The History of Gambling in Peru
Peru regulated land-based casinos and slot machines relatively early, under Ley N.º 27153 of 1999, but left online gambling and sports betting almost entirely unregulated until Ley N.º 31557 of August 2022 — a full two decades after the land-based framework, and years after most of its South American neighbours moved on remote gaming. Both regimes sit with the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior y Turismo (MINCETUR, the foreign trade and tourism ministry), not a dedicated gambling commission, because Peruvian casino law was built as a tourism-promotion instrument in 1979 and never re-homed. The online licensing window closed in March 2024, formal operations began in February 2024, and by mid-2026 Peru had around ninety authorised remote-gaming and sports-betting platforms, an active site-blocking programme, and a live constitutional dispute over a 2024 tax decree. This article traces that history from the colonial-era Lotería de Lima to the current regulatory position.
Colonial charity draws and the birth of a state lottery
Organised lottery drawing in Lima predates the Republic. Historical accounts of the “Ramo de Loterías de Lima y Callao” describe an early lottery ticket drawn in Lima on 16 December 1832 to help fund the reconstruction of the Hospital San Bartolomé, at a time when lottery income was already being channelled toward public charitable works. Responsibility for organising these draws passed to public administration on 30 June 1826, and the institution most closely associated with Peruvian lotteries for the following century, the Sociedad de Beneficencia Pública de Lima (Lima Public Charity Society), was formally created by supreme decree on 12 June 1834 under the provisional presidency of General Luis José de Orbegoso. For most of the nineteenth century the lottery was a weekly public event: tickets were sold across Lima and the draw itself was staged in the Plaza de Armas, in front of the citizens who had bought a chance in it.
The Beneficencia’s monopoly persisted into the twentieth century. In 1907 the previously separate Lima and Callao lotteries were merged into a single “Ramo de Loterías de Lima y Callao”, which continued to fund hospitals, orphanages and other charitable institutions under the Beneficencia’s control. The system reached a commercial peak in the 1980s — press accounts from the period describe roughly 350,000 tickets sold monthly and jackpots in the hundreds of thousands of US dollars — before market liberalisation in the 1990s ended the Beneficencia’s exclusive position and opened the lottery business to private operators, of which Intralot’s La Tinka became the best-known successor brand.
Early prohibition: the 1920 Constitution
Peru’s relationship with gambling before the modern casino law was one of formal prohibition alongside informal tolerance. The Constitución para la República del Perú of 18 January 1920, promulgated under President Augusto B. Leguía, addressed wagering games directly: Article 52 declared that “se prohíbe en lo absoluto el juego de envite en la República” (wagering games are absolutely prohibited in the Republic) and ordered that any premises where such games were played be closed. In practice the prohibition did little to suppress demand. Newspaper accounts from Lima in the 1920s and 1930s describe clandestine gaming houses operating in the Cercado de Lima and the city’s Chinese quarter, periodically raided by the Guardia Civil but never eliminated — a pattern of nominal prohibition and de facto tolerance that would recur throughout the century whenever Peru’s gambling law fell behind actual practice, as it later did with unlicensed slot halls in the 1990s and unlicensed betting websites in the 2010s.
1979: casinos legalised through the tourism ministry
The modern framework’s defining institutional choice was made in 1979. Decreto Ley N.º 22515, issued on 1 May 1979 by the military government then in office, empowered the ministry then responsible for industry, tourism and integration to grant concessions for casino operation — the first time a Peruvian government had legalised casino gambling outright rather than simply tolerating it. The rationale was economic rather than social: casinos were conceived as an amenity for the international tourism the government was trying to attract, not as a domestic entertainment product to be regulated for its own sake. That framing — gambling policy as a subset of tourism promotion — is the reason MINCETUR, rather than a standalone gaming regulator, still holds the licensing and enforcement competence for both land-based and online gambling in Peru more than four decades later, through its Dirección General de Juegos de Casino y Máquinas Tragamonedas (DGJCMT).
Peru’s two modern political constitutions provided the underlying economic-rights framework within which this activity would later be litigated. The 1979 Constitution guaranteed freedom of commerce and industry within a mixed, socially-oriented market economy; the 1993 Constitution that replaced it carried the same logic forward more explicitly, with Article 59 committing the state to guarantee “la libertad de trabajo y la libertad de empresa, comercio e industria”, while specifying that the exercise of those freedoms “no debe ser lesivo a la moral, ni a la salud, ni a la seguridad públicas” (must not be injurious to morals, health or public safety). That morals/health/safety qualifier is not incidental: it is the same language Ley 27153 would later use, almost verbatim, to justify regulating rather than banning casino gambling, and it is the constitutional hook the Tribunal Constitucional would use in 2002 to strike down part of that same law’s tax regime.
Liberalisation and the tragamonedas boom of the 1990s
Through the 1980s and into the 1990s, slot-machine (“tragamonedas”) halls spread across Lima and other cities with little central oversight, operating under a patchwork of municipal licences and the 1979 casino-concession framework, which had not been designed with mass slot-hall proliferation in mind. By the late 1990s the sector had become a recognised public-policy problem: thousands of machines were in operation with no unified registration, inspection or taxation regime, prize payouts and machine integrity were unverifiable, and the halls were widely associated with money-laundering risk and the exposure of vulnerable players to unregulated, high-frequency gambling. That proliferation — not any single scandal — was the direct trigger for the comprehensive law Congress passed in 1999.
Ley 27153 (1999): a unified casino and slot-machine regime
Ley N.º 27153, “Ley que regula la explotación de los juegos de casino y máquinas tragamonedas”, was published in the Diario Oficial El Peruano on Friday 9 July 1999. Its stated purpose was threefold: to preserve and protect citizens from harm to morals, health and public safety; to promote inbound tourism; and to establish a tax on the exploitation of casino games and slot machines. The law brought casinos and slot halls under a single licensing regime for the first time, imposed minimum operating standards, and required formal authorisation from MINCETUR rather than the informal municipal tolerance that had prevailed until then.
The law’s tax provisions did not survive first contact with the Constitution unchanged. Articles 38 and 39 of Ley 27153 set the Impuesto a los Juegos de Casino y de Máquinas Tragamonedas at 20% of gross winnings, calculated without any deduction for operating costs. A group of casino operators challenged the law, and on 29 January 2002 the Tribunal Constitucional, in Exp. N.º 009-2001-AI/TC, declared Articles 38.1 and 39 unconstitutional, along with the law’s transitional provisions governing the changeover. The court’s reasoning was that a 20% levy on gross revenue, with no allowance for costs, was confiscatory and therefore incompatible with the constitutional guarantees around property and free enterprise; it also found the 120-day adaptation period set by the transitional provisions unreasonably short. Most of the law’s other provisions — the licensing structure, the morals/health/safety justification, the formalisation requirements — were upheld.
Congress responded within months. Ley N.º 27796, promulgated 26 July 2002, rewrote the tax: the rate was cut to 12%, and the taxable base was redefined as monthly net income (total amounts wagered minus prizes paid) less a 2% maintenance deduction, rather than gross winnings. That 12%-of-net-income-minus-2%-maintenance formula, born directly out of the 2002 ruling, proved durable — it is essentially the same structure Congress would reuse twenty years later for the online-gambling tax in Ley 31557.
Formalisation and the creation of the DGJCMT (2006)
The regulator itself was not put on a fully independent statutory footing until Ley N.º 28945, the “Ley de Reordenamiento y Formalización de la Actividad de Explotación de Juegos de Casino y Máquinas Tragamonedas”, published 24 December 2006. That law formally established the Dirección General de Juegos de Casino y Máquinas Tragamonedas as the unit within MINCETUR’s tourism vice-ministry responsible for proposing, supervising and enforcing the sector’s administrative rules, and drove a further formalisation push aimed at bringing the remaining unlicensed slot halls into the registered system. The DGJCMT is the same body — now also responsible for remote gaming and sports betting — that issues the authorised-operator register still in use today.
The long unregulated online market
Ley 27153 and its successors dealt with physical premises: casino floors and slot-machine halls. They said nothing about gambling conducted online, and for roughly two decades Peru had no legal framework at all for internet-based betting. Offshore-licensed sportsbooks and casino platforms served Peruvian players throughout the 2000s and 2010s without any domestic authorisation requirement, tax obligation or consumer-protection rule, while the land-based sector operated under increasingly detailed MINCETUR oversight. This gap — common across Latin America in the 2000s, but closed earlier in several neighbouring markets — became the specific target of the legislative package passed in 2022–2023.
Ley 31557 (2022): regulating remote gaming and remote sports betting
Ley N.º 31557, “Ley que regula la explotación de los juegos a distancia y apuestas deportivas a distancia”, was promulgated 12 August 2022 and published in El Peruano the following day. It created a licensing regime for online casino-style games (“juegos a distancia”) and online sports betting (“apuestas deportivas a distancia”) operated through technological platforms, confirmed MINCETUR as the competent national authority — with power to authorise, register, inspect, sanction and revoke — and created a new specific tax: the Impuesto a los Juegos a Distancia y a las Apuestas Deportivas a Distancia, set out in Article 39, at 12% of monthly net income (gross receipts less refunds and prizes paid) after a 2% maintenance deduction — the same formula Congress had settled on for land-based casinos twenty years earlier. Operators, whether Peruvian legal entities or Peru-registered branches of foreign companies, were required to obtain platform authorisations valid for six years and to run their Peru-facing operation through a domain using the “.bet.pe” extension.
Ley 31806 (2023): closing gaps in the definitions
Less than a year after Ley 31557 took effect, Congress passed Ley N.º 31806, published 28 June 2023, amending fourteen articles and two final provisions of the 2022 law “para precisar conceptos y sus alcances” (to clarify concepts and their scope). Among the changes: the definition of a qualifying sporting event was broadened to include skill-based competitions and esports; and platforms were permitted to operate under a wider set of domain extensions — “.bet.pe”, “.bet”, “.com”, “.pe” and “.com.pe” — rather than being confined solely to “.bet.pe” as the original text implied.
The 2023 reglamento and the February 2024 commencement
The implementing regulation, Decreto Supremo N.º 005-2023-MINCETUR, approving the “Reglamento de la Ley N.º 31557” as amended by Ley 31806, was published in El Peruano on 13 October 2023. The reglamento set out the detailed authorisation procedure, technical certification requirements (including biennial third-party laboratory audits of gaming systems), collateral/guarantee obligations, and a tiered sanctions regime running from warnings up to fines of over 150 UIT, suspension or permanent disqualification. It entered into force on 9 February 2024.
MINCETUR then opened a one-month window, from 13 February to 13 March 2024, for every company already offering remote games or sports betting to Peruvian consumers to file a virtual application for a formal operating authorisation. At the time, MINCETUR had identified roughly 115 companies already active in the Peruvian market, of which around 86 were foreign (non-domiciled) operators and 29 were Peruvian entities. Any operator that missed the window, or that continued operating without an authorisation, became liable to blocking: MINCETUR announced that unlicensed betting and gaming sites would be blocked from 1 April 2024, backed by a graduated fine schedule (from 1 UIT for minor infractions up to over 150 UIT — roughly USD 200,000 at the time — for the most serious, alongside potential criminal referral) and by administrative powers to order ISP-level blocking of the domains and IP addresses of unauthorised platforms.
The ISC on remote gaming: a 1% tax, later cut to 0.3%, on the value of each bet — not on deposits
A second, separate tax was layered onto the sector in 2024, and it is the one most often misreported. Ley 31557’s own Article 39 tax (12% of net income, described above) applies to Peru-domiciled operators and Peru-registered branches. Decreto Legislativo N.º 1644, published 13 September 2024, went further and brought remote games and sports betting explicitly within the scope of the pre-existing Impuesto Selectivo al Consumo (ISC, Selective Consumption Tax) — but specifically for platforms operated by foreign legal entities serving Peru-resident players (identified through geolocation, payment-method origin, IP address or habitual residence), with electronic-money issuers and other payment intermediaries acting as withholding agents where the foreign operator does not comply directly.
Contrary to widespread reporting describing this as a tax “on deposits”, the ISC’s taxable base under Decreto Legislativo 1644 is the value of each individual bet or play (“el valor de cada apuesta”) — defined as any money or money-valued bonus applied to a game or bet — not the amount a player deposits into their account. The rate as originally set was 1%. The Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas then temporarily cut it to 0.3% by Decreto Supremo N.º 008-2025-EF, effective 20 January 2025 and running only until 30 June 2025, citing operators’ difficulty in passing the tax on to end consumers; the rate reverted to 1% from 1 July 2025 and, on the sources reviewed for this article, remained at 1% into 2026. In June 2025 Congress separately amended the ISC’s calculation to exclude promotional or bonus bets from the taxable base, so that only money actually staked is taxed — a change intended to lower operators’ effective liability, approved by Congress (Proyecto de Ley N.º 9645/2024-CR, exonerated of a second vote) but then subject to executive observation, which is what set up the 2026 dispute described below.
Enforcement: blocking unlicensed sites and payment channels
MINCETUR’s DGJCMT, working with the Ministerio de Transportes y Comunicaciones and, for physical raids, the national police and the Public Ministry, has continued active enforcement well past the 2024 licensing window. In one action reported on 23 July 2026, MINCETUR ordered the blocking of 36 unlicensed online gaming and sports-betting platforms and, in coordinated physical raids in Ancón (Lima), Pomalca (Lambayeque) and Catacaos (Piura), seized 39 clandestine slot machines. Peruvian law provides for criminal penalties, not just administrative fines, against those who promote or facilitate unlicensed gambling — MINCETUR has cited prison terms of one to four years for that conduct — on top of the administrative fine schedule (up to roughly 990,000 soles for unlicensed operation) established under Ley 31557 and its reglamento.
Peru’s gambling market in 2026
By mid-2026 Peru’s online licensing regime was mature enough that international industry bodies were treating it as a regional reference point: at the Peru Gaming Show 2026, held in Lima on 17–18 June, the tourism vice-ministry noted that Peru had been named “Regulador del Año 2025” (Regulator of the Year 2025) by the International Masters of Gaming Law, an award MINCETUR cited as recognition of its integrated framework for casinos, slot machines and remote gaming. Secondary reporting on MINCETUR’s own licensing data put the number of authorised remote-gaming and sports-betting platform licences at roughly 91 by early 2026, drawn from the pool of more than 50 sites that obtained authorisation between March 2024 and the end of 2025, alongside the pre-existing land-based casino and slot-hall register the DGJCMT has maintained since 2006.
The market has not been without turbulence. Industry figures cited in 2026 reporting on the ISC dispute put the toll of the 2024–2025 tax uncertainty at around 40 operators exiting the Peruvian market and roughly 1,500 point-of-sale locations closing, while sports-club sponsorship deals fell from about 18 Liga 1 football clubs to around 5. That dispute reached a procedural turning point in June 2026: Congress had approved Proyecto de Ley N.º 9645/2024-CR (103 votes in favour, none against) to adjust the ISC calculation, the measure was observed (vetoed in part) by the executive, and Congress moved toward an “insistencia” vote to override that observation. In parallel, betting operators and their trade association pursued a separate legal route: on 22–23 June 2026 Peru’s Jurado Nacional de Elecciones certified the roughly 5,000 citizen signatures needed to bring an acción de inconstitucionalidad (constitutional challenge) against Decreto Legislativo 1644 before the Tribunal Constitucional — echoing the same court’s 2002 intervention against the original 20% casino tax, though as of the sources reviewed here the outcome of both the congressional insistencia vote and any resulting Tribunal Constitucional case remained undetermined.
What is settled, twenty-seven years after Ley 27153 and four years after Ley 31557, is the institutional model itself: Peru continues to regulate gambling — land-based and online alike — as a licensed, taxed, tourism-adjacent economic activity administered by MINCETUR’s DGJCMT, rather than handing the sector to a dedicated gaming commission, with enforcement now extending to domain and payment blocking against anything operating outside that licensed perimeter.
Key dates
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 30 June 1826 | Lottery drawing placed under public (Beneficencia) administration in Lima |
| 12 June 1834 | Sociedad de Beneficencia Pública de Lima formally created |
| 1907 | Lima and Callao lotteries merged into the Ramo de Loterías de Lima y Callao |
| 18 January 1920 | 1920 Constitution, Article 52, bans “juego de envite” and orders gaming venues closed |
| 1 May 1979 | Decreto Ley 22515 legalises casinos under the tourism-sector ministry |
| 1993 | New Constitution (Art. 59) enshrines freedom of enterprise, limited by morals/health/public safety |
| 9 July 1999 | Ley 27153 creates a unified casino and slot-machine regime under MINCETUR; sets a 20% tax |
| 29 January 2002 | Tribunal Constitucional (Exp. 009-2001-AI/TC) strikes down the 20% tax as confiscatory |
| 26 July 2002 | Ley 27796 replaces it with 12% of net income minus a 2% maintenance deduction |
| 24 December 2006 | Ley 28945 formally creates the DGJCMT and drives further formalisation |
| 12–13 August 2022 | Ley 31557 regulates remote games and remote sports betting; creates a 12% tax on net income |
| 28 June 2023 | Ley 31806 amends 14 articles of Ley 31557 |
| 13 October 2023 | DS 005-2023-MINCETUR approves the implementing reglamento |
| 9 February 2024 | Reglamento enters into force |
| 13 Feb – 13 Mar 2024 | One-month window for existing operators to apply for authorisation |
| 1 April 2024 | MINCETUR begins blocking unlicensed gaming/betting sites |
| 13 September 2024 | Decreto Legislativo 1644 extends the ISC to foreign-operated remote gaming/betting platforms at 1% of each bet’s value |
| 20 Jan – 30 June 2025 | ISC temporarily reduced to 0.3% (DS 008-2025-EF) |
| 1 July 2025 | ISC reverts to 1% |
| 17 June 2026 | MINCETUR cites Peru’s “Regulador del Año 2025” award (IMGL) at Peru Gaming Show 2026 |
| 22–23 June 2026 | JNE certifies signatures for a constitutional challenge to DL 1644 |
| 23 July 2026 | MINCETUR blocks 36 unlicensed platforms, seizes 39 clandestine slot machines |
Sources
- El Peruano / busquedas.elperuano.pe — Ley N.º 31557 official text and publication record (12–13 August 2022): https://busquedas.elperuano.pe/dispositivo/NL/2095517-1 — supports the law’s title, date, purpose, MINCETUR authority, licensing terms and the 12% tax structure.
- El Peruano / busquedas.elperuano.pe — Decreto Supremo N.º 005-2023-MINCETUR, reglamento of Ley 31557 (13 October 2023): https://busquedas.elperuano.pe/dispositivo/SE/2224342-1 — supports the reglamento’s publication date and its status as the implementing regulation.
- El Peruano — Decreto Legislativo 1644, extension of ISC to remote games/betting (13 September 2024): https://www.elperuano.pe/noticia/252806-decreto-legislativo-1644-amplian-el-impuesto-selectivo-al-consumo-a-juegos-y-apuestas-a-distancia — supports the decree’s date, scope (foreign-operated platforms) and initial 1% rate.
- El Peruano — “ISC en juegos y apuestas deportivas a distancia” (19 February 2025): https://www.elperuano.pe/noticia/264505-isc-en-juegos-y-apuestas-deportivas-a-distancia — supports the 1%→0.3% temporary reduction, the per-bet taxable base, and the scheduled reversion to 1% on 1 July 2025.
- SUNAT — Orientación: “ISC – Juegos a distancia y apuestas deportivas a distancia”: https://orientacion.sunat.gob.pe/isc-juegos-distancia-y-apuestas-deportivas-distancia — supports the ISC taxable base being “el valor de cada apuesta” (the value of each bet), the taxpayer categories, and the legal basis chain (Ley 31557, Ley 31806, DL 1644, DS 005-2023-MINCETUR).
- Tribunal Constitucional del Perú — Exp. N.º 009-2001-AI/TC (29 January 2002): https://www.tc.gob.pe/jurisprudencia/2002/00009-2001-AI.html — supports the ruling striking down the original 20% casino/slot-machine tax as confiscatory and unconstitutional.
- Gob.pe / Congreso de la República — Ley N.º 27153 record: https://www.gob.pe/institucion/congreso-de-la-republica/normas-legales/3035658-27153 — supports the law’s official title and purpose article (moral/health/safety protection, tourism promotion, tax creation).
- Gob.pe / MINCETUR — “Mincetur destaca avances en regulación y fiscalización…” (17 June 2026): https://www.gob.pe/institucion/mincetur/noticias/1407892-mincetur-destaca-avances-en-regulacion-y-fiscalizacion-de-juegos-de-azar-juegos-a-distancia-y-apuestas-deportivas — supports the DGJCMT’s role, the “Regulador del Año 2025” (IMGL) recognition, and current officials named.
- Congreso de la República — Archivo Digital de la Legislación del Perú, Ley N.º 28945 text: https://leyes.congreso.gob.pe/Documentos/2006_2011/ADLP/Normas_Legales/28945-LEY.pdf — supports the creation of the DGJCMT and the 24 December 2006 publication date.
- Yogonet Latinoamérica — “Perú: Mincetur abrió un plazo de un mes…” (7 February 2024): https://www.yogonet.com/latinoamerica/noticias/2024/02/07/97940-peru-mincetur-abrio-un-plazo-de-un-mes-para-que-los-operadores-online-soliciten-su-permiso-de-funcionamiento — supports the 13 February–13 March 2024 licence-application window and identified-operator counts.
- Yogonet Latinoamérica — “El nuevo escenario…” and “Se inició el plazo…” (February 2024) and MTC/MINCETUR enforcement coverage (22 July 2026): https://www.yogonet.com/…/109874-el-mincetur-bloqueo-36-plataformas-de-apuestas-ilegales-e-incauto-39-tragamonedas-clandestinas — supports the July 2024 blocking-start policy background.
- InfoPlay — “Mincetur refuerza el control del juego online en Perú con el bloqueo de 36 plataformas ilegales” (23 July 2026): https://www.infoplay.info/es/2026-07-23/mincetur-refuerza-el-control-del-juego-online-en-peru-con-el-bloqueo-de-36-plataformas-ilegales/36772/noticia/ — supports the 23 July 2026 blocking action, seizure numbers, coordinating agencies and criminal-penalty figures.
- La República — “Casas de apuestas buscan inconstitucionalidad de su ley con respaldo del JNE” (22 June 2026): https://larepublica.pe/politica/2026/06/22/casas-de-apuestas-buscan-inconstitucionalidad-de-su-ley-con-respaldo-del-jne-congreso-de-la-republica-hnews-2114376 — supports the JNE signature certification, the industry-impact figures (operator exits, closed points of sale, sponsorship decline), and the status of Proyecto de Ley 9645/2024-CR.
- Gestión — “Casas de apuestas online pagarán menos ISC, medida fue aprobada por el Congreso” (13 June 2025): https://gestion.pe/economia/casas-de-apuestas-online-pagaran-menos-isc-medida-fue-aprobada-por-el-congreso-noticia/ — supports the June 2025 congressional vote on PL 9645/2024-CR excluding bonus bets from the ISC base, and its referral to the Executive.
- PPU Legal (Payet, Rey, Cauvi, Pérez) — “Ley que regula la explotación de los juegos a distancia y apuestas deportivas a distancia”: https://ppulegal.com/actualidad-legal/ley-que-regula-la-explotacion-de-los-juegos-a-distancia-y-apuestas-deportivas-a-distancia/ — supports licence-validity terms (6 years), the “.bet.pe” domain rule, the 12% tax rate/base, and the sanctions structure under Ley 31557/DS 005-2023-MINCETUR.
- El Comercio Perú — “¿Quieres ser millonario? La historia de las loterías peruanas”: https://elcomercio.pe/economia/peru/quieres-millonario-historia-loterias-peruanas-179635-noticia/ — supports the colonial-era lottery origins, the 1826 and 1907 dates, the 1980s peak, and 1990s liberalisation of the lottery market.
- Apuesta Legal Perú — “Sitios de Apuestas Autorizados por Mincetur” and “Sanciones del Mincetur a Sitios que Incumplen Ley Nº 31557”: https://apuestalegal.pe/lista-sitios-apuestas-autorizados-mincetur/ — supports the approximate 91-licence count as of early/mid-2026 and the 1 April 2024 site-blocking policy; treated as a secondary, MINCETUR-data-citing source rather than a primary one.