UAE weighs age-gating to block underage access to gambling-style online games as child digital safety push expands

Plans discussed at the Education, Human Development and Community Development Council’s 15 February 2026 meeting point to a phased, risk-based rollout of age controls — with gambling and betting mechanics explicitly flagged for outright restriction for minors under the UAE’s new Child Digital Safety framework.

The UAE’s Education, Human Development and Community Development Council has reviewed proposals to regulate children’s digital access through a phased, risk-based approach, starting with social media and expanding to other digital services. Officials highlighted age-based access regulations as a core tool, tailored by age group and platform risk level, alongside broader digital wellbeing measures.

The discussion lands as the UAE implements Federal Decree-Law on Child Digital Safety, which creates a national system to classify digital platforms by risk and requires platforms to deploy safeguards such as age verification, tools to enforce age restrictions, and blocking/filtering/age-rating mechanisms.

Critically for gambling-related content, the Decree-Law prohibits digital platforms from allowing children to participate in, create accounts for, or access online commercial games involving gambling or money-based betting activities — a provision designed to be enforced through age-gating and blocking where relevant.

For the industry, the signal is that “underage gambling” controls in the UAE are being treated as an ecosystem issue, not just an operator KYC step: platform classification, age verification, and enforcement tooling are moving toward becoming baseline compliance requirements across apps, online games and other digital services that could expose minors to gambling mechanics.