Poker in Sweden: licensed online, and two live rooms left

Sweden is an unusual poker market. The online side is properly licensed and the tax treatment favours licensed sites; the live side has been cut back to almost nothing. The state casino chain is permanently closed, and as of October 2026 Spelinspektionen's register shows exactly two addresses in the country holding a land-based card-game licence — one in Stockholm, one in Malmö — both limited to tournament poker. There is no lawful poker cash game anywhere in Sweden.

Is online poker legal in Sweden?

Yes, under licence. The Gambling Act — Spellagen, SFS 2018:1138 — created a licensing regime supervised by **Spelinspektionen**. The regulator divides the market into three parts: online gambling and betting, which is open to competition; gambling with a public benefit, such as lotteries and land-based bingo; and gambling controlled by the Swedish state, which covered land-based casinos and token machines. Any operator offering online poker to Swedish residents needs a Swedish licence.

Several of the regime's features are worth knowing before depositing anywhere. Licence holders carry a statutory duty of care and must monitor play and help players limit it. Spelinspektionen runs Spelpaus, a central system through which a player can exclude themselves from all gambling at every licensed operator at once. Licensed operators pay 18 per cent tax on their Swedish gambling profit. Marketing must be moderate. The regulator can order payment blocking and can require unlicensed sites to display a warning. The minimum age is 18.

Tax: the part that decides where you play

Winnings from a Spelinspektionen-licensed operator are **not taxable income** in Sweden. Winnings from an operator without a Swedish licence are treated as foreign-source income and taxed accordingly.

That single distinction matters more than any promotion. A player choosing an unlicensed site is accepting a tax bill on results that would otherwise be tax-free, and giving up Spelpaus and the duty-of-care protections at the same time.

Where the live game went

Svenska Spel held the monopoly on land-based casinos through Casino Cosmopol. It closed Sundsvall in 2020, then Gothenburg and Malmö in February 2024, and finally Stockholm in April 2025 — the operator's notice records an amended government owner directive on 24 April and permanent closure from 25 April, after the Riksdag resolved to wind up the state casinos. Svenska Spel gives years of falling profitability and visitor numbers as the background, as play moved online.

The operator states the consequence for poker directly: because all land-based casinos are to be prohibited, nobody has the right to offer cash games, while tournament poker may be conducted to a limited extent under a special licence.

The two rooms that are left

That special licence is the land-based card-game licence under chapter 9 of the Gambling Act. Filtering Spelinspektionen's licence register to it on 7 October 2026 returns four licence entries covering two operators and two locations:

**Opuk Poker**, Hagagatan 1, Stockholm — licence held by Sthlm Opuk Ideell Förening, a non-profit association, valid 25 September 2025 to 24 September 2027.

**Miss Wang**, Einar Hansens esplanad 37, Malmö — licence held by Inlilo AB, valid 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2028.

The licence is granted for recurring tournaments through the year, and it permits only poker in which both community cards and individual cards occur. In practice that means the Hold'em and Omaha family; draw and stud games are outside it. A holder of a commercial online licence may separately apply for one annual tournament.

One trap is worth naming, because venue listings fall into it constantly. The register's other land-based category, casino game, returns more than 400 Swedish locations — restaurants and bars holding the Swedish restaurant-casino permission for house-banked table games. Those are not poker rooms. Miss Wang in Malmö holds both licences, which is exactly how a venue ends up described as a casino when its poker offering is a separate and far more restricted thing.

Swedish players who want a full live schedule still travel — most often to Denmark, the Baltic festivals, or the larger European stops.

Swedish players

For a country of ten million, Sweden's record is remarkable. **Martin Jacobson** won the 2014 WSOP Main Event and heads the national money list. **Niklas Astedt**, better known online as Lena900, has $9.7m live alongside one of the strongest online tournament records anywhere. Behind them come Viktor Blom, Chris Bjorin, Anton Wigg, Michael Tureniec, Martin De Knijff and Johan Storakers — a group with more than $3m in live earnings each.

All legal points here are general information, not legal advice, and the position can change.