Anjouan or Curacao in 2026: which licence to choose for launch

If you want the conclusion before reading, here it is.

For most projects in 2026 the answer is Anjouan. Official fees of around €17,000 a year against €47,450 for Curacao, a two to four week timeline against three to six months, and no requirements at all for a local company, an office, staff or a resident director.

Curacao since its reform is a different product. From 1 January 2026 real presence on the island is mandatory: an office, staff and a managing director who genuinely runs the business from there. That is not a line in a budget but a separate project taking two to three months, and it has to be finished before the application goes in. Local staffing requirements expand further in 2027 and 2029.

The gap over time. Across three years, Anjouan’s official fees come to roughly €51,000. Curacao’s come to about €147,000, before office rent, salaries, server infrastructure and the non-refundable application fee. For a project still proving its economics, that difference matters.

When Curacao is justified. Once the project has moved past validation, hits the requirements of major content providers, or is preparing for a transaction with an investor. In those scenarios the price difference is repaid in recognition. Before that point it is simply a price difference.

The working model for most. Launch on Anjouan with a controlled budget, prove the product and the payment routes on real revenue, then move to a more recognised jurisdiction on a planned basis once revenue justifies it. That approach costs less than starting in an expensive jurisdiction and is more predictable than leaving the decision until later.

Comparisons written in earlier years describe a Curacao that no longer exists. The chronology matters, because it explains why the gap between the two jurisdictions has widened so much.

24 December 2024. The National Ordinance on Games of Chance, known in the market as the LOK, entered into force. It abolished the master and sub-licence model the market had run on since 1993.
1 January 2025. All previous sub-licences ceased to have effect. No transitional provisions preserved the old terms: holders went through the full procedure again.
15 October 2025. The temporary regime for operators transitioning to the new system finally lapsed.
1 January 2026. Physical presence requirements took effect. For operators who had treated Curacao as a paper structure, this is a fundamental change to the model.

What is coming. Local staffing requirements expand in 2027 and 2029. The cost of holding a Curacao licence will therefore keep rising, and what you need to budget for is the trajectory rather than today’s figure.

What Anjouan was doing over the same period. Tightening its procedures. From July 2025 solution providers must hold a licence of their own; from April 2026 an updated framework for confirming certificate authenticity applies; quarterly reporting has been introduced. Requirements went up, but the shape of the product did not change: timelines, cost and the absence of presence requirements all held.

The upshot. Over eighteen months Curacao became more expensive, slower and dependent on physical presence. Anjouan became stricter procedurally while keeping its speed and price. The gap between them widened, and it widened in Anjouan’s favour for every project except the mature ones.

Compare on total cost of ownership rather than entry price, because the two structures are built differently.

Anjouan. The base annual package of official fees comes to around €17,000: a licence fee of roughly €13,300, an ISP monitoring charge of about €1,700 and a compliance officer approval fee of around €2,000. Each additional key person adds approximately €2,000. There are no requirements for share capital, staff or an office. Full-service support with us starts at €19,000.

Curacao. The application fee is €4,592, non-refundable regardless of the outcome. The annual charge is €47,450, split across two invoices: €24,490 to the National Treasury and €22,960 to the regulator for supervision. Additional items are billed separately: €250 for a new primary domain, €383 for requesting technical certificates, €150 for beneficial owner registration, €128 for updating details of qualifying interest holders.

And the costs Anjouan does not have at all. Incorporating a local company. Renting an office on the island. Paying staff. A resident managing director’s salary. Software certification. Hosting player data on a certified server within the jurisdiction. A realistic first-year budget starts at €52,000 and in practice comes in higher.

Curacao’s payment discipline is stricter than people assume. Invoices are payable within fourteen days. On late payment the regulator issues automated warnings, and after seventy-one days of non-payment the licence is revoked and the company removed from the register. This is a written procedure, and it needs building into cash planning, particularly for a project with uneven cash flow.

Tax. Anjouan taxes neither gross gaming revenue nor profit. Curacao does not tax gross gaming revenue, and corporate tax on net profit is 2%. Against fixed annual charges of €47,450, those two percentage points are rarely decisive: the economics are set by the fees and the substance, not the rate.

What that produces over three years. Anjouan: around €51,000 in official fees. Curacao: about €147,000 plus the non-refundable application fee and the full cost of presence. The difference covers a small development team’s annual budget.

Marketing material counts the timeline from submission to issue. What matters to an operator is a different stretch: from decision to first payment received.

Anjouan. Licence issue takes two to four weeks from a complete submission. Adding company formation and document preparation, four to six weeks pass before issue. Payment service onboarding adds one to four weeks. A realistic total is six to ten weeks.

Curacao. Regulator review takes three to six months on a clean file, and the procedure runs in two stages. But that is only the review. On top of it sits incorporating a local company and building presence, neither of which can be done retrospectively: the office and the director have to exist before the application, not appear after approval. A realistic total is five to eight months.

What that means in money. The difference between six weeks and seven months is not a matter of convenience but five months of forgone revenue on a finished product with a marketing budget already committed. For a project already paying a team, those five months cost more than the entire difference in licence fees.

What stretches timelines in both jurisdictions. Not the volume of documents but their consistency and how fast you answer follow-up questions. That is the only part of the timeline the applicant controls, and we close it by preparing the file before submission.

Since 2026 this is the most visible practical difference, and most comparisons underrate it.

Anjouan. No local company required. No share capital set. No local director. No office and no staff. The platform and content providers can sit in any country. For a distributed team that removes an entire layer of work.

Curacao. A local legal entity with a registered office is required. A resident managing director who actually runs the business from the island, rather than appearing on paper, is required. A designated compliance officer is required. Player data must be hosted on a certified server within the jurisdiction, accessible to the regulator during inspections.

Why this costs more than it looks. Presence cannot be bought in a week. Renting an office, finding and hiring a resident director, configuring server infrastructure: that is a separate project of two to three months, running before the application. On top of the direct costs sits founders’ management time, which at that stage is worth more than the money.

And it is not a one-off. Presence has to be maintained for the life of the licence, and local staffing requirements expand in 2027 and 2029. So the cost line is not just permanent but rising.

A separate point. Director and shareholder services, offered by many providers, do not substitute for real management. Curacao checks this since the reform, and a structure whose connection to the island amounts to an address and an appointed person creates risk at the first inspection.

The practical takeaway. For a team of five spread across three countries, Curacao’s presence requirement means creating a separate legal and operational footprint on the island. For the same team, Anjouan means filing documents and waiting for a decision.

Cheap and fast are not the only arguments, and the others are worth naming directly.

Broad vertical coverage under a single licence. Casino, sports betting, poker, bingo, live dealer, virtual sports, lotteries. No need to buy separate permissions for each direction. The product range expands without new applications, which matters for a growing project.

Operational access to industry infrastructure. Agreements with game content providers, onboarding with specialist payment services, work with affiliate networks. Enough for launch and first revenue, which is precisely why the jurisdiction took the market share it did.

Zero tax burden. Neither gross gaming revenue nor profit is taxed. Curacao, on top of everything else, still charges 2% on net profit.

A predictable procedure. Requirements are known in advance, the document pack is stable, and the review timeline does not depend on queues or transitional regimes. An application with a consistent file goes through in the stated time.

Structural flexibility. No presence requirements means you build the operating model around the business rather than around the regulator. Team, servers, providers and the centre of management sit wherever suits the project.

A recent advantage for solution providers. Since July 2025, platform developers, game studios, payment services and compliance solution providers working with operators on the island must hold a B2B licence of their own. For that category of company, Anjouan stopped being a choice and became a condition of market access.

An honest comparison is more useful than one-sided advertising, so here are Curacao’s strengths stated plainly.

Recognition with banks. Since the reform, Curacao is read noticeably better by financial institutions than it was before: the move towards transparency and real presence improved how banking partners see it. Anjouan in this respect remains an offshore licence with everything that follows.

The largest content providers. Some tier-one studios set requirements around the operator’s jurisdiction. Curacao passes almost everywhere; certain major providers will not work with Anjouan.

Investor transactions. During structural due diligence ahead of a deal, the licence jurisdiction becomes a subject of discussion. Curacao needs no explanation. Anjouan will need one.

When this starts to matter. Not immediately. Specialist industry payment services work with both jurisdictions. Second-tier providers and aggregators work with both. Mid-sized affiliate networks work with both. The problem arises at a specific point: when revenue has grown enough that you need content from the largest studios, or when an investment conversation begins.

The practical takeaway. If your project is already at that point, Curacao is justified and the price difference repays itself. If it is not, you are paying for recognition you are not yet using, and paying for it in the first year, when the money is needed elsewhere.

A short section, but worth reading: it explains why the price gap between the two jurisdictions is not accidental.

Curacao is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Licences are issued directly by the state regulator under a national law passed in December 2024. The legal position is clear and unambiguous.

Anjouan is an autonomous island within the Union of the Comoros. Licences are issued under a 2005 island act on computer gaming licensing. The division of competences between the island level and the federal level of the Union remains a question without a settled answer.

What that means in practice. An Anjouan licence is not the equivalent of a tier-one regulator’s licence and is not positioned as one by the regulator or by the market. What it provides is a legal framework for activity in the issuing jurisdiction and, more importantly for most projects at launch stage, operational access to industry infrastructure. That practical access is the value of the product, and it is why it costs a third of the alternative.

And a point common to both. No offshore licence opens regulated markets. Taking bets from residents of a country with its own regulation requires a local licence, and nothing substitutes for it.

Abstract comparison helps little, so here are the scenarios.

First launch, limited budget, product unproven. Anjouan. A difference of around €35,000 in the first year is several months of a team’s time or a full marketing test. Working out whether the product functions is cheaper on an inexpensive licence, and you can always move later.

A distributed team with no capacity to build presence. Anjouan. Curacao’s requirement for a local office, staff and a resident director means creating a separate operational footprint on the island for that configuration. It changes not the budget but how the business is organised.

A solution provider rather than an operator. Anjouan, if your main clients are operators on the island: since July 2025 a local licence has been a condition of working with them. If you work mainly with Curacao operators and recognised jurisdictions, you need Curacao provider status.

A project settling in cryptocurrency. More often Anjouan. Both jurisdictions permit the model, but at half the cost and a fraction of the timeline. What usually decides it is not the jurisdiction but whether specific payment partners will work with your model, and that gets checked before submission.

A mature project preparing for a transaction or hitting provider limits. Curacao, and in advance. If major studios are declining on jurisdiction grounds or an investment conversation has started, the saving on the licence already costs more than the licence itself. Changing jurisdiction mid-transaction pushes timelines and reduces valuation.

Most articles frame this as a final decision. In practice it is a stage, and getting the sequence right saves more than choosing either jurisdiction well.

The working sequence. Launch on Anjouan with a limited budget and quick access to the market. Prove the product, the economics and the payment routes on real revenue. Move to Curacao or another recognised jurisdiction when revenue and partner requirements justify it.

Why that beats starting on Curacao. You do not tie up €52,000 and five to eight months in a jurisdiction whose recognition you are not yet using. If the hypothesis fails, you lose €19,000 rather than €52,000. If it works, you have the revenue to pay for the move comfortably.

When to move. The signals arrive before the financial necessity does. A major provider declines on jurisdiction grounds. A payment partner raises fees or tightens terms. An affiliate network asks you to confirm status. An investment conversation begins. Any one of those means it is time to cost the move.

How to do it properly. The new licence is obtained before giving up the old one, so operations never stop. A prepared move takes months and runs without interruption. A forced move creates a gap, and a gap means payments stop and players leave.

What not to do. Do not surrender an active licence before the new one is in hand. Do not start the move at the point a partner has already notified you of a policy change: at that point there is no time to prepare.
We support both stages: the launch on Anjouan and the later move, once a project grows into it.

The choice between Anjouan and Curacao in 2026 comes down to the stage the project is at. At launch, money and time are the expensive things, and Anjouan wins by a wide margin: three times cheaper, several times faster, no presence requirements. Once the product has proved its economics, declined providers and payment terms become the expensive things, and that is when it makes sense to cost the move.

The mistake that costs more than either licence is treating the choice as permanent. It is more sensible to launch quickly and cheaply and buy recognition once it starts paying for itself.

Finextwin is an international corporate services firm with offices in Hong Kong and Tbilisi. Over 6+ years we have registered companies in 30+ jurisdictions for more than 1,250 clients and we work with 65+ banking partners. We work through the structure for the specific project model, handle the application and the choice of payment route, and help plan the move once a project grows into it. Licence decisions rest with the regulator and account decisions with the financial institution, and nobody can guarantee either: our job is to remove the reasons for refusal in advance. A manager responds within 30 minutes.

All directions and their terms are set out in the licensing section. Detailed breakdowns are on the Anjouan licence and Curacao licence pages.