What is GAMSTOP? UK Self-Exclusion Register Explained

GAMSTOP is the name of the free, national self-exclusion register that allows any adult in Great Britain to block their own access to every UK-licensed remote gambling account for a period they choose. It was launched in April 2018, and since April 2020 every operator holding a Gambling Commission remote licence has been required to be integrated with it as a condition of their licence. In plain terms, that means that any online casino, sportsbook, bingo site or lottery product legally serving British customers has a technical obligation to check the GAMSTOP register before opening an account or accepting a deposit.

What the scheme actually does

The mechanics are less complicated than the acronym-heavy world of gambling regulation often suggests. When a person registers, they provide their full name, date of birth, address, email and mobile number. Those details are hashed — turned into a one-way cryptographic identifier — and shared with the systems of every UK-licensed operator. Each time a new account is opened or a dormant one is reactivated, the operator's system checks the incoming customer's hashed details against the live GAMSTOP register. If there is a match, the account is refused, and any existing account is closed and locked.

Once registered, a person cannot reverse the exclusion until the minimum term they selected has expired, and even then there is a mandatory seven-day cooling-off period before the block is fully lifted. That cooling-off design is deliberate: it exists to prevent an impulsive decision in a difficult moment from immediately re-opening access.

Who can register and how long it takes

Registration is open to any resident of Great Britain who is aged 18 or over. Northern Ireland residents can also register, and the operators that serve the Northern Irish market voluntarily honour GAMSTOP exclusions in the same way they do for the rest of the UK. The whole process typically takes ten to fifteen minutes, and it can be completed at gamstop.co.uk from any device with an internet connection.

Three exclusion durations are available: six months, one year and five years. Most clinical practitioners who work with problem gamblers recommend the longest available duration by default. The rationale is straightforward — the pattern of gambling harm typically re-establishes itself in the weeks and months after any return to activity, and the longer the enforced gap, the greater the chance of durable change. There is no financial or administrative cost to choosing a longer duration.

What GAMSTOP covers, and what it does not

Coverage is comprehensive within the UK-licensed remote gambling market: casino games, online slots, sports betting, in-play betting, online bingo, online lottery products, and remote instant-win games. Land-based gambling — high-street bookmakers, casinos, arcades and licensed betting offices — is not covered directly by GAMSTOP, but a parallel system called the Multi-Operator Self-Exclusion Scheme (MOSES) exists for the retail sector and can be joined at the same time as, or separately from, GAMSTOP.

What GAMSTOP does not cover is anything outside the UK-licensed perimeter. Gambling websites regulated by other jurisdictions — Curaçao, Anjouan, occasionally Malta or the Isle of Man in their non-UK-facing configurations — are not connected to the register and cannot be. This is the technical fact from which the entire "non-GAMSTOP casinos" search vocabulary has grown. For a fuller discussion of that regulatory boundary, see our page on the UKGC-versus-offshore comparison.

The evidence that self-exclusion helps

The clinical literature on self-exclusion is broadly positive. A 2021 systematic review commissioned by GambleAware found that self-exclusion schemes — of which GAMSTOP is one of the more comprehensive internationally — are associated with meaningful reductions in gambling frequency and expenditure, and with improved psychological wellbeing among registrants. The effect is not universal, and the schemes work best when combined with wider treatment, but the direction of the evidence is clear. GAMSTOP itself publishes annual outcome data, and in each of the last three years has recorded registrant numbers exceeding half a million cumulatively.

The strongest predictor of durable benefit, according to the same research base, is the presence of parallel supports: therapy, peer-support communities, informed family involvement, and where relevant, financial counselling. Registration alone is a friction, not a cure. Its value is the space it opens up for those other things to work.

What to do at the moment of registering

Because the act of registering is often preceded by a period of heightened emotional intensity, we routinely suggest that people bookend the process with two small actions. Before beginning the form, tell one person — a partner, a friend, a GP, the National Gambling Helpline — that you are about to register. The disclosure itself creates accountability. After completing the form, book an appointment with a GamCare adviser or an NHS gambling clinic through the referral pathway that suits you. The National Gambling Helpline at 0808 8020 133 can also make the onward referral on your behalf.

Registration is not a public act; it does not appear on any credit file or public record; it does not affect insurance, employment or immigration status. Nobody outside the GAMSTOP system will know you have registered unless you choose to tell them. That privacy has been part of the design from the beginning.

If you have already registered and are reading this

If you registered previously and you are searching for information about non-GAMSTOP sites now, please read this paragraph twice. The impulse you are experiencing is common, it is understood, and there is immediate support available. Your earlier decision to register was made by a version of you who knew something important. That knowledge has not become false. Before you take any other action, please call the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133, or open a GamCare live chat window. Neither will ask you to explain or justify anything.

Frequently asked questions