Norway’s Ministry of Culture and Equality has proposed letting state-owned gambling operator Norsk Tipping offer online poker, which would give the country its first legal operator-run online poker product. Poker would stay inside Norway’s existing monopoly system rather than opening up to commercial operators, with Norsk Tipping holding the exclusive right to run both tournaments and cash games online.
A public consultation on the changes opened on Sept. 29 and runs until Nov. 29. No Norwegian gambling operator can legally offer online poker right now, though the government says a significant number of residents already play on foreign websites. A University of Bergen survey found that almost 90,000 Norwegians played online poker with overseas operators in 2022, and Norsk Tipping now puts the annual figure somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000.
Culture and Equality Minister Lubna Jaffery said the government would rather pull those players into a regulated domestic product than leave the demand to unlicensed foreign operators. Norway runs its gambling market on an exclusive-rights model, with Norsk Tipping controlling most products and Norsk Rikstoto holding the monopoly on horse racing betting, and the government has repeatedly argued that the regulated offer has to stay attractive enough to keep players away from operators outside the system.
Limits on the proposed product would be considerably tighter than on most international poker sites. Losses would be capped at NOK5,000 per day and NOK10,000 per calendar month, with players under 20 held to NOK2,000 a month. Tournament buy-ins would top out at NOK2,500, roughly €250 or $250, cash-game buy-ins at NOK1,000, roughly €100 or $100, and nobody could play more than four tables at once.
Tournaments would also come with a mandatory five-minute break every hour. Cash games wouldn’t have a fixed break, though players could set daily time limits, and the ministry expects Norsk Tipping to fold cash-game play into its existing Spillepuls responsible gambling system. The consultation additionally looks at ways to stop players who hit their poker loss limit from jumping straight into Norsk Tipping’s online casino, with a 15-minute cooling-off period floated as one option.
Norsk Tipping has been lobbying for legal online poker since at least May 2024, arguing that without a domestic product, Norwegian players end up on operators outside the country’s responsible gambling controls. It formally asked the ministry to amend the gambling regulations in June 2024, but the decision needed government approval. A consultation was first expected in 2025, then targeted for before summer 2026, and slipped both times.
Poker is currently allowed in Norway only in much narrower forms, such as private home games and the annual Norwegian Poker Championship. The proposal would add online poker to Norsk Tipping’s existing remit without changing anything about the government’s stance on overseas operators, which are still barred from offering gambling directly to Norwegians. Enforcement against those companies has tightened in recent years, including DNS blocking of unlicensed gambling websites.
Whether Norsk Tipping should be banned from marketing the new poker product is also part of the consultation. There’s no launch date yet, and the regulations can’t be amended until the consultation process finishes. If the proposal goes through, Norsk Tipping could start building the product under whatever limits the final rules set, while foreign poker operators would stay locked out of the legal market.