Brisbane’s licensed casino and the rulebook Australians play under in 2026

Updated September 2026

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The casino in Brisbane is The Star Brisbane at Queen’s Wharf — a single licensed venue, no alternatives inside city limits, and no online substitute an Australian can legally sign up to. That is the shape of the answer before any detail is added. A player weighing a night out wants the address, the dress standard, the games on the floor and where to stay. A reader weighing the online shortcut that keeps appearing in search ads wants the rule that bans it. This page covers both, in that order: the venue first, the law that frames it second, and the offshore brands the ACMA has already acted against last, because those are the brands a search like this turns up most often and the ones a reader needs to recognise.

Updated 23 September 2026 against the ACMA register and Star Entertainment Group’s most recent Queensland disclosures.

What the search actually points at

Brisbane has one casino and has had one for three decades. The old Treasury Casino, in the heritage Treasury Building at the top of Queen Street Mall, opened in April 1995 and ran until 25 August 2024. The licence moved less than a kilometre down the river to the A$3.6 billion Queen’s Wharf Brisbane precinct, where The Star Brisbane began a staged opening on 29 August 2024. The main gaming floor and the premium gaming rooms opened first; the hotel tower, the rooftop bars and the broader retail mix followed in stages across 2025 and into 2026.

There is no second casino licence on offer. Queensland’s Casino Control Act 1982 limits the state to a single casino licence, and Star Entertainment Group holds it. Anyone searching for “brisbane casino accommodation deals” or “brisbane casino bar” is reaching for the same venue every time. That single-facility shape is what the rest of the page works from: one licence, one building, one set of rules.

The licence behind The Star Brisbane

The Star Brisbane operates under a Queensland casino licence held by Star Entertainment Group. The licence was the focus of an independent review in late 2022 by former Court of Appeal judge Robert Gotterson, which found Star unsuitable to hold its Queensland casino licences after concluding it had misled regulators and failed its anti-money-laundering duties. Star was fined $100 million on 9 December 2022, with a 90-day suspension of the Treasury Brisbane and Star Gold Coast licences deferred to 1 December 2023 to allow remediation.

The deferred suspension and the subsequent opening of The Star Brisbane are two different stories running on the same timeline. The Queen’s Wharf precinct opened amid concerns about the licence position of its lead partner, Star Entertainment Group, in August 2024. The Queensland Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation continues to oversee the licence; Star’s continued suitability remains under active monitoring. For a reader, that translates into a venue that is licensed and operating, with a regulator who has publicly put the operator on notice and who has the tools to act further if remediation slips.

What the building actually offers

The Star Brisbane replaces a venue that, before its August 2024 closure, occupied a three-level gaming emporium of 80 gaming tables and over 1,300 gaming machines, plus a hotel, six restaurants, five bars and a nightclub. Queen’s Wharf lifts that footprint substantially: a multi-tower precinct with the casino as the anchor, three hotels, a rooftop pool deck, a riverwalk and a retail and dining strip along the Brisbane River.

For a visitor the practical map is short. The casino floor sits at the lower levels of the main tower. The premium gaming rooms — the high-limit spaces where minimum bets sit well above the main floor — are accessed through a separate entry. The hotel brands inside the precinct include members of the broader Star group and partner brands tied to the development, with Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, the Hong Kong-based co-developer, holding a long-term presence through its retail and hospitality arms. Visitors wanting restaurants inside the casino find multiple options across the precinct, including a line-up that runs from a casual sports bar through to higher-end dining on the rooftop level.

The dress standard at The Star Brisbane is smart casual. Closed shoes, collared shirts for men after a certain hour, no workwear or singlets. Identification is checked on entry. Members of Star’s loyalty programme can move through dedicated entrances; the general public enters through the main gaming floor entry on the river side of the precinct.

Games on the floor

A reader asking about “brisbane casino blackjack”, “brisbane casino baccarat”, “brisbane casino roulette” or “brisbane casino craps” is asking what tables the floor runs. The Star Brisbane’s main gaming floor covers the standard international table mix: blackjack in multiple stake tiers, roulette in both single-zero and double-zero formats, baccarat and mini-baccarat, and craps on a dedicated pit. Punto banco baccarat dominates the Asian-market table share, as it does at every Australian casino with a premium floor.

Pokies — gaming machines — sit on a separate level from the tables and run into the low thousands across the venue. Queensland recorded 21,122 gaming machines operating in 351 venues in October 2023, which is the state’s full installed base, not The Star Brisbane’s count alone; the casino holds a meaningful share of that footprint, with the rest spread across the state’s clubs and hotels. Pokies inside the casino run on different parameters from pub machines — higher maximum bets, no mandated return-to-player floor, broader stake ladders — which is one reason regulars treat the casino floor as a different experience from their local.

Live tables at The Star Brisbane are physical, not streamed. The video-streamed “live dealer” format a reader meets at an offshore site has no Australian legal equivalent and is not offered at the venue.

Where it sits and where to stay

The Star Brisbane is at Queen’s Wharf, 1 William Street, Brisbane. The address places it directly across the river from the South Bank parklands and within walking distance of the central business district: a short walk from Queen Street Mall, the Botanic Gardens at the foot of George Street, and the rail and bus hubs at Roma Street and Central. The Treasury Hotel — the small boutique hotel attached to the old Treasury Casino — closed with the venue in 2024 and has not reopened as part of the new precinct.

Visitors looking for “hotels in brisbane near casino” have several options at the precinct itself and in the surrounding blocks. The precinct’s own hotel towers — including The Star Grand, the Dorsett and the Emporium complex — sit within the same footprint. Within a five-minute walk the CBD offers the Hilton, the Marriott, the Sofitel and the Pullman, alongside mid-range chains and boutique options in the Burnett Lane and Edward Street lanes. For budget stays the area around Roma Street and Caxton Street sits roughly fifteen minutes’ walk uphill from the precinct; Petrie Terrace and Spring Hill add serviced apartments and smaller hotels within a similar radius.

A reader planning to walk in from a CBD hotel should note that the river walk between the casino and South Bank crosses the Goodwill Bridge, which is the most direct pedestrian route and adds about ten minutes from the inner-city hotels on the northern side of Queen Street.

The legal frame around any “online casino in Brisbane”

The lawful offer to an Australian adult stops at the venue door. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001, strengthened by the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act 2017, makes it an offence to provide online casino games, online pokies or in-play betting to a person physically in Australia. No state or territory issues a licence for those services. What is licensable is wagering on races and sport placed before the event, lotteries and keno — in practice licensed by the Northern Territory through the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission, which regulates 52 of Australia’s online bookmakers, including Sportsbet, Bet365 and Ladbrokes. The commission has no full-time staff and meets once a month in Darwin; the licensing is done for tax reasons, not because the regulator runs day-to-day oversight of the operators.

For a Brisbane resident this distinction matters in two directions. First, every online casino-style site that accepts an Australian sign-up is operating outside the Australian framework — whatever offshore licence it displays is not an Australian licence and does not give Australian consumer protection. Second, the individual player is not prosecuted under the IGA. The Act targets the provider. The reader pays the cost in a different shape: no Australian complaints body, no Australian recourse on a refused withdrawal, no guarantee the site will still be reachable next week.

The enforcement record the ACMA has built

The ACMA — the Australian Communications and Media Authority — has run an escalating enforcement programme since 2017. According to the ACMA as reported in June 2026, a total of 1,751 illegal gambling and affiliate marketing websites had been blocked since the first blocking request in November 2019, and more than 230 unlicensed gambling services had left the Australian market since enforcement was strengthened in 2017. In a round reported on 26 June 2026 the ACMA asked Australian internet service providers to block 12 more illegal gambling websites: 7Signs, ChromaBet, Donbet, Duospin, Freshbet, Slots Gem, Jacks Club, Lucky Start, Pointsbetz, Spinrise, Vinyl Casino and Wildsino.

The picture the numbers draw is one of cumulative removal rather than one decisive round. Sites go up, warnings get issued, blocks follow, the operators rebrand and a new round begins. A reader seeing a familiar brand one week and a different URL the next is watching that cycle in real time.

A working figure: how fast the block list has grown

Taking the ACMA’s running total of 1,751 blocked sites and affiliate pages since the first blocking request in November 2019, the average sits at roughly 220 to 240 sites per year across the period. The exact figure moves with each round: a single reporting month can add dozens of URLs, and quieter months add none. The honest reading is a band, not a number — a steady-state pace of around six sites a week being taken offline, with bursts when a single operator-group exposes a dozen URLs at once. For a player the practical meaning is that an offshore site that looks reachable today can be unreachable on the morning an ISP refreshes its block list, and any balance held on the site at that point is held offshore, in a currency the operator chose, with no Australian complaints process behind it.

Cost the reader actually pays

H2 Gambling Capital’s 2025 report estimates that Australians lose about A$3.9 billion a year to illegal gambling sites, and that the share of gambling going through legal channels fell from 74% in 2021 to 64%. The A$3.9 billion is the spend; the 74% to 64% fall is the share. The two figures are not separate problems. Each dollar that moves from a legal channel to an illegal one is a dollar the player cannot recover through any Australian process, regardless of how the site performs on a single spin.

Payment rules for the legal side

Credit cards, credit-related products and digital currency are banned as payment for licensed online wagering since 11 June 2024, with penalties up to $247,500 for operators who breach the rule. Legal deposit routes for licensed wagering are debit card, bank transfer, PayID, Osko and BPAY. A site that asks an Australian for a credit card or a crypto deposit is operating outside the Australian rules. That single payment ask is one of the cleanest signals an offshore brand sends.

A note on the 2026 reform package

The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 passed Parliament on 19 August 2026; its advertising and inducement measures commence 1 January 2027. The law is enacted with a future start date, which means a 2026 reader is reading the existing regime, not the new one. The Bill tightens what licensed wagering operators can advertise and what inducements they can offer, and it does not open the door to online casino games.

Responsible gambling around the venue

The age floor at The Star Brisbane is 18, set by Queensland’s Casino Control Act 1982 and enforced at the door with photo identification. Minors are not permitted on the gaming floor at any hour.

BetStop, Australia’s National Self-Exclusion Register, launched by ACMA on 21 August 2023, covers Australian-licensed online and telephone wagering services but does not cover in-venue gambling such as The Star Brisbane. Queensland residents wanting to self-exclude from The Star Brisbane use the venue’s own exclusion process, with minimum exclusion periods that match the responsible-gambling codes each casino operates under. The Star Brisbane operates a self-exclusion scheme alongside on-floor trained responsible gambling officers and access to the National Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858 — free, 24/7, with chat and online counselling at Gambling Help Online.

ACT residents who want a worked example of what in-venue self-exclusion looks like have a useful point of comparison: in the ACT, the ACT Gambling Harm Prevention team runs a self-exclusion process for Casino Canberra for periods of 6 months to 3 years, separate from BetStop because BetStop does not reach in-venue gambling. The same logic applies in Queensland.

For anyone whose gambling spend has moved offshore, the right starting point is the same helpline. The site cannot be unblocked by calling, but the spend can be made visible to a counsellor who has worked with Australian players in the same situation before.

Brisbane against the other Australian casinos

Brisbane sits inside a small national set. Each mainland state and territory has at most one casino licence. The comparison that matters for a Brisbane reader is what each licence is, where it sits, and how the floors differ.

Adelaide Casino, known commercially as SkyCity Adelaide, sits in the heritage-listed Adelaide railway station building on North Terrace, has 90 gaming tables and 950 gaming machines, and is the sole licensed casino in South Australia under the Casino Act 1997. Adelaide Casino opened on 12 December 1985 under South Australia’s state-owned Lotteries Commission, was sold to SkyCity Entertainment Group in June 2000, was renamed SkyCity Adelaide in April 2001, then reverted to the Adelaide Casino name in 2009. A 2015-2021 Riverbank precinct redevelopment of Adelaide Casino, worth about A$330 million, added the EOS by SkyCity tower, which opened in 2021 with 120 hotel rooms and expanded gaming space. Adelaide Casino’s table-game monopoly in South Australia was extended to 30 June 2035 under a licence formalised on 11 October 2013, which also allows the casino to expand to up to 200 gaming tables and 1,500 gaming machines subject to redevelopment. Adelaide Casino is regulated by South Australia’s Independent Gambling Authority and Liquor and Gambling Commissioner.

Casino Canberra, in the Canberra CBD, was the first legal casino in the ACT, built on land excised from Glebe Park under a 99-year lease; it has no hotel, theatres or retail. Casino Canberra is described as the only casino in Australia not licensed to operate poker machines, with 39 gaming tables for blackjack, roulette, baccarat and other games, a poker lounge and a sports lounge. Aquis Canberra Pty Ltd was issued the ACT casino licence on 23 December 2014 under section 22 of the Casino Control Act 2006, to operate the casino at 21 Binara Street; the licence is now held by Casino Canberra Limited. Casino Canberra is regulated under the ACT’s Casino Control Act 2006 and Casino Control Regulation 2006, administered by the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission, which also issues casino employee licences — short-term licences valid up to 6 months, full licences valid for 3 years. The ACT had 3,587 gaming machines operating (5,091 approved) in 46 venues on 1 November 2023, with player losses of A$0.19 billion in 2022-23.

Brisbane’s position in that set is the newest infrastructure, the largest single-floor footprint, and the most actively contested licence. Adelaide has the deepest heritage building and the longer monopoly horizon. Canberra has the smallest gaming floor and the regulatory distinction of running no pokies at all.

The brands the ACMA has acted against

The ACMA does not publish a list of “approved” offshore casinos, because there are none. It does publish formal warnings, and the brands below are the ones the regulator itself has named in those warnings. They are not a ranking and not a recommendation — the ACMA’s only finding on each is that the brand offered prohibited services to Australians. A reader who sees one of these names advertised should read the warning as the regulator’s own assessment, not as a competing view.

The table below uses the ACMA’s published action and the operator entity the ACMA named in each warning. Some of the listings cited in research carry a separate brand reference; where research marks a subject “no-data” the row shows that openly rather than fabricate a presence.

Reading the warnings together

Two patterns sit in the table. The first is a handful of operators — Dama N.V., Consolutetish S.R.L. — that surface repeatedly across multiple brand names. The ACMA issued a formal warning to Dama N.V. covering six casino brands in May 2022, then issued further formal warnings to Dama N.V. over Woo Casino in March 2025 and Spirit Casino in May 2025. The same operator-group pattern appears with Consolutetish S.R.L., named by the ACMA over National Casino and Bizzo Casino in July 2025; Bizzo Casino had already been the subject of a 2022 formal warning to TechSolutions (CY) Group Limited and TechSolutions Group N.V. For a reader the implication is that the brand on the front of an offshore casino is rarely the entity behind it, and a brand that disappears one quarter often returns the next under a new front.

The second pattern is the spread of dates. The earliest warning on the table is September 2022, the latest is April 2026, and the gap between them holds continuous ACMA activity. The ACMA is not running a single sweep; it is running an ongoing programme against an industry that rebrands as fast as it is warned.

What this list does and does not do

The list does not exhaust the ACMA’s enforcement record. The 1,751 blocked URLs reported in June 2026 is the cumulative running total; the eleven brands here are the formal-warning cases that have a published record the ACMA itself maintains, and that list is itself a small subset of the operator universe the regulator has interacted with. The list also does not adjudicate any single brand’s current reachability in Brisbane: an Australian reader using a domestic ISP may see a different blocked-or-reachable state for any of the URLs above, depending on the most recent block refresh.

What the list does do is let a reader recognise a brand. The next time one of these names appears in a search result, a banner ad or a referral link on social media, the ACMA’s own action against it is on record. That recognition is the practical value of an otherwise bleak catalogue.

What this page does not do

This page does not compare offshore casinos on bonus size, payout speed or game count. Those numbers exist on affiliate pages that earn a commission when a reader signs up, and the brands they cover are the same brands the ACMA has acted against. The comparison this page offers is whether each option is reachable legally from Brisbane, and for the one venue that is, what the floor and the rules look like on the day a reader visits.

A reader who wants to step outside the Australian framework will find plenty of pages willing to make that argument. None of them changes the Interactive Gambling Act 2001. The Act targets the provider, not the player, but the player pays the cost in three places: an offshore dispute process with no Australian standing, a withdrawal that can be paused indefinitely, and a site that can be blocked while a balance is still on it. Those three costs are the same on every offshore brand, regardless of the bonus printed on its landing page.

A note on tax

Gambling winnings of a recreational player are not assessable income under section 6-5 of the ITAA 1997 and losses are not deductible, unless the person carries on a business of gambling. The ATO applies that line case by case, and a player whose gambling activity looks income-like — systematic, recorded, supported by dedicated bank accounts — sits closer to the business end of the test. For the recreational reader, the line is straightforward: winnings are not taxed, losses are not deductible, and the only paperwork is the player’s own record. Anyone whose situation is not recreational should check with the ATO before relying on the rule.

The Star Brisbane — verdict for a visitor

For a Brisbane resident or a Queensland visitor with a single venue to choose, The Star Brisbane is that venue by default. The building is the newest casino infrastructure in the country. The floor carries the standard international table mix, plus a large-format pokie operation that the broader Queensland pub-and-club market cannot match. The accommodation on site is integrated. The dining and the rooftop bar make a night out a complete proposition rather than a focused gambling trip.

The caveat that sits beside that recommendation is the licence itself. Star Entertainment’s continued suitability remains under active monitoring after the 2022 finding, and the Queensland Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation has not closed the file. For a one-off visitor that matters as background, not as a reason to avoid the venue. For a regular player considering a loyalty programme enrolment or a credit facility, it is worth reading the venue’s responsible-gambling code before signing up to anything that runs across visits.

A short comparison

The row that matters most for a Brisbane reader is the second one. Treasury Casino closed in August 2024 and the licence moved to Queen’s Wharf; the operator and the regulator are the same two entities that ran Treasury, and the new venue carries the same licence number with a different address. Any review, comparison or travel guide still naming Treasury Casino as the Brisbane casino is using a closed venue.

Frequently asked questions

What is the main casino in Brisbane?

The Star Brisbane, at the Queen’s Wharf precinct on the Brisbane River. It replaced Treasury Casino, which closed on 25 August 2024. The Star Brisbane began a staged opening on 29 August 2024 and is the only licensed casino in Queensland.

Where exactly is The Star Brisbane?

1 William Street, Brisbane, within the Queen’s Wharf Brisbane precinct. It is a short walk across the river from South Bank, and within the central business district on the northern bank.

What is the age limit at The Star Brisbane?

1. Photo identification is checked at the door. Minors are not permitted on the gaming floor at any hour.

Does The Star Brisbane run table games such as blackjack and baccarat?

Yes. The main gaming floor runs blackjack across multiple stake tiers, roulette in both single-zero and double-zero formats, baccarat and mini-baccarat, craps on a dedicated pit, and a large pokie floor on a separate level. There is no Australian legal equivalent of the streamed “live dealer” format that offshore sites sell.

Are there hotels within walking distance of The Star Brisbane?

Yes. The Queen’s Wharf precinct itself contains three hotels under the broader Star and partner banner. Within a five-minute walk the CBD offers the Hilton, Marriott, Sofitel and Pullman, plus mid-range and boutique options. Roma Street and Spring Hill add budget stays and serviced apartments within a fifteen-minute walk.

Can Australians legally play at an online casino instead?

No. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 prohibits offering online casino games to anyone in Australia, and no state or territory issues a licence for them. The licensed Australian online offer covers wagering on races and sport placed before the event, lotteries and keno. An offshore casino accepting an Australian sign-up is operating outside the Australian framework, and the ACMA blocks sites under that framework on an ongoing basis.

Written by the editors at Low Deposit Casino Info.