The History of Gambling in Colombia
Colombia was the first country in Latin America to build a complete legal framework for online gambling, licensing its first internet operator in June 2017 under rules the rest of the region later copied. That 2016 regime, Acuerdo 04, sits at the end of a much older story: gambling revenue in Colombia has been constitutionally earmarked for public health since the 1991 Constitution, a principle rooted in colonial-era charity lotteries that funded hospitals and shelters. Between the department-run lotteries of the nineteenth century and the 15 Coljuegos-licensed online operators active in 2026, Colombian law has consistently treated games of chance as a fiscal monopoly (monopolio rentístico, a state-reserved revenue source) rather than a private industry — a design choice that shaped everything from the legalisation of the street-corner numbers game chance in 1982 to the tax disputes still working through the Constitutional Court today.
Colonial lotteries and the origins of a charity-funded monopoly
The first documented public lottery in what is now Colombia was organised in Santa Fe (colonial Bogotá) in June 1792, run on a monthly basis with a 1,000-peso prize fund. As the historian Roger Pita Pico has documented, colonial authorities quickly folded lotteries into official administration: what began as a philanthropic idea became, in his words, a mechanism “to cover the scarce state coffers” rather than a purely charitable exercise.
The charitable framing nonetheless persisted in the specific causes lotteries funded. In 1801 the Cabildo (municipal council) of Santa Fe organised a lottery with a 1,000-peso prize, issuing 2,000 tickets at 20 reales each; the roughly 453-peso profit was directed to the “Casa de Recogimiento de Mujeres”, a shelter for abandoned women. After independence, the new republican government decentralised lottery administration in 1823, handing the monopoly to four principal cities — Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena and Mompós — each required to direct proceeds to local charitable works. This pattern, of gambling revenue formally tied to a designated public good rather than flowing into general taxation, is the direct ancestor of the health-earmarking rule that now sits in Colombia’s Constitution.
The link to public health specifically hardened over the following century as departmental and municipal lotteries proliferated. When the Lotería de Bogotá was formally created by city council Acuerdo 81 of 1967, the enabling agreement fixed the split of proceeds in advance: 75 percent to the city health secretariat and 25 percent to the child-protection institute Idipron. By the mid-twentieth century, in other words, “lottery money funds hospitals and social protection” was already settled administrative practice in Colombia’s major cities, well before it became a constitutional command.
El chance: from clandestine numbers game to regulated industry
El chance — a low-stake bet in which players try to match the last two, three or four digits of an official lottery draw — emerged as a popular working-class wagering form in the 1960s. It began as an entirely illegal, informal betting network, and clandestine chance operators became, in several documented cases, a financing channel for illegal armed groups, which gave successive governments a direct fiscal-order incentive to bring the activity inside the law rather than simply suppress it.
That formalisation came under President Julio César Turbay Ayala with Ley 1 de 1982, which brought apuestas permanentes (permanent bets — the formal legal name for chance) into the state’s rentistic monopoly, established licensing and exploitation-rights obligations for private operators, and set out sanctions for unauthorised operation. Decrees 386 of 1983 and 033 of 1984 filled in implementing detail. The effect was to convert what had been an underground cash economy into a state-licensed betting sector whose proceeds were now legally captured for public revenue — the same health-funding logic already established for the lotteries. Despite four decades of regulation, chance still competes with a persistent illegal market that Coljuegos and industry bodies continue to flag as a drain on both tax collection and consumer protection.
The 1991 Constitution: gambling revenue as a health-funding monopoly
Colombia’s 1991 Constitution turned administrative practice into binding law. Article 336 provides that no monopoly may be created except as an arbitrio rentístico (fiscal monopoly instrument) pursuing a public or social purpose and established by statute, and states explicitly: revenue obtained through the exploitation of games-of-chance monopolies “shall be destined exclusively to health services”, while revenue from the liquor monopoly goes preferentially to health and education. The article also directs Congress to criminalise evasion of monopoly revenue. This is the constitutional root of every subsequent gambling statute in Colombia — casinos, lotteries, chance and, eventually, online betting all exist as facets of a single rentistic monopoly whose entire justification, in law, is financing the health system.
Article 336 also instructed Congress to pass an organic law defining the monopoly’s regime. It took eleven years for that instruction to be fulfilled.
Ley 643 de 2001: the framework statute
Ley 643 was enacted on 16 January 2001 and published in Diario Oficial No. 44.294 the following day, under the title “por la cual se fija el régimen propio del monopolio rentístico de juegos de suerte y azar” (fixing the specific regime for the rentistic monopoly of games of chance). It remains the framework statute for Colombian gambling law today, though heavily amended.
Article 1 defines the monopoly as the state’s exclusive power to exploit, organise, administer, operate, control, oversee, regulate and monitor every modality of games of chance, exercised for a fiscal purpose in favour of health services. Article 5 defines a “juego de suerte y azar” as one governed by pre-set rules in which players stake money against an operator with the possibility of a monetary or in-kind prize determined by chance rather than skill. The law then works through each modality in turn: traditional lotteries (Article 11), permanent bets/chance (Article 21), raffles (Article 27), localised games — bingo, slot machines and casinos (Article 32), horse-racing wagers (Article 37), and, significantly for what followed in 2016, a residual category of “novel games” (juegos novedosos, Article 38) that later became the legal hook for regulating games that did not exist in 2001, including internet-operated betting.
Ley 643 also created ETESA (Empresa Territorial para la Salud), a state industrial and commercial enterprise owned jointly by the departments and the Capital District, tasked specifically with exploiting the “novel games” category on a national scale. Departments, the Capital District and municipalities were confirmed as holders of monopoly revenue generally, except for the portion earmarked for national health research, which belonged to the nation. Under Article 42, exploitation-rights income collected through third-party operators had to be deposited in a special account and transferred to the health sector within the first ten business days of the following month, with revenue divided roughly 80 percent to service delivery, 7 percent to health research, 5 percent to elderly-population coverage and 4 percent each to disability and child-health coverage. The law additionally imposed a 1 percent parafiscal contribution on professionalised lottery and permanent-betting operators.
Baloto and the national lottery apparatus
Alongside the departmental lottery system, Colombia developed a national electronic lottery under the Baloto brand, which held its first draw on 27 January 2001 in Barranquilla, Bogotá, Cali, Envigado and Medellín, with an opening jackpot of 1,500 million pesos. Baloto and its companion games (Revancha and, later, Súper Astro Millonario) fall administratively under the “innovative games” category managed at national level — first by ETESA, later by its successor, Coljuegos. Since its creation, Baloto has become one of the monopoly’s largest single contributors to health financing, alongside the older departmental lotteries and the localised-games sector (bingo halls and casinos).
Enforcement teeth: Ley 1393 de 2010
A decade after Ley 643, Congress moved to close a persistent enforcement gap: exploitation-rights evasion by unlicensed operators. Ley 1393, enacted on 12 July 2010, amended Article 44 of Ley 643 to sharpen sanctions for operating games of chance without authorisation — closure of premises, seizure of gaming equipment, and a fine equal to 200 percent of the undeclared exploitation rights, on top of criminal liability under Article 312 of the Penal Code (six to eight years’ imprisonment plus a fine of 500 to 1,000 minimum monthly legal salaries). The law also transferred administration of exploitation rights for nationally operated games to DIAN (the national tax and customs authority) from 1 January 2011, and set operating conditions for games run aboard cruise ships. Ley 1393 signalled that Bogotá treated evasion of gambling levies as a direct threat to the constitutionally earmarked health budget, not a minor compliance issue.
From ETESA to Coljuegos, 2010–2012
ETESA’s institutional life ended in a drawn-out liquidation. Decreto 175 of 25 January 2010 ordered its suppression and liquidation within one year. That deadline proved unworkable and was repeatedly extended: Decreto 4816 of 29 December 2010 pushed it to 31 December 2011; Decreto 4961 of 30 December 2011 pushed it again to 30 April 2012; and Decreto 0873 of 27 April 2012 extended it a final time, to 31 August 2012.
In the meantime, the government created ETESA’s permanent successor. Decreto 4142 of 3 November 2011 established Coljuegos — formally the Empresa Industrial y Comercial del Estado Administradora del Monopolio Rentístico de los Juegos de Suerte y Azar (the state industrial and commercial enterprise administering the games-of-chance rentistic monopoly), attached to the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit — on the basis that no entity existed to administer the national monopoly permanently once ETESA wound down. Coljuegos began operating on 16 April 2012, and on 30 August 2012 the two entities signed an inter-administrative agreement transferring ETESA’s assets to Coljuegos at no cost, completing the handover. Coljuegos today directly administers localised games (casinos, bingo, virtual races and sports betting), the innovative games (Baloto/Revancha and Súper Astro Millonario), and national raffles and promotional draws.
2016: Colombia regulates online gambling first in Latin America
Coljuegos’ board of directors approved Acuerdo 04 on 24 May 2016 (formally issued by resolution on 9 June 2016), establishing the regulatory framework for games of chance operated “in the novel modality” of the internet — using the residual “novel games” category Ley 643 had created fifteen years earlier for exactly this kind of unanticipated case. The Acuerdo made Coljuegos the sole national authority empowered to grant concession contracts to online casino and betting operators, setting out the financial, technical and legal requirements applicants had to satisfy.
The first licence was awarded to Wplay.co, operated by Aquila Global Group and based in Medellín, which became the first company to meet Coljuegos’ full set of requirements; its authorisation was reported as finalised in June 2017, and online operations under the new regime began that same year. Concession contracts have typically run for multi-year terms — the licence granted to Corredor Empresarial ran for five years, and the most recent operator added to the register (MrYoker, via concession contract C2261 of 2026) is authorised through 2031, also five years. By this mechanism, Colombia became the first country in Latin America with a comprehensive legal and licensing structure for online gambling, ahead of Argentina (which regulates online betting at provincial rather than national level) and of Peru, Chile and Brazil, which introduced national online-gambling frameworks only from 2022 onward.
The online licensing regime has since been amended repeatedly — notably by Acuerdos 2 and 4 of 2019 and Acuerdos 2 and 5 of 2020 — refining requirements without displacing the basic 2016 structure. By 2026, Coljuegos listed 15 authorised online operators: Wplay, Betsson, Codere, Luckia, BetPlay, Rushbet, YaJuego, Bingo Casino, Bwin, Betano, Rivalo, MrYoker, Sportium, Zamba and Stake.
Policing the unlicensed market
Licensing only works if unlicensed competitors can be kept out, and Colombia has increasingly relied on domain and social-media blocking to do that. Under Circular 017 of 2025, issued on 23 April 2025 by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (MinTIC), Coljuegos can request blocking of websites and social profiles dedicated to unauthorised gambling activity. The blocking campaign runs ahead of that procedure rather than starting with it. In a bulletin dated 21 February 2025, Coljuegos reported having blocked 10,000 websites and social-media profiles over the course of the previous year, and set out a running total of 141 domains tied to the 1Win brand, 242 to 1XBET, 19 to BBRBET and 3 to Pinnacle. By 29 September 2025 it put cumulative blocking requests at roughly 28,100 sites, with close to 3,000 more expected in the months that followed. Coljuegos has also targeted platforms outside the traditional betting model, including a blocking request against the prediction-market platform Polymarket over unauthorised wagering on Colombian electoral events.
The blocking power is not unlimited, however. Decreto Legislativo 175 of 2025 (discussed below) had attempted to give Coljuegos an explicit site-blocking authority tied to that specific emergency decree; when the Constitutional Court reviewed the decree in October 2025, it upheld the decree’s tax measures but struck down that particular blocking clause (paragraph 5 of Article 1) as failing the constitutional necessity test for emergency legislation. How far that ruling reaches beyond the decree itself is less clear than it might look. MinTIC issued Circular 017 on 23 April 2025 expressly, in its own words, “to comply with Decreto 0175 de 2025”, and stated that the Circular would remain in force for as long as the exceptional situation behind that emergency framework lasted. The Circular is therefore not a legal basis standing independently of the clause the Court struck down, and the public record does not make clear whether Coljuegos’ blocking requests after October 2025 rest instead on its ordinary powers to administer the gambling monopoly under Ley 643 of 2001.
2025–2026: a volatile stretch of gambling taxation
The most turbulent period in the modern regime has come very recently, driven by Colombia’s use of constitutional states of exception to fund unrelated crises through gambling taxation.
On 24 January 2025, President Gustavo Petro declared a state of internal commotion (conmoción interior, a constitutional emergency power under Article 213) covering the Catatumbo region, the Cúcuta metropolitan area, and the municipalities of Río de Oro and González in Cesar department, in response to an escalation of armed-group violence that displaced more than 36,000 people. Using powers unlocked by that declaration, Decreto Legislativo 175 of 14 February 2025 imposed a temporary 19 percent VAT (IVA) on money deposits made to internet-only games of chance and betting platforms — the taxable event being the deposit itself, whether made in cash, bank transfer or cryptoassets, regardless of whether the operator was based in Colombia or abroad. The measure took effect five business days after publication and was scheduled to run until 31 December 2025, with the Finance Ministry estimating it would raise around 1.06 trillion pesos earmarked exclusively for the Catatumbo response.
The Constitutional Court reviewed Decreto 175 in Sentencia C-431/25, issued 16 October 2025, and declared the decree’s tax measures — the 19 percent gambling VAT, a 1 percent special levy on hydrocarbon and coal exports, and a stamp-tax increase — constitutional, while striking only the site-blocking paragraph described above. The 19 percent VAT accordingly ran its full course and expired on schedule on 31 December 2025.
The government then tried a second route to the same revenue. A broader economic-emergency declaration (Decreto Legislativo 1390 of 2025) was used to issue Decreto 1471 of 2025, reimposing a 19 percent VAT on liquor and online betting for 2026. The Constitutional Court provisionally suspended this on 28–29 January 2026 (6–2), and in April 2026 confirmed the underlying emergency declaration itself was unconstitutional, invalidating Decreto 1471 with it.
A third mechanism followed within weeks. After severe flooding struck the Caribbean coast in early February 2026 — an “atypical hydrometeorological event” affecting 181 municipalities across eight departments (Córdoba, Antioquia, La Guajira, Sucre, Chocó, Bolívar, Cesar and Magdalena) — the government declared a new economic, social and ecological emergency via Decreto Legislativo 150 of 11 February 2026. Under that declaration, Decreto 0240 of 12 March 2026 created a national consumption tax (impuesto al consumo, distinct from VAT) of 16 percent on online games of chance, levied not on player deposits but on gross gaming revenue — total bets minus prizes paid — for each two-month period; a companion Decreto 0241 added 8.6 trillion pesos to the 2026 national budget. On 24 June 2026, the Constitutional Court’s plenary chamber conditionally upheld Decreto 150 by an 8–1 vote, restricting its scope to the 181 flood-affected municipalities but leaving the tax measures issued under it, including the 16 percent gambling consumption tax, in force.
Colombia’s licensed online operators have accordingly moved, within roughly eighteen months, from no special gambling tax, to a 19 percent VAT on deposits (upheld), to an attempted repeat of that VAT (struck down), to a 16 percent consumption tax on gross gaming revenue that remained in force as this article was researched in mid-2026.
Current position, 2026
As of 2026, Coljuegos lists 15 authorised online operators, and the sector’s contribution to the health system continues to set records: Coljuegos transferred more than 1 trillion pesos to health financing in 2024, the first time transfers had crossed that threshold, with 2025 collection projected at roughly 1.3 trillion pesos. The constitutional architecture from 1991 — gambling revenue as an earmarked health-funding monopoly — remains fully intact, even as the specific tax instruments applied to the online segment have been rewritten three times in eighteen months. Colombia’s 2016 online-licensing framework remains the reference point against which other Latin American markets are measured, having predated comparable national online regimes in Peru, Chile and Brazil by roughly half a decade.
Key dates
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1792 | First documented public lottery in Santa Fe (colonial Bogotá), run monthly with a 1,000-peso fund. |
| 1823 | Republican government decentralises the lottery monopoly to Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena and Mompós, tying proceeds to local charity. |
| 1960s | El chance (informal numbers betting) emerges as an illegal but popular working-class wagering form. |
| 1982 | Ley 1 de 1982 formalises and licenses apuestas permanentes/chance under the state monopoly. |
| 1991 | New Constitution’s Article 336 earmarks all games-of-chance monopoly revenue exclusively for health services. |
| 2001 | Ley 643 de 2001 (16 January) fixes the national framework for the gambling monopoly and creates ETESA. |
| 2001 | Baloto’s first draw takes place, 27 January. |
| 2010 | Ley 1393 (12 July) tightens evasion sanctions; Decreto 175 (25 January) orders ETESA’s liquidation. |
| 2011–2012 | Coljuegos created by Decreto 4142 (3 November 2011); begins operating 16 April 2012; assumes ETESA’s assets 30 August 2012. |
| 2016 | Acuerdo 04 (24 May) makes Colombia the first Latin American country to fully regulate online gambling. |
| 2017 | Wplay.co becomes the first licensed online operator, June 2017. |
| 2025 | Decreto 175 (14 February) imposes a temporary 19% VAT on online betting deposits under Catatumbo’s state of internal commotion; upheld by the Constitutional Court in October (C-431/25), expires 31 December as scheduled. |
| 2026 | A repeat 19% VAT is struck down (April); a 16% consumption tax on gross gaming revenue is introduced under a flood-related economic emergency (Decreto 0240, 12 March) and conditionally upheld by the Constitutional Court, 24 June. |
Sources
- Función Pública — Ley 643 de 2001 (gestor normativo) and Alcaldía de Bogotá’s mirror of the full text — primary source for the 2001 framework statute: monopoly definition (Art. 1), games-of-chance definition (Art. 5), modality-by-modality regulation (Arts. 11–38), ETESA’s creation, and the health-revenue allocation rules (Art. 42).
- Corte Constitucional, Sentencia C-431/25 — the 16 October 2025 ruling reviewing Decreto Legislativo 175 de 2025: upholds the 19% VAT on online gambling deposits, the hydrocarbon levy and the stamp-tax increase, while striking the decree’s site-blocking clause.
- Presidencia de la República — declaration of the state of internal commotion in Catatumbo (Decreto 0062, 24 January 2025) — legal basis and stated rationale for the emergency underlying the 2025 gambling tax.
- Presidencia de la República — announcement of Decreto 175 de 2025 — official statement on the 19% VAT on online gambling deposits, its purpose and expected revenue.
- Coljuegos — “Juegos de Suerte y Azar” — Coljuegos’ own summary of the legal regime it administers.
- Secretaría del Senado — Decreto 175 de 2010, plus SUIN-Juriscol — Decreto 4816 de 2010 — the decrees ordering and successively extending ETESA’s liquidation.
- Función Pública — Decreto Ley 4142 de 2011 and Ámbito Jurídico coverage of Coljuegos’ creation — Coljuegos’ founding decree, start of operations and the asset transfer from ETESA.
- Función Pública — Ley 1393 de 2010 — evasion sanctions, DIAN’s role from 2011, and cruise-ship gaming provisions.
- Roger Pita Pico, “Los inicios del juego de lotería en Colombia: entre la suerte, el control social y el beneficio público,” Anuario de Historia Regional y de las Fronteras, vol. 22, no. 1 (2017), pp. 169–192, published at Redalyc — peer-reviewed history of the 1792 Santa Fe lottery, the 1801 Cabildo lottery and its charitable destination, and the 1823 decentralisation to Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena and Mompós.
- AZARplus — “Wplay.co es la primera en obtener la autorización de Coljuegos” (29 June 2017) — trade-press report confirming Wplay as the first licensed online operator.
- InfoPlay — Coljuegos’ full list of 15 authorised online operators (29 May 2026) — current operator register, including MrYoker’s concession contract C2261.
- El Espectador — “Coljuegos alcanza récord: $1 billón para la salud en 2024” — Coljuegos’ historic first transfer of over 1 trillion pesos to the health sector, with 2025 projections.
- Yogonet Latinoamérica — Coljuegos blocks 10,000 illegal gambling sites and social profiles (4 February 2025) — scale of the enforcement campaign against unlicensed operators, with brand-specific blocking figures.
- Infobae — Constitutional Court strikes down the 2025–26 economic emergency decree (9 April 2026) — the invalidation of Decreto 1390/Decreto 1471 de 2025, which had attempted to reimpose the 19% gambling VAT for 2026.
- Rio Consultores — analysis of Decreto 0240 de 2026 — the 16% national consumption tax on gross gaming revenue for online gambling, its legal basis under Decreto 150 de 2026, and its mechanics.
- El País (Cali) — Constitutional Court conditionally upholds Decreto 150 de 2026 (24 June 2026) — the ruling limiting the flood-related economic emergency to the 181 affected municipalities while leaving its tax measures in force.