At the close of 2025, the Senate of Romania authorised a series of legal proposals to enable marketing reforms to be reviewed by the Chamber of Deputies and associate committees.
The decision was authorised to allow Parliament to choose new marketing rules/legislation by early 2026. A fractious issue in which the Senate has gotten large range proposals from several parties.
Among the essential measures under conversation are the prohibition of street-level betting advertising, stricter time-based constraints on online and broadcast promotions, and the positioning of betting marketing requirements with wider consumer-protection and digital-media laws.
The Chamber of Deputies will handle considerations, with arguments anticipated to resume when the next parliamentary sessions open in February. The reforms are viewed as the very first stage of a larger overhaul of Romania's Law on Games of Chance, a regulative framework that has come under mounting examination following a series of prominent governance in 2025.
Proposed steps consist of raising the national gaming age from 18 to 21, sent by the Liberal Party under a legislative mandate entitled "Protecting the Age of Innocence."
Elsewhere, union member Save Romania Union (USR) has actually backed a thorough bundle of modifications calling for a ban on untargeted marketing and sports sponsorships, together with limitations on online betting promos in between 06:00 and 00:00.
The USR continues to promote for the total overhaul of the sector, consisting of the dismantling of ONJN, the National Gambling Office of Romania, following what it describes as "systemic governance and auditing failures that have actually lost all trust in the regulator".
Additional proposals concentrate on presenting local-authority approvals for gambling licences and harmonising the national self-exclusion system throughout online and land-based places, a directive that ONJN intends to complete by the very first half of 2026.
The ONJN preserves its position as Romania's main regulative authority for betting. Recently, President Vlad Soare released a program and open letter detailing ONJN's key objectives for 2026, prioritising the heightened enforcement of existing laws and the modernisation of core regulative systems.
Soare highlighted that the regulator had actually made significant progress in enhancing openness and accountability in 2025 but yielded that it stays unsure whether such measures would relieve political anxieties around betting oversight.
Acknowledging the ongoing scrutiny, Soare reiterated his assistance for an extensive reform of Romania's gambling legislation, prompting policymakers to team up on a "coherent and effective framework" to change what he referred to as "a morally out-of-date Gambling Law."
2026: Turning point
Cosmina Simion -WH Simion & Partners
Legal observers concur that the months ahead will be pivotal in shaping Romania's long-lasting gambling policy. There is growing consensus that 2026 could mark a turning point in the modernisation of the market.
However the government requires to pick its regulative principals/priorities as betting licences demand a sense of stability and sustainability that has actually been disregarded due to continual changes given that 2018.
Talking about the developments, Cosmina Simion, Managing Partner at WH Simion & Partners, stated: "Romania is getting in a phase of regulative debt consolidation in the gaming sector, consisting of in relation to advertising guidelines. The Senate's decision on street and public marketing reflects a more comprehensive effort to reinforce the legal structure and present more procedures concentrated on gamer defense.
