, three cities, for a country of nineteen million people with a licensed and apparently healthy online market.
The casino list is barely longer. Two companies hold casino licences, both in Bucharest: PLATINUM CASINO SRL at Calea Victoriei 63-81 in sector 1, licensed to 30 September 2029, and DEVELOPMENT SERVICES SYSTEM SRL at Calea 13 Septembrie 90 in sector 5, licensed to 31 December 2028. Neither holds a poker-club licence, and a casino licence says nothing about what card games are dealt — a casino can list "poker" and mean a game played against the house rather than against other players. Whether either of these two spreads player-versus-player poker is not something the register answers, and we have not claimed it does.
The separation is the interesting part. In Germany, Austria or the UK, working out whether a given casino deals real poker means checking the venue's own pages one at a time and reading carefully enough to catch a dealer-banked variant wearing the word poker. Romania's licence classes do that sorting for you at the regulator level: a poker-club licence is a card-room licence. The cost of that clarity is that it also makes the scarcity impossible to miss.
For players, the practical upshot is that Romania's poker is mostly online, where the licensed picture is healthier — Unibet's Romanian room holds ONJN licence L1260657W001792, valid to August 2036 — and that the live game, where it exists at all, is three addresses belonging to one company. The register is republished every month, so the count can change; it is worth checking rather than assuming.
Frequently asked questions
How many licensed poker clubs does Romania have?
Three rooms, all under one licence held by POKER TM S.R.L. — in Bucharest, Iași and Craiova.
Why does Romania license poker clubs separately?
It treats a card room as its own category of gambling venue, distinct from a casino. One practical benefit is that the register tells you which addresses are licensed for player-versus-player poker, rather than leaving you to check each venue's own pages.
Do Romania's casinos have poker rooms?
Unverified. The two licensed casinos hold casino licences, not poker-club licences, and the register records licences rather than games.