The law
Sites that are not on the Alberta list, and what a player gives up there
For years most Albertans who gambled online did so on sites with no Canadian authorization at all, and many of those sites are still a click away, with the same logos and the same promises. Since the grace period ended on October 13, 2026, the difference between them and a registered site is a matter of rule (not of opinion).
The grey market, and its end
Before July 13, 2026 the only legal online casino in Alberta was Play Alberta, and everything else an Albertan could reach operated in what the trade called the "grey market" (sites licensed somewhere, but not in the province). The iGaming Alberta Act gave those operators a choice, which was to register, sign with AiGC and accept the province's rules, or to leave, and a "grace period" of three months, from July 13 to October 13, was allowed for the transition.
Sites already active had until October 13, 2026 to complete their approval, after which those that had not were required to stop taking bets. When we read the list on November 12, fifty-one sites had made the transition or entered fresh, and any site not among them is simply not authorized here.
Licences from elsewhere
Many unregistered sites display a licence, and the licence is often real; it is simply not a licence for Alberta, whatever the "footer" implies about where it may operate. Malta, Curaçao, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man and the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (which sits in Quebec, in the Mohawk territory of Kahnawà:ke) all issue licences that sites aimed at Canadians have displayed for years, and none of them authorizes a site to take bets from people in Alberta.
The distinction is not "pedantry". A "licence" is a set of obligations owed to the regulator that issued it, so a Maltese or Curaçao licence obliges an operator to Malta or Curaçao, under their rules and their complaint procedures (where they exist), with nothing owed to Alberta's players in particular.
| Protection | Registered site | Site not on the list |
|---|---|---|
| Funds in a trust account in Canada | required | no |
| Deposit, loss and time limits at sign-up | required | varies |
| The province's self-exclusion | applies | does not apply |
| Complaint to AiGC after 72 hours | available | not available |
| Minimum age checked, eighteen | required | varies |
| Cryptocurrency | not accepted | often the main method |
The money is where the risk lives
On a registered site the player's balance sits in a dedicated "trust account" in Canada, separate from the operator's own funds, which is a protection that matters only on the day something goes badly wrong for the operator. On an unregistered site the balance is an entry in a database owned by a company abroad, and getting it back depends on that company's "goodwill" and "solvency" (neither of which a player can check).
Withdrawals are where players find out the difference, usually at the worst moment (after a win, as a rule). Weekly or monthly "withdrawal caps" (a ceiling on how much may be paid out in a period), documents requested only at the moment of cashing out and "terms" that change without notice are the complaints most often made about "offshore" sites; in Alberta, a player has no provincial body to turn to when they happen.
Self-exclusion that stops at the border
The province's "self-exclusion" covers every registered site at once, which is its great strength, and it covers nothing else. A person who has excluded themselves can still reach an unregistered site with a few clicks, and some of those sites market themselves to people who are excluded elsewhere (a practice we would describe in stronger words than this page allows).
That is the cruellest part of the grey market, and the reason we would urge anyone who has chosen self-exclusion to add "device-level blocking" as well (blocking apps, and the parental settings built into phones and browsers). The page on self-exclusion explains the programme, and where to find help lists the services that can help with the rest!
The player's own position
Canadian gambling law is aimed at those who run and promote unauthorized games, and we know of no case in which a player in Alberta was prosecuted for playing on an offshore site in recent memory. The risks for the player are practical rather than criminal, and they are the ones described above: money held abroad, no provincial complaint route and no self-exclusion that reaches the site.
Advertising is a different story, and in our view the rules have changed it more than the law has changed the sites themselves. Registered operators may no longer work with affiliates who promote unregistered sites, which has thinned out the advertising for offshore brands in Alberta; it has not eliminated it, since a site with no registration to lose has little to fear from the province's standards.
How to tell, quickly
The page on how to check a site gives the method in five steps, and the first one (the list itself) settles most cases in under a minute. Open the AiGC list and look for the name. If it is not there, the site is not authorized in Alberta, whatever its footer says about Malta or Kahnawake or any other licensing body.
The whole list, as we read it, is at the foot of the full index, and you can run that first check there without leaving this site, with the company named against each row. A site you liked before July 2026 may well be on the list now under a new address (several brands moved to a folder or subdomain for Alberta), and that new address, with the company named against it on the list, is the one to use.
By the Alberta Casinos Online editorial team · Last updated: November 13, 2026 · Online since 2026
