The Dutch market restarts: KSA renews the first eight online licences

On 18 September 2026 the Netherlands gambling authority granted follow-up licences to eight online operators, running 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2031. The original 2021 licences expired on 30 September. The renewal terms are stricter than the first round, and one new requirement is worth every operator’s attention: a mandatory exit plan.

What changed between round one and round two

Three things stand out in the renewal standard.

You have to account for your own record. Applicants were required to explain during the process how they had learned from previous mistakes and what they changed. A licence renewal is no longer a form; it is a review of five years of conduct, and past enforcement is now something you write about rather than something you hope is forgotten.

Duty of care got a sharper definition. The vaguest and most litigated part of the Dutch framework has been tightened, which means the gap between “we have responsible-gaming tools” and “we can evidence how they were applied to this player on this date” is now the gap that matters.

Every licensee needs an exit plan. Operators must describe in detail how they would responsibly wind down if a licence is not renewed or is revoked — what happens to balances, to data, to open bets, to customer communication.

The exit plan is the interesting one

It is easy to file an exit plan as compliance paperwork. It is better read as a design requirement, because a plan you cannot execute is not a plan.

Writing one forces four questions most operators have never answered in writing. Can you export a complete player record, with balances, bonus liabilities, KYC status and transaction history, in a usable format, without your supplier’s cooperation? Can you settle or void open positions cleanly? Do you hold the data, or does your platform provider? And what does your contract actually say about all of the above?

Operators who discover the answers while writing the plan are the lucky ones. The unlucky ones discover them during a wind-down.

What it signals for anyone planning a Dutch entry

Eight licence holders remain from the original cohort; two 2021 licensees, LiveScore and Tombola, had already exited by 2024. This is not a market that rewards volume entry. It rewards operators who can demonstrate a compliance history and carry the cost of proving it.

For a supplier the requirement list translates fairly directly into product: auditable player records, exportable data, evidenced responsible-gaming interventions, and contractual clarity about who owns what. Those are not Dutch-specific features. They are simply where regulated Europe has been heading, and the Netherlands has written it down first.

The practical checklist

If you hold or are applying for a licence in a maturing European market, three things are worth testing before a regulator asks: export a full player record end to end and time it; produce the evidence trail for one responsible-gaming intervention from detection to action; and read your platform contract’s termination and data clauses as though you were leaving next month.

Based on the Netherlands Kansspelautoriteit announcement of 18 September 2026 granting eight follow-up online gambling licences for the period 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2031, as reported in trade coverage the same day.