Last Updated On 6 November 2025, 2:56 PM EST (Toronto Time)
The Ontario online casino market has been growing at an impressive rate for the past three years. This growth has not only attracted more investors to the industry but also influenced other provinces to rethink their current gambling laws.
What’s more, Ontario residents have quickly moved away from offshore unregulated sites and chosen to focus on Ontario online casinos, as these have valid licenses.
But with different stakeholders raking in the perks left, right, and center, where does that leave foreigners? We explain whether they, too, can have a piece of the pie.
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Can Foreigners Gamble in Ontario Online Casinos?
The good news is that the Ontario online casino market is open to foreigners. However, before you open an account and start enjoying the wide selection of games, there are four criteria that you must keep in mind.
- Physical Location.
Per the stipulations set out by the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO), anyone accessing Ontario online casinos must physically be within the province. But how can sites verify this? They use a combination of factors, including:
- GPS
- WIFI signals
- Cellular network data
- IP address, etc.
With this information, sites can confirm your location and determine whether you are within Ontario. Where you are not within the province or your location is not verifiable, these sites will not allow you to access their platforms and will block any attempts on your part.
To ensure that you pass these checks, you must be in the province. Additionally, you must turn on your device location and switch off your virtual private network (VPN) to help the sites verify your location.
- Identification.
Foreigners do not need to reside in Ontario or the greater Canada to play in Ontario casinos. However, under the law, casino operators must conduct customer verification processes during account registration. These checks are not in place to verify where you come from.
Instead, they are done in order to comply with their iGO operating agreements, which require operators to have verifiable customer details.
As such, sites will require you to verify your identity using valid official government documents that have been issued by your country of residence.
Such documents include your passport, driver’s license, or any other document that has your photo and personal details.
The verification often takes a couple of minutes as you are signing up for an account. Once your documents have been accepted, you will have access to the site and can play games, make deposits, and even access your earnings.
- Age.
While foreigners are allowed to join online casinos in Ontario, there is an exception. Only players aged 19 and above can access these sites. What’s more, the same rules apply to land-based casinos. After all, minors are a vulnerable population, and it is the mandate of the AGCO to protect such people from activities that can cause them harm.
So, how do sites verify your age? Again, this comes back to the identification we covered in the previous point. Once you provide a valid ID, the casino systems check if you are at least 19 years old. If not, your account registration cannot take place.
But what if the gambling age in your home country is lower than 19? When gambling in Ontario, the province’s laws will apply. As such, even if you can gamble in your home country before reaching 19 years of age, you will not be able to do so in Ontario.
- Taxation.
Will you need to pay taxes on your earnings? There are two ways to look at this. In general, Canada does not view earnings from gambling as a source of employment or business income. As such, whether you are a foreigner or resident, your earnings will not be subject to tax. However, there is a caveat.
If you are a professional gambler, then the law views you as someone who places wagers as part of your business operations.
As such, your earnings will be subject to taxes. While Ontario will not deduct these taxes, you should check the tax laws in your country to determine if you need to report these winnings as taxable income.
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