Romania ONJN licence: Class I and Class II, the August 2025 price reset and certified content

Licence and authorisation: two permits, not one

Romania separates the right to operate (the licence) from the right to run a specific activity in a given year (the authorisation). A Class I licence is valid for up to ten years; the authorisation must be obtained and paid for each year, and it is where most of the money goes.

This two-layer design explains the Romanian fee vocabulary. The "licence fee" is a fixed annual charge for holding the licence; the "authorisation tax" is a percentage of gross gaming revenue with a floor. Both are due, and both appear in every serious business plan.

Class I and Class II side by side

Class I licences cover organisers of gambling, online and land-based. Class II licences cover the businesses that make gambling possible: software and platform providers, game studios and aggregators, payment processors, testing laboratories, affiliates and other service providers.

Romanian licence classes and main charges (ONJN framework as amended by OUG 82/2023 and Law 141/2025)

Before August 2025 the Class I licence fee was tiered by turnover and the online authorisation tax stood at 21% of GGR with a €400,000 floor. Advisers' one-off fee figures are consistent across the sources we checked, but ONJN does not publish them in one consolidated table.

The fiscal package of 2025, line by line

Law 141/2025 was part of the fiscal consolidation adopted in summer 2025 and applied from 1 August 2025. For a new Class I online operator, the fixed annual floor now exceeds €1.2 million before a single euro of revenue: €300,000 licence fee, €480,000 minimum authorisation tax and the €500,000 responsible gambling contribution.

• Authorisation tax for online gambling: raised from 21% to 30% of GGR, minimum €480,000 a year
• Class I licence fee: flat €300,000 a year, replacing turnover tiers
• Tax on player winnings: withheld at source by the operator on progressive brackets starting at 4% (previously 3%), paid to ANAF
• Class II suppliers of platforms, software and payment processing must refuse services to operators without a Romanian Class I licence and report to ONJN monthly on players trying to reach illegal sites

The 2023 reform (OUG 82/2023, approved by Law 107/2024) had already closed purely offshore structures by requiring a Romanian company or an EU/EEA/Swiss entity with a permanent establishment in Romania, and it raised the responsible gambling contribution from €5,000 to €500,000.

Local presence, mirror server and player controls

An online Class I licensee needs a Romanian legal presence, a mirror or safe server located in Romania that records transactions for ONJN, and real-time data access for the regulator. Players must be checked against the national self-exclusion register at registration and denied access if listed.

• Romanian company, or EU/EEA/Swiss company with a registered permanent establishment in Romania
• Financial guarantee in favour of the state budget, sized to the activity
• Fiscal certificate showing no debts to the Romanian state
• AML/CFT programme under Law 129/2019, with a designated compliance officer
• Minimum player age of 18, identity verification at account opening
• Operation on a .ro domain; ONJN maintains a blacklist of illegal sites that internet providers must block

Methodological norms in Government Decision (HG) 111/2016 set out the technical, financial and documentation rules that turn the ordinance into a checklist.

How long ONJN takes

Once a complete file is filed, advisers report that the ONJN review itself takes about 30 days for Class I and 45 to 60 days for Class II. End-to-end, including company set-up, guarantee, server and game certification, three to four months is a realistic plan; licences take effect on the first day of the month after approval.

Leave room for politics. A full rewrite of the Games of Chance law was in preparation in 2026, and the government that sponsored it collapsed on 5 May 2026. The office itself has had several leadership changes since a 2025 audit of its past fee collection. Nothing in that debate has changed the rules above yet, but Romanian transition periods have historically been short.

Content rules for a Romanian lobby

Romania is strict about content. Every game and RNG offered to Romanian players must be certified by a testing laboratory recognised by ONJN (GLI, BMM and others are commonly used), the supplier must hold a Class II licence, and source code for B2B software is registered with the regulator.

Before adding a studio, ask three things: does it hold a Romanian Class II licence, are the specific titles certified for Romania, and can the game be restricted to Romanian players without affecting other markets. Well-known studios such as Pragmatic Play, Evolution, Playson and EGT Digital are active in Romania, yet not every title in a studio's global catalogue carries a Romanian certificate.

On the technical side, a casino game aggregator API reduces the work: per-game metadata (studio, category, currencies, market) lets the operator build a Romania-only lobby from the certified subset, and the country parameter at launch enforces studio restrictions. The same integration serves live dealer tables and the sportsbook API, a seamless wallet keeps balances and winnings-tax withholding in the operator's own ledger, demo play runs through the separate getGameDemo call, and the site can be locked to one currency or run multi-currency per player. Catalogue and currencies change continuously; the live list is in the API.

Treat this as general information and have Romanian counsel review your application. For other European regimes, see the gaming licences hub.

Operator questions about the ONJN licence

Sources and last update

Romanian rules were reset twice in three years, so each figure here is tied to the act that set it. One-off fees and processing times come from Romanian advisers, as ONJN does not publish them in one place. Checked September 2026.

• Government Emergency Ordinance (OUG) 77/2009 on the organisation and operation of gambling, as amended
• Government Decision (HG) 111/2016, methodological norms
• OUG 82/2023, approved by Law 107/2024 (local presence, responsible gambling contribution of €500,000)
• Law 141/2025, in force 1 August 2025 (30% authorisation tax with €480,000 minimum, €300,000 licence fee, winnings tax from 4%)
• Law 129/2019 on preventing money laundering and terrorist financing
• Romanian advisers' published guides on Class I and Class II fees and timelines (2026)
• Trade press on ONJN leadership and the draft gambling law, May to September 2026

Last reviewed: 24 September 2026.