Official language: Romanian
Population: 21,504,442
Currency: Leu (RON)

Current Exchange Rate
1 EUR = 4.2689 RON
1 GBP = 4.6391 RON
1 USD = 2.8452 RON

Casinos in Romania
While gambling in all forms was illegal through the Soviet era in Romania, casinos were legalized in 1990, shortly after the country re-gained its independence. It took a year for the first casino to emerge, but in 1991, Casino Bucharest opened its doors. Like many Romanian casinos today, Casino Bucharest is attached to a large, 5-star hotel. Many casino patrons in Romania are foreign tourists.

Because casinos in Romania need a license for each table and each machine they operate, casinos tend to be small, as the licenses are expensive. The largest Romanian casino in operation is Casino Palace in Bucharest. It is open 24 hours a day, and offers 26 tables along with 76 gaming machines. Most machines in the country, including slot machines and video poker games, are in fact found outside of casinos – there are more than 900 companies offering an amazing 23,000 licensed gambling machines across Romania.

Online Casinos in Romania
Online gambling in Romania is neither legal nor illegal. In fact, there is no mention of it anywhere in Romanian law, which places it in a strange middle ground. In June of 2003 Danube Casino opened Romania's first online casino. It was partnered with the famous Windows Casino. It ran strong for a few years, but in late 2007, the site closed down. Today, there are no online casinos targeting just Romania that offer real-money gambling.

Casino Palace, the largest casino in Romania, does offer online casino games, but they are mostly just played for fun. Players who spend enough time gambling with the free online games they offer can still win prizes, including entry into a special lottery, and benefits at the land-based Casino. This is a way around the lack of licensed internet gambling in Romania. For real-money casino gambling on the internet, Romanian players can use one of the many foreign internet casinos that provide Romanian-language casino games.