UAE quietly strips gambling and betting rules from new civil code

The United Arab Emirates has removed all references to gambling and betting from its new Civil Transactions Law, a technical but significant shift that clears space for a separate GCGRA-led commercial gaming regime from June 2026.

The United Arab Emirates has taken another decisive step in reshaping its approach to gambling regulation by deleting long-standing gambling and betting provisions from its new civil code. Under the new Civil Transactions Law, issued as Federal Decree-Law No. 25 of 2025 and due to take effect on 1 June 2026, the civil code will no longer include a dedicated section governing gambling contracts and recovery of losses.

Under the current Civil Transactions Law (Federal Law No. 5 of 1985), Articles 1012 to 1021 explicitly address gambling and betting, setting out how such agreements are treated under civil law, including issues of invalidity and whether gambling debts can be enforced or reclaimed. Legal analysis of the new code confirms that these articles have not been carried over or re-inserted elsewhere: the entire chapter has simply been removed.

Law firms tracking the change say the deletion should not be read as a softening of the UAE’s underlying stance on gambling. Instead, it is widely interpreted as part of a broader clean-up of “general” legislation to make room for a specialised commercial gaming framework administered by the General Commercial Gaming Regulatory Authority (GCGRA), the federal regulator created in 2023 to license and supervise casinos, online gaming and sports betting.

This move comes shortly after the GCGRA issued its first internet gaming and sports wagering licence to Play971 in December 2025, signalling the practical rollout of a tightly controlled, licence-based market. By removing overlapping civil-law provisions, the government is effectively signalling that disputes and compliance questions around gambling will be handled primarily within the sector-specific regulatory system rather than through generic civil-code rules.

Analysts expect further fine-tuning of the legal framework in 2026, including possible alignment between gaming regulations and federal criminal and cybercrime laws, but the direction of travel is clear: gambling and betting are being carved out of the traditional civil-law landscape and placed firmly under the remit of a dedicated commercial gaming regime. For operators and investors watching the UAE, the removal of gambling provisions from the civil code is another sign that the country is moving toward a self-contained, rules-based gaming system rather than ad-hoc tolerance.