Are real-money online casinos legal in the Commonwealth, and what can you actually play in May 2026?
Virginia went from zero commercial casinos in January 2023 to five operating floors by January 2026. Rivers Portsmouth opened first, then Hard Rock Bristol turned its temporary hall into a permanent $550 million resort, Caesars Virginia opened in Danville, the Pamunkey Tribe and Boyd Gaming raised a tent in Norfolk, and Cordish opened a temporary Petersburg floor in January. Two permanent resorts in Norfolk and Petersburg are still under construction for 2027.
| Casino | Operator | Floor | 2025 AGR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caesars VirginiaDanville | Caesars + EBCI HoldingsOpened Dec 17, 2024 | 90,000 sq ft of gaming, 1,500 slots, 79 tables, 48 ETGs, 320-room hotel, 2,500-seat venue. Joint venture with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. $750M build. | $393.8M2025 AGR |
| Rivers Casino PortsmouthPortsmouth | Rush Street GamingOpened Jan 23, 2023 | 50,000 sq ft of gaming inside a 400,000 sq ft complex, 1,448 slots, 57 table games, 24 poker tables, sportsbook. The Landing Hotel broke ground Oct 2025 for a 2027 opening. | $316.4M2025 AGR |
| Hard Rock BristolBristol | Hard Rock International + United Co.Opened Nov 14, 2024 (permanent) | 92,000 sq ft of gaming inside a 620,000 sq ft resort, 1,500 slots, 50 table games, sportsbook, 303-room hotel, 2,000-seat Hard Rock Live venue. $550M build. Temp floor ran from July 2022. | $256.3M2025 AGR |
| Norfolk Interim Gaming HallNorfolk | Boyd Gaming + Pamunkey TribeOpened Nov 2025 | Tent structure between Harbor Park and the Amtrak station, ~130 slot machines, limited food and beverage. The permanent 65,000 sq ft resort with a 200-room hotel is slated for late 2027. | $2.6M (2 mo.)2025 AGR |
| Live! Casino VirginiaPetersburg | Cordish + Bruce Smith EnterpriseOpened Jan 22, 2026 (temp) | Temporary $145M floor with about 900 slots and 33 table games. Permanent $1.4 billion resort on 100 acres off I-95 with a 200-room hotel and live-entertainment venue is slated for 2027. | n/a (2026 start)2025 AGR |
Caesars Virginia led the state in 2025 with more than $393 million in AGR and is the first Virginia casino to cross the $400 million local-tax tier in calendar- year revenue. Rivers Portsmouth and Hard Rock Bristol followed at $316 million and $256 million respectively. The Norfolk interim hall, which opened in mid-November, contributed about $2.6 million across its first two months. Petersburg started taking bets too late to report a 2025 number.
Gov. Ralph Northam signs HB 4 and SB 36 for casino gaming plus HB 896 and SB 384 for sports wagering, putting both under Virginia Lottery oversight.
FanDuel launches the first Virginia mobile sportsbook. DraftKings and BetMGM follow within two weeks.
Petersburg voters approve the Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia referendum with about 82 percent support, after Richmond rejected casino proposals in 2021 and 2023.
HB 161 and SB 118 end the legislative session without a compromise on tax allocation. A companion sweepstakes ban dies with them.
The 2026 General Assembly produced two online-casino bills that agreed on almost every dollar figure and disagreed on the calendar. Both chambers settled on a 20 percent tax, a 6 percent hold-harmless fee for land-based casinos, a $500,000 license fee per skin, and up to three skins per land-based casino. They could not agree on when the market would open, on whether to force a second vote in 2027, or on where the tax money would go.
Del. Marcus Simon (D-Falls Church)
Sen. Mamie Locke (D-Hampton, District 23)
SB 118 cleared the Virginia Senate by a 19-17 vote on February 17 after losing an initial 19-20 vote earlier the same day, then surviving a unanimous reconsideration motion. The House passed HB 161 with its reenactment clause attached. The conference committee, with Del. Simon and Sen. Locke at the table, ran out the clock on March 14, 2026 without producing a single combined bill. The sweepstakes prohibition both versions carried died with them.
Virginia law requires a local referendum before a commercial casino can break ground. Bristol, Danville, Portsmouth, and Norfolk all said yes by margins above 65 percent in 2020. Richmond was authorized as the fifth host city in the original legislation and lost its referendum twice, first by a hair in 2021 and then by a much wider gap in 2023. The General Assembly moved the license about 25 miles south to Petersburg, which approved the project with the largest yes margin in state history.
| City | Year | Result | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bristol | ~71% yes | Cleared in the first wave under HB 4. Hard Rock Bristol opened a temporary floor in July 2022 and the $550M permanent resort in November 2024. | |
| Danville | ~69% yes | Caesars Entertainment partnered with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians on the $750M Caesars Virginia, which opened December 17, 2024. | |
| Portsmouth | ~67% yes | Rivers Casino Portsmouth opened January 23, 2023, the first commercial casino in the state to take a real bet. | |
| Norfolk | ~65% yes | The Pamunkey Tribe and Boyd Gaming opened a tent-structure interim hall in November 2025 after years of partnership and design changes. | |
| Richmond | 51% no, ~1,500-vote gap | The first Richmond casino referendum failed by less than one percentage point. North Side and West End precincts voted no, South Side and East End precincts voted yes. | |
| Richmond | 62% no, 15,000-vote gap | The second attempt lost by a much larger margin: 39,768 against to 24,765 in favor. Two losses moved the fifth license out of Richmond entirely. | |
| Petersburg | 82% yes (10,265 to 2,325) | The highest pro-casino margin in Virginia referendum history. The General Assembly redirected the fifth license to Petersburg after the city of Richmond rejected the question twice. |
Richmond's two losses split along the same racial and geographic lines both times. The North Side and West End, the whiter and wealthier precincts, drove the no vote. South Side and East End precincts, which are majority Black, drove the yes vote. Petersburg has a 64 percent Black population and is the second-poorest mid-sized city in Virginia by median household income. Its 82 percent yes vote was the highest pro-casino margin a Virginia city has ever produced.
With no licensed online casinos in the state yet, sweepstakes sites are the legal way to play slots and table games online. These are placeholders until our database is wired in.
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Virginia legalized casinos and sports betting in April 2020. The Virginia Lottery Board oversees both verticals plus the VA iLottery, which launched online July 1, 2020 under SB 922. Five host cities approved local referendums under HB 4 and SB 36, and commercial casinos opened in Portsmouth, Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, and Petersburg between January 2023 and January 2026.
Real-money online casinos remain illegal because no bill has cleared the General Assembly. The 2026 attempt, HB 161 and SB 118, would have authorized iGaming through Virginia's casino licensees, but the two chambers could not agree on tax distribution and the conferenced bills died on March 14, 2026. Each version also carried a reenactment clause forcing a second 2027 vote, so even a future passage would push the earliest market launch into 2028. A companion provision to ban unlicensed sweepstakes died with the iGaming bills.
The same 2026 session that lost online casinos in conference also produced the first Northern Virginia casino bill ever to clear both chambers. Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell's SB 756 would have authorized a sixth Virginia commercial license tied to a Tysons mixed-use development on the Silver Line. The Senate passed it 23-14 on February 13. The House cleared it on March 4. Governor Abigail Spanberger vetoed the bill on April 10, citing the unanimous opposition of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
The four-criteria filter was drafted to point at Tysons Corner and only Tysons Corner. The 1.5 million square foot development requirement, the quarter-mile Silver Line proximity, the outside-the-Beltway clause, and the 1.5 million square foot regional-mall requirement all line up at the Tysons interchange. Earlier 2023 and 2025 versions sponsored by Sen. Dave Marsden never reached a floor vote. Surovell's 2026 version is the closest a Northern Virginia casino has come to law since the original 2020 legislation drew the five-city map. The next opportunity is the 2027 session.
Beyond online casinos, Virginia regulates several other forms of gambling.
Rivers Casino Portsmouth opened in January 2023, Hard Rock Bristol in November 2024, and Caesars Virginia in Danville in December 2024. Norfolk's interim Pamunkey and Boyd Gaming hall opened in November 2025, and the temporary Live! Casino Virginia in Petersburg opened on January 22, 2026. Permanent Norfolk and Petersburg facilities are slated for 2027.
Legal since January 21, 2021, regulated by the Virginia Lottery. More than a dozen permitted mobile operators take wagers from anyone 21 or older located inside the state. Bets on Virginia college teams and youth sports are prohibited.
SB 922 authorized online lottery play in 2020, and VaLottery.com went live on July 1 of that year. Players 18 and older inside Virginia can buy Powerball and Mega Millions, e-instant games, keno, and second-chance drawings online.
Colonial Downs and its Rosie's Gaming Emporium chain run historical horse racing terminals around the state under Virginia Racing Commission rules. The Rose Gaming Resort in Dumfries opened in late 2024 with about 1,650 HHR machines, the largest such floor in the state.
Virginia touches six neighbors. Only West Virginia licenses real-money online casinos. Maryland tried twice and failed twice. Washington DC, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky all run mobile sports books but no iGaming statute. Virginia residents who want a regulated online slot machine can drive across the Appalachian ridge to West Virginia, or they can play sweepstakes apps from home. The 2026 conference failure left the state staring at the same regional choice for at least another year.
| State | Vertical | Tax | Size | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| West Virginia | Legal iGaming + mobile sports + casinos | 15% on iGaming AGR | ~$216M GGR in CY 2024, +57% in 2025 YTD, $41M in Jan 2026 alone | Borders Virginia for 380 miles along the Appalachian ridge. |
| Washington DC | Mobile sports + ILottery, no iGaming | 10% on mobile sports GGR | No online casino market. FanDuel and GambetDC split mobile sports. | A Metro ride from Arlington and Alexandria. |
| Maryland | Retail casinos + mobile sports, no iGaming | 20% on mobile sports | HB 1319 (2024) and SB 885 (2026) both died in the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee. | Across the Potomac from Northern Virginia and a short drive from the Eastern Shore. |
| North Carolina | Mobile sports + tribal casinos, no iGaming | 18% on mobile sports | Launched mobile sports in March 2024. The 2025 commercial-casino bill stalled. No iGaming statute. | Borders Virginia along the entire southern boundary, 290 miles. |
| Tennessee | Mobile sports only, no casinos | 20% of handle (privilege tax) | Online-only sports market run by SWAC. No commercial or tribal casinos in the state. | Touches Virginia in Bristol, where the state line runs down the middle of State Street. |
| Kentucky | Retail tracks + mobile sports, no iGaming | 14.25% on mobile sports | Mobile sports launched Sept 2023. Historical horse racing terminals operate at tracks. | Borders Virginia’s southwestern corner near Bristol. |
| Virginia | Retail casinos + mobile sports + HHR, no iGaming | 15% on mobile sports, 18–27% on retail AGR | Five commercial casinos, ~$969M AGR in 2025. iGaming bills died in conference March 14, 2026. | — |
West Virginia's online casino market hit roughly $216 million in calendar 2024, grew about 57 percent through the first nine months of 2025, and set a single-month record of about $41 million in January 2026. Virginia's legislative fiscal staff projected the proposed HB 161 / SB 118 framework at $230 to $300 million in annual tax once mature, sitting between West Virginia and the Pennsylvania-Maryland scale. None of that revenue exists yet. The 2027 session is the next opportunity to write it into law.
No. The 2026 iGaming bills HB 161 and SB 118 passed both chambers but died in conference committee on March 14, 2026. Both versions also carried a reenactment clause that would force a second General Assembly vote in 2027, so the earliest possible launch is 2028 even if lawmakers try again.
Yes. Mobile sports betting has been legal since January 21, 2021, regulated by the Virginia Lottery. More than a dozen permitted mobile operators take wagers from anyone 21 or older located inside the state, although bets on Virginia college teams and youth sports are banned.
Five cities host commercial casinos: Bristol (Hard Rock), Danville (Caesars Virginia), Norfolk (Pamunkey and Boyd Gaming interim hall), Petersburg (Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia temporary site), and Portsmouth (Rivers Casino). Petersburg replaced Richmond after that city's voters rejected casino proposals in 2021 and 2023.
There is no state ban on sweepstakes casinos as of May 2026. Lawmakers attached a sweeps prohibition to the 2026 iGaming bills, and that language died when those bills failed in conference. Operators continue to accept Virginia players.
It is possible but not certain. The 2026 bills had momentum and are expected to be reintroduced in the 2027 session. Even if they pass next year, the prior versions required a second General Assembly vote the year after passage, so a market launch before 2028 is unlikely.
