Gambling Commission Unveils Major New Rules for Britain's Gaming Machines

Britain's land-based gaming machines are about to start asking players a question they have never had to answer: how long, and how much?

On 30 September 2026, the Gambling Commission published its long-awaited response to its January 2025 consultation on the Gaming Machine Technical Standards (GMTS).^[1]

The headline change is that new category A and B machines will no longer allow anyone to play without a limit in place. 

Players will either set their own time and loss limits at the start of a session or accept tighter defaults. Hitting a limit will force a break, put safer gambling messaging on screen and, from October 2028, ping an alert to staff on the shop or venue floor.

The rules land on a sector worth £2.6 billion in gross gambling yield (GGY) in the year to March 2025, with 88.5% of that coming from category B machines. That is the stock in trade of high street bookmakers, adult gaming centres (AGCs), bingo halls and casinos, and it is where the cost of compliance will fall hardest.

Crucially, existing machines are exempt. The catch is the compendium rule: once a single new game is added to a multi-game cabinet, every game on it, including older titles and category C and D content, must comply. Licensees will also be legally required under a revised social responsibility code provision (SRCP 3.3.3) to make sure staff alerts are “acted upon appropriately and in a timely manner”. 

How we got here

The reforms trace back to the April 2023 Gambling Act Review white paper, High Stakes: gambling reform for the digital age, which committed the Commission to review machine technical standards, including session limits and safer gambling tools on category B and C machines. 

The consultation opened on 29 January 2025, closed on 3 June 2025 and drew 1,065 responses from operators, clubs, trade bodies and campaigners. A first part of the response, published in January 2026, produced a new licence condition forcing operators to pull non-compliant machines once notified by the Commission. That rule has applied since 29 July 2026.

Much of what is now mandatory already existed on a voluntary basis in parts of the industry, and the Commission says it has deliberately consolidated that progress. The difference is that voluntary tools could be skipped. From mid-2027 they cannot.

There is also a political trade-off in the background. The Commission is explicit that the government will not consider loosening machine rules until consumer protections are raised. It names three possible deregulatory steps that could follow: debit cards used directly on machines, more category B machines in AGCs and bingo halls, and future stakes and prizes reviews. 

For operators, the new standards are effectively the price of admission for those changes.

The Commission's own impact assessment puts the bill for staff alerts at £20.76 million to £41.63 million a year, mostly for data systems and extra staff. Limit-setting software adds a one-off £500,000 to £1 million, and session displays £554,000 to £1.154 million. How that lands depends on what kind of business you run.

Entain: the alert problem at scale

Entain runs about 2,300 Ladbrokes and Coral shops. Many trade with one or two staff on the floor, and from October 2028 the law will require those staff to act "appropriately and in a timely manner" on every qualifying alert.^[2]

The content strategy matters too. In November 2025 Entain struck an exclusive retail deal to put Pragmatic Play's Big Bass slot series on its shop machines. That online-to-retail model is exactly what the compendium rule bites on. Any new title added to a multi-game cabinet after the cut-off brings every game on that cabinet into the new regime.^[3]

It arrives at an awkward moment. Chief executive Stella David has told the prime minister that doubling machine games duty (MGD) to 40% would add around £100 million a year to the cost of running the shops. 

Evoke and William Hill: fewer shops, older kit

Evoke has closed 278 William Hill shops over the past year, around 200 of them in May 2026 alone. Supplier Inspired said terminals from closed shops have been redeployed across the remaining estate.

Redeployed machines are existing machines, so they stay outside the new rules. That gives a shrinking estate a short-term reason to sweat older kit rather than buy new cabinets, at least until the content on them needs refreshing.

Rank: timing in its favour, for now

Rank is the clearest winner from the exemption. Grosvenor added 850 machines across 37 casinos in 2025/26, a 60% increase, after the government allowed casinos to host more machines. Grosvenor gaming machine revenue was up 15% in the first six weeks of the new financial year.^[4][5]

Because new-or-existing status is set by final testing date, a fleet installed before 30 June 2027 should largely sit outside the rules. The catch is Rank's own growth plan. Management calls machine "optimisation" a significant opportunity, and fresh games on compendium cabinets will pull those machines into scope.

Chief executive Richard Harris has separately warned that an MGD rise could affect around 2,000 jobs, about 30% of Rank's UK workforce.^[6]

Merkur: the 24-hour arcade question

Merkur Casino UK runs more than 220 high street gaming centres, with many open 24 hours [8]. It is still expanding, with two new venues opened in July 2026 as part of a £5 million UK investment programme.^[7]

Reference 7

Two things make Merkur distinctive. Its venues lean on category B3 and C machines in small, lightly staffed units, which is where overnight staff alerts are hardest to resource. And as part of the Gauselmann group, it also has in-house game development through studios such as Blueprint, so it carries both the operator cost and the design cost of no turbo modes and no celebrated losses.

Inspired Entertainment: the supplier's bill

Suppliers absorb the build cost before operators see a single alert. Inspired is the exclusive terminal and content provider to Paddy Power's UK and Irish shops. It also signed a five-year deal in 2025 to supply around 570 Vantage terminals to Jenningsbet, the UK's largest independent bookmaker.^[8][9]

It launched a new UK cabinet, the Vantage Slant, at ICE in January 2026. Every cabinet released after the cut-off will need limit-setting, session displays and alert integration built in and tested. The upside is that a compliant estate becomes a reason for operators to sign the next refresh.^[10]

The small operators

The Commission admits that forcing retrofits would have hit smaller licensees and social clubs hardest, which is why existing machines are exempt. The industry estimated around 7,770 machines could have been removed if upgrades had been mandatory. 

For independents, the exemption buys time rather than removing the cost.

How the industry and regulator have reacted

The tone has shifted sharply since the consultation opened. In May 2025 Bacta vice president Joseph Cullis called the original proposals "an existential threat to the industry", warning that forcing every category B machine to comply regardless of age would see many units “junked”.

That argument has largely been won. Existing machines are exempt, the first two default breaks are shorter, and staff will not be alerted at the 20- and 40-minute marks. Expect trade bodies to welcome the concessions while pressing on cost and the compendium rule

The Commission is not budging on the alert deadline. Policy senior manager Graham Burgin described 3 October 2028 as a "hard stop" and urged licensees to use alert technology now where they already have it.

Helen Rhodes, the Commission's director of major policy projects and evaluation, said the package would “empower consumers to understand and manage their gambling and ensure operators play their part” 

The defaults themselves are not new. The Betting and Gaming Council's own responsible gambling code already set mandatory alerts after 20 minutes of play and £150 spent on its members' machines. The difference now is that the numbers become hard limits with forced breaks, and they apply beyond the bookmakers.