Germany's licensed online poker market is five companies, and the official register names them
The GGL's official whitelist, last updated on 2 October 2026, lists exactly five companies permitted to offer online poker in Germany: bwin, Ladbrokes, NSUS Malta (ggpoker.de), Reel Germany (pokerstars.de) and 888 Germany. Each entry names the permitted website and the date the permission was first granted.
Germany publishes the answer to a question most affiliate sites guess at. Under section 9(8) of the 2021 State Treaty on Gambling, the Gemeinsame Gluecksspielbehoerde der Laender keeps an official public list of every operator holding a German permission, and licensed operators are separately obliged to state on their own front page that they hold one and which authority granted it.
Filtered to online poker, that list is short. Five companies hold a German online poker permission, all of them supervised by the GGL itself rather than a single state authority:
- bwin (Deutschland) Limited, for bwin.de, first permitted on 14 November 2022 - Ladbrokes (Deutschland) Limited, for bpremium.de, 10 November 2022 - NSUS Malta Limited, for ggpoker.de, 25 November 2022 - 888 Germany Limited, for 888.de, 24 January 2023 - Reel Germany Limited, for pokerstars.de, 22 March 2023
Two things about that list are worth a player's attention. The first is that the register is organised by company rather than by brand, which is why checking a room against it means knowing who operates it: nothing on the list says GGPoker, and the licence that makes GGPoker legal in Germany sits under NSUS Malta Limited. The second is that the permitted website is part of the entry. The permission attached to ggpoker.de does not extend to the international .com site, and the same holds for the other four.
The whitelist is wider than poker. It also covers sports betting, virtual slot games, horse racing, lotteries and the land-based Spielbanken, including the state casino companies whose houses we cover on our Germany venues page. The GGL updates it at least monthly and on an ad-hoc basis; the version read for this piece carried the date 2 October 2026 and a single recent change, a new sports-betting permission for Betway.
For anyone comparing rooms from Germany, the practical use of the register is narrow but absolute: a poker site not on it, under any of its corporate names, is not licensed to take German players, whatever its own marketing says. This is general information rather than legal advice.
Read the original at Gemeinsame Gluecksspielbehoerde der Laender - Whitelist →
Frequently asked questions
Which online poker rooms are licensed in Germany?
Five companies, per the GGL whitelist read on 7 October 2026: bwin (bwin.de), Ladbrokes (bpremium.de), NSUS Malta (ggpoker.de), 888 Germany (888.de) and Reel Germany (pokerstars.de).
Is GGPoker on the German whitelist?
Yes, under its operating company NSUS Malta Limited, for the site ggpoker.de, first permitted on 25 November 2022.
Does a German licence cover the international .com site?
No. Each whitelist entry names the permitted website, so the German permission attaches to the .de site rather than the international one.