Brazil's betting law from 2018 to 2026: legalization to provisional ban

For eight years, Brazil's betting law shaped the business around its competitions. Betting brands appeared on club jerseys and on sports broadcasts while the country first legalized fixed-odds betting, then spent years without rules, then built a detailed licensing system, and finally, on September 25, 2026, prohibited fixed-odds betting by provisional measure, a text in force at once that Congress has yet to review.

This guide follows that path through the texts themselves: the 2018 law that created the market, the 2023 law that organized it, the ordinances of the Ministry of Finance's betting secretariat that made it work, the restrictions added in 2025 and 2026, and the provisional measure now in force. It describes the law as it stands on October 2, 2026, including what the texts say, and do not say, about competitive gaming. It covers the rules, not any operator, and where a provision's effect depends on the case, it says so.

Law 14,790 of 2023, article 12; Ministry of Finance figure reported by Congresso em Foco, September 26, 2026; Law 13,756 of December 12, 2018.

A lottery created in 2018

Brazil did not legalize betting as a private business. It created a new kind of lottery. Law 13,756, dated December 12, 2018, came from the conversion of Provisional Measure 846 of the same year. Its main subjects were the National Public Security Fund and the distribution of lottery revenue; fixed-odds betting was one chapter of it.

Article 29 of that law created a lottery modality, as an exclusive public service of the Union, called fixed-odds betting, to be operated commercially across the whole national territory. Fixed odds, in the law's sense, means the bettor knows when the bet is placed how much a correct guess will return. The 2018 text covered bets on real events with a sporting theme.

Three other features of article 29 shaped what followed. The Ministry of Finance was to grant the authorization or concession. The activity was to be run exclusively in a competitive environment, and it could be sold through any commercial channel, physical or online. And the ministry was to regulate the activity within two years of the law's publication, a deadline that could be extended once by the same period.

Four years without a rulebook

The regulation the law required was not completed during the government of Jair Bolsonaro, from 2019 to 2022, as Congresso em Foco recalled in its timeline of September 26, 2026. Betting was legal in principle, but there was no federal authorization model: nothing required a company to be based in Brazil, to submit to financial supervision or to pay a license fee.

The Ministry of Finance's own reading, quoted in the same timeline, is that legalization happened in 2018 and that regulating the market was the job of the executive branch. Platforms based mostly abroad filled the gap. They grew through advertising on sports broadcasts and through club sponsorships, the same outlet notes. That is the period in which betting brands became familiar on Brazilian screens, before any Brazilian authority had issued a license.

The 2023 law and what it covers

The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took the subject up in 2023. Provisional Measure 1,182 of July 2023 amended the 2018 law, and Congress examined a bill on the same subject at the same time. The measure, whose validity has since ended, had added a paragraph to article 29 letting national or foreign legal entities established in Brazil apply for authorization. The law that followed went further and required a Brazilian company. The result was Law 14,790, sanctioned on December 29, 2023. It is the text that organized the market until September 2026.

Its article 2 sets the vocabulary. A bet is an act by which a value is put at risk in the expectation of a prize. Fixed odds are the multiplier of the amount staked that sets what the bettor receives per unit bet. A bettor is a natural person, and a betting operator is a legal entity authorized by the Ministry of Finance.

Article 3 then says what bets may cover: real events with a sporting theme, and virtual events of online games. In practice, as Congresso em Foco describes it, the 2023 law brought virtual games based on random result generators into the regulated category, beside sport. The same article excludes sporting events involving youth categories, or involving only athletes under 18.

The law does not use the word esports. Since December 30, 2024, a separate ordinance of the Ministry of Sport has regulated which sports and which sporting entities may be the subject of bets; the current version is Ordinance 27 of April 1, 2026, which revoked the earlier texts of December 2024 and April 2025. Whether a given competition could be offered therefore turned on that list and on the case.

Who could run a betting business

Under article 4 of Law 14,790, fixed-odds betting was to be operated in a competitive environment, with prior authorization from the Ministry of Finance. Article 5 made that authorization discretionary, with no minimum or maximum number of operators, for a period of five years.

Article 7 set who could apply: legal entities constituted under Brazilian law, with their headquarters and administration in Brazil, and with a Brazilian shareholder holding at least 20 percent of the share capital.

The price was in article 12. The fixed license fee was capped at R$30 million, for up to three commercial brands per authorization, and article 13 required it to be paid within 30 days. In practice, Congresso em Foco reports, each company paid R$30 million for a five-year authorization.

The same article kept a line between betting and the ownership of sport: a controlling shareholder of an operator could not hold a stake in a Sociedade Anônima do Futebol, a football company under Brazilian law.

Who could not bet

Article 26 drew the line around the people closest to the competitions. It barred from betting anyone under 18, the people inside an operator, and public officials with regulatory or supervisory duties over the sector.

It also barred anyone able to influence a sporting result, among them referees, coaches and athletes. The same article barred people diagnosed with a gambling disorder by a qualified mental health professional, and it extended its bans to spouses, partners and relatives up to the second degree.

Integrity duties fell on the operators too. Article 19 required membership of a national or international sports integrity monitoring body. Article 20 made bets placed to profit from manipulation void, and allowed prize payments on bets under investigation to be suspended. Article 35 required operators to report suspected manipulation to the Ministry of Finance and to the public prosecutor's office within five business days.

The government added its own layer in the following years. A Ministry of Sport ordinance of November 11, 2024 set measures to promote sports integrity and monitor competitions against manipulation. A working group of the sport, finance and justice ministries was created on August 15, 2025 to propose a national policy, and that policy, the National Policy for Preventing and Combating the Manipulation of Sports Results, was instituted by an interministerial ordinance of March 25, 2026.

The market built by ordinance

A law sets principles; the market itself was built by the Ministry of Finance. Its Secretaria de Prêmios e Apostas, the Secretariat of Prizes and Betting, issued through 2024 the ordinances that turned Law 14,790 into a working market, each one covering a part of the business.

Ordinance 1,231 of July 31, 2024 became the reference text for the bettor's side of the market. It set the rules on responsible gambling, communication and marketing, and on the rights and duties of bettors and operators, and many later restrictions were written as amendments to it. In the same year, as Congresso em Foco records, the use of credit cards for betting, credit granted by platforms and sign-up incentives for new users were prohibited, and the government announced the blocking of illegal sites and restrictions on their advertising and payments.

The secretariat also gave authorized operators a common identity online. A normative instruction of November 4, 2024 set the rules for a dedicated national web address reserved for them.

The licensed market from 2025

The regulated federal market opened on January 1, 2025. From that date only companies authorized by the secretariat could operate nationally, under authorizations of five years covering up to three brands each. By August 2026, the Ministry of Finance reported 85 authorized companies.

The rules tightened steadily while the market was open. Ordinance 2,217 of September 30, 2025 barred betting with funds of the Bolsa Família and BPC social programs; Congresso em Foco links the change to decisions of the Supreme Court, where Justice Luiz Fux had ordered measures to keep beneficiaries of social programs off betting platforms, according to Agência Brasil. Ordinance 2,579 of November 7, 2025 organized self-exclusion, and from November 2025 bettors had to set loss and time limits.

The restrictions continued in 2026. Ordinances of May 5, June 26 and July 13 extended the ban to beneficiaries of debt-renegotiation programs, and in August, Congresso em Foco reports, the government widened the restrictions on beneficiaries of social programs again. A centralized self-exclusion platform was launched in July, and advertising had to carry new mandatory warnings on the risk of dependence and financial loss. Ordinance 1,964 of July 3 amended the rules on responsible gambling and advertising, an interministerial ordinance of July 10 set consumer protection rules for betting advertising, and on September 10 Ordinance 2,750 set procedures to prevent, identify and repress payment transactions, replacing an ordinance of 2025.

The secretariat also turned to the newest products. Its Technical Note 2,958 of April 23, 2026 deals with the illegal operation of fixed-odds betting by suppliers of prediction markets, platforms that sell contracts paying out on the outcome of an event.

Provisional Measure 1,394

On September 25, 2026, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva issued Provisional Measure 1,394. Article 1 prohibits, throughout the national territory, the operation, offering, intermediation and advertising of fixed-odds betting, physical or online, including by operators based abroad that target people in Brazil. Its first paragraph extends the ban to bets on real events with a sporting theme and on virtual events of online games; its second leaves the other lottery modalities authorized by law untouched. Article 2 applies the ban to the betting the states and the Federal District had authorized.

For competitive gaming, the text settles the question by its breadth rather than by name. The word esports appears neither in the measure nor in the 2018 and 2023 laws. But the two categories the ban covers are the two in which Law 14,790 allowed bets, so no competition escapes it because of the game it is played on.

The measure works on the 2018 and 2023 laws directly. Its article 29 revokes the fixed-odds chapter of Law 13,756, articles 1 to 21, 22 to 24, 25 to 40, 43 to 48 and 54 of Law 14,790, and article 68 of Law 15,421 of June 1, 2026. A savings clause keeps both earlier laws applicable to facts that occurred while authorizations were valid.

The rest follows from that. Under article 4, every authorization granted under Law 14,790 is extinguished 30 days after publication, in the public interest, with no right to a refund of the license fee or to compensation. Article 7 requires operators to disable access to their sites and apps ten days after publication, under penalty of blocking. Article 16 bars communication, advertising, marketing and sponsorship in any medium and requires advertising and sponsorship material to be removed within ten days; article 17 exempts content published earlier in which betting advertising is only incidental. Articles 19 to 21 place duties on internet services, app stores and operating systems, and article 22 lets the Ministry of Justice and Public Security fine them up to 10 percent of a group's revenue in Brazil, or, for a company with no revenue there, R$10 to R$1,000 per registered user, capped at R$50 million per infraction.

The president gave his reasons in public. Brazilian football, he said, should not depend on this kind of revenue, and he linked the growth of the sector to household debt and gambling dependence, according to Congresso em Foco.

Where things stand on October 2

Seven days after publication, the measure is in force and its deadlines are running. Its own day counts put the removal of advertising and sponsorship material and the end of public access to betting sites at ten days, and the end of every license at thirty. A report by Agência Brasil, published on Friday, October 2 by the Diário do Grande ABC, gave the calendar as dates: bettors may withdraw their balances until 23:59 on Monday, October 5; advertising and sponsorship material must be gone by the same Monday; sites and apps go offline from Tuesday, October 6. Between October 7 and 8, operators must tell financial institutions the remaining balances, identified by each bettor's taxpayer number.

The secretariat has already issued the first implementing text. Ordinance 3,005, dated October 2, sets the procedures, operational flows and final deadlines for the obligations of the operators whose authorizations the measure extinguishes.

Two decisions remain open. At the Supreme Court, Justice Luiz Fux, the rapporteur of the cases on the sector's regulation, gave the Advocacia-Geral da União, the government's legal service, 72 hours to respond to a petition by two industry associations, the Associação Nacional de Jogos e Loterias and the Instituto Brasileiro de Jogo Responsável, which ask the court to strike the measure down, according to the same report. A request for a response is not a ruling. In Congress, the measure must still be reviewed, and lawmakers may keep the ban, rewrite it or reject it.

Until one of those decisions comes, the legal position is the one set by the measure: the 2018 lottery and the 2023 license system are revoked for the future, and the licenses granted under them run out on the thirtieth day after publication.

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