Why your Welcome Bonuses are Changing

You may not have noticed, but something quite drastic is happening with welcomes offers in the UK. Intrigued?…

Last year, we learnt that two quite seismic shifts were coming to the online gambling industry in the UK.

The first of these is the change to welcome offers, which officially takes place on 19th January 2026. Some brands have started the process already. You may not have heard of this, but it will have a rather large impact for when you sign-up to casino and bingo sites going forward.

The second of these seismic shifts is the increase in Remote Gaming Duty (from 20% to 40%), which comes into force in April 2026. You may have heard about it during the general furore around the Government’s budget last Autumn, and it could have quite large consequences for you and for us. We’re not quite sure what those are yet but be sure you’ll get a similar update to this from us in a few months time.

Welcome offers are changing

After a long consultation between players, the industry and the Gambling Commission, the regulations around welcome offers are changing after a new rule was added to operators’ Licensing conditions (LCCP).

There are two main changes which is causing hundreds of offers to change this month. They are:

Banning mixed product Offers

This means the end of combination offers that allow players to make a first deposit, and then have bonuses across different types of games. This seems to be because often, each of those different product bonuses would have wildly different conditions attached to them. In the name of transparency, the GC wanted to shore that up!

Therefore, you will no longer see singular welcome packages that include slots bonus, bingo bonus, scratch cards and a free bet all in one go. Or any combination of them.

Very common welcome packages on our site like “Deposit £20, Get £20 Bingo Bonus + 50 Free Spins” will no longer be allowed! Only welcome packages on the same type of game. Therefore, a slots bonus and free spins offer should be fine!

Some of the brands that have started to change their offers have decided to give players a choice, for example Deposit £20, Get £20 Bingo Bonus OR 50 Free Spins.

Interestingly, the Gambling Commission have said that a bonus that can be used on pretty much any product is possible, but the major stipulator is the conditions cannot change across products. So say a bingo site is offering a Deposit £5, Get £5 Bonus on any product on their site, be it slots or bingo, is fine… as long as the terms, conditions, wagering requirements etc etc are the same throughout!

This is an interesting idea, but never really existed in the past due product variance. It didn’t need to exist. But if a bold operator wants to experiment in creating the first, ultimate fair bonus that can be used across their products with no differentiation in terms, we will happily promote them!

Wagering requirements capped at maximum 10x

The second major change is the reforming of wagering requirements. Obviously, for many years we have featured welcome bonuses with WRs that range from zero to 65x (and perhaps even more if you go back a decade or so).

Now, 10x will be the maximum! So the range will shrink drastically. We don’t know how this will shake out entirely. Obviously, many of our favourite independent casino sites with no wagering free spins offers will stay the same, so not much will change there.

We’re more interested at this stage in seeing how operators who had much higher wagering adapt. Incredibly, the Jumpman Gaming brands have started to change by lowering their prize wheel spins’ wagering from 65x to 10x. Will that be sustainable?

Another slightly grey area is that some brands have elected to have a welcome bonus with 10x (deposit + bonus) wagering, which doubles the amount and is effectively 20x bonus wagering. Will those be allowed? We will try to update this piece after the dust has settled if we have more concrete answers!

What to expect next?

For many of our favourite brands, we don’t expect to much to change. They often already have business models built on fair bonusing and we expect players to continue to flock to great sites.

But what about the brands who are changing their business models entirely?

Crucially, in the short term for players, bonuses will get fairer, which is a good thing. Wagering requirements are a bit of a scourge for many and their removal will no doubt go down very well.

With the industry tax rises coming in April 2026 as well, it really is all change for online gambling in the UK. The landscape could look rather different in a year’s time.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment below and we’ll do our best to keep you up to speed!