Any list of Macau casinos published before 2026 is out of date, and out of date in a particular way. It will show you thirty venues. There are twenty. As of 22 August 2026 the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau (DICJ) records twenty casinos in operation — its figure for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, unchanged since the end of 2025. Ten venues stopped taking bets during 2025; the last closed at 11:59pm on 30 December.
What ended was not a building type. It was a licensing arrangement, and the difference is what separates reading Macau accurately from reading a stale directory.
What a satellite casino was
Macau has six gaming concessionaires — SJM, Galaxy, Venetian Macau (Sands China), Wynn, Melco and MGM — and only they may run games of fortune. A satellite casino was a gaming floor inside a building owned by somebody else, a hotel company or a property investor, operating under a concessionaire’s licence with the owner taking a share of what the floor produced. The concessionaire supplied the permission; the third party supplied the room, the staff and the capital, and was paid out of the win. At the peak there were twenty-two; eleven were still trading at the start of 2025.
Why the model ended
Law 7/2022, published in the official gazette on 22 June 2022 and amending Law 16/2001, closed the arrangement from two directions at once. A casino must now sit in immovable property to which the concessionaire holds title, and a concessionaire may no longer share casino revenue with, or pay commission to, a management company — a third party may be paid a management fee and nothing more.
That removed the satellite owner’s entire economics. The business had been a revenue share on a floor you owned; take away the share and require that the floor belong to the licence holder, and two lawful exits remain — sell the premises, or stop gaming. The law allowed three years from the start of the new concessions on 1 January 2023, setting the deadline at 31 December 2025.
The timeline
On 9 June 2025 the government announced that the three concessionaires with satellite arrangements — SJM with nine venues, Melco with one, Galaxy with one — had decided to terminate all eleven by year end, and instructed them to settle the affected employees properly. The wording matters: that records a commercial decision, not an order. The binding instrument was the expiring transition in the 2022 law.
The closures ran through the second half of the year. Casino Grandview in Taipa went first, on 30 July. Grand Dragon, Melco’s only satellite, closed on 22 September; Emperor Palace on 30 October and Galaxy’s Waldo on 31 October; Legend Palace at Macau Fisherman’s Wharf on 12 November, Casa Real on 21 November, Ponte 16 on 28 November, Kam Pek Paradise on 1 December and Fortuna on 9 December. Casino Landmark was the last, at 11:59pm on 30 December 2025.
One venue did not close. SJM bought the L’Arc property outright for HK$1.75 billion, completing on 17 December 2025, and began operating Casino L’Arc Macau directly at 2am on 30 December. It is now an SJM house casino, and it is open. The company had signalled it might do the same at Ponte 16 and then declined, which is why that floor is dark while L’Arc’s is lit.
The headcounts give the scale: 1,169 staff at Landmark, 584 at Kam Pek Paradise, 553 at Fortuna. The owners carried the loss into 2026 — Macau Legend flagged a 2025 loss of roughly HK$1.57 billion after writing down Legend Palace.
What is open now
Twenty casinos, all in buildings owned by the concessionaire that runs them. A visitor experiences them as two distinct places.
Cotai, the reclaimed ground between Taipa and Coloane, holds eleven: the Venetian Macao, the Londoner Macao, the Parisian Macao and the Plaza Macao (Sands China); Galaxy Macau and Broadway Macau; City of Dreams and Studio City (Melco); Wynn Palace; MGM Cotai; and Grand Lisboa Palace (SJM). These are the purpose-built integrated resorts — hotel, mall, theatre and gaming floor designed together on a made-to-order site.
The Macau Peninsula holds eight: Grand Lisboa, Casino Lisboa, Casino Oceanus at Jai Alai and Casino L’Arc Macau (SJM); Sands Macao; StarWorld; Wynn Macau; and MGM Macau. Altira sits apart from both, in the middle of Taipa — a 38-storey tower of about 230 rooms, and the one Melco floor that is not on Cotai.
The part that explains the city
Macau never really had standalone casinos. Gaming here sits in the podium — the wide lower floors of a hotel, beneath the tower — and that holds for the survivors as much as for the venues that closed. Grand Lisboa’s floors are the base of the lotus; Wynn Macau’s sit under the hotel slab; Altira’s under thirty-eight storeys of rooms. Even Casino Oceanus at Jai Alai, the closest thing to a freestanding gaming building here, occupies a complex that also carries the 132-room Jai Alai Hotel, which SJM manages.
The podium is the constant; what varied was who held title to it. Kam Pek Paradise makes the point from the other side, having occupied floors one to five of the San Kin Yip Commercial Centre on Avenida da Amizade — an office building, not a hotel at all. A satellite was defined by its paperwork, not its plan.
The visible consequence is a set of older peninsula and Taipa hotels whose podium floors are now dark or being repurposed while their guest towers keep working. Grand Emperor still trades as a hotel; its owner reported revenue down about 39 per cent for the year to 31 March 2026 and says it will rework the entertainment offer at the base. Legend Palace is now marketed with no gaming reference at all, and Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16 remains open and listed among SJM’s hotels. Grandview, Waldo, Fortuna, Casa Real, Grand Dragon and the New Orient Landmark were all bookable as hotels in August 2026. A closed casino is not a closed building.
The twenty that are open are indexed on the integrated resorts hub, the nine largest are read side by side in the Cotai resorts guide, and getting here from Hong Kong is covered in the ferry guide.
What this means practically
Planning around a gaming floor, use a list dated 2026 or later. Planning around a room, a pre-2026 list is mostly still usable — you simply cannot assume there is a casino downstairs. And if you are on the peninsula for the old city, very little has changed.
The rules that apply to you
Entry is 21 and over, and the age floor applies to being on the gaming floor, not only to placing a bet. Carry a passport — door checks are routine.
Macau residents may gamble — the restrictions are targeted, not general, and the common claim that residents are barred is wrong. Law 10/2012 governs entry to, work in and gaming at casinos. Its largest restriction took effect on 27 December 2019 and covers gaming-sector employees, who may not enter casino floors off duty: every role, from dealers and cage staff to security, cleaning and food and beverage, roughly 54,000 people. The exception is the first three days of Chinese New Year; the penalty runs to MOP10,000. Senior public office holders may not gamble, and self-exclusion and third-party exclusion schemes sit alongside both.
Photography is prohibited on gaming floors across every operator. Atria, malls and lobbies — where the architecture worth looking at is anyway — are fine.
Frequently asked questions
How many casinos are there in Macau now?
Twenty, as of 22 August 2026 — the DICJ figure for the quarter ended 30 June 2026, unchanged since the end of 2025. By concessionaire: SJM five, Sands China five, Galaxy three, Melco three, Wynn two, MGM two. The total was 30 through 2022–2024 and 42 in 2021.
Which Macau casinos closed in 2025?
Ten satellite venues, in order: Grandview, Grand Dragon, Emperor Palace, Waldo, Legend Palace, Casa Real, Ponte 16, Kam Pek Paradise, Fortuna and Landmark, which closed on 30 December. An eleventh, L’Arc, did not close — SJM bought it and now runs it directly.
Is the Ponte 16 hotel still open?
Yes. The casino closed on 28 November 2025 after SJM decided not to buy the property, but Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16 continues to operate and is still listed among SJM’s hotels. The resort’s own site no longer lists a casino.
Can Macau residents gamble in the casinos?
Yes. Residents are not barred as a class. The restrictions in Law 10/2012 target specific groups: gaming-sector employees are barred from casino floors when off duty, and senior public office holders may not gamble. Neither applies to an ordinary resident or to a visitor aged 21 or over.
Does the minimum age of 21 apply to entering, or only to betting?
To entering. Anyone under 21 may not be on the gaming floor in any capacity, including as an employee. Everything else on a resort property — hotel, restaurants, retail, theatre — is unaffected by the age rule.