Welcome back to the Casinoplusbonus gambling news columns. Today, it’s our first news piece of the year. Well, to be honest, this is more like a catch-up blog and a look into the future to let you know what to expect from 2026 in the online gambling space. We won’t go into too much detail, and instead, briefly cover some of the main topics we’re expecting to hit the online gambling news headlines in 2026.
Table of Contents
All the best of luck for the year, and let’s dive into some of the headline topics to keep an eye on before we know it. We are preparing for Christmas 2026 and the New Year 2027.
New Licensing Authority News from Ireland and New Zealand
Where do we begin? Licensing for certificated, domestically regulated online casinos in Ireland and New Zealand is in the pipeline for 2026. Although we’re not expecting the new GRAI (Ireland) or the New Zealand licensing authority to dramatically change how people gamble in these countries, we are relatively sure they will have a significant impact over the next few years.
Why? We’ve covered the pre- and post-release of the domestic Ontario licensing that hit the Canadian province back in 2022. At the time, we were not overly confident that iGaming Ontario, the regulatory authority, would be successful, as overseas sites offer more games, better sports betting odds, and more bonuses. However, as of our last report, November 2025 broke all records with a +29.5% rise in online casino wagers year on year, which is impressive.
For context, Ontario has a population of 16 million as of Q4 2025, according to statcan.gc.ca. Ireland has a population of just over 5 million, and New Zealand has a similar population. With both populations at a third of Ontario’s size, it will be interesting to compare wager and revenue stats.
Also, we’ve seen smaller iGaming markets succeed in the USA, with states like Delaware (1 million), Connecticut (3.5 million), and West Virginia (1.6 million) showing success.
1,500+ New Online Casino Games – Weekly New Online Casino Games Report
Every week, we cover the release of as many new online casino games as we can find. Usually, our report covers roughly 30 new releases every week, giving you up to 120 new games to explore each month. This year, we’re expecting record-breaking game release weeks, with our research team predicting months with over 40 new online slots and table games.
With the growing number of software providers entering the industry and some studios partnering with others to bring out multiple releases every month, we’re expecting our 2025 new casino games report to be busy every week.
You can find out about new casino games every week via the casino games news or on our homepage in the news feed every week.
More Crypto Bonuses
As regulated markets come online, crypto players in Ireland and New Zealand will continue to play at overseas online casinos. Mostly, those under the Curacao licensing authority. At the same time, we’re expecting more people to adopt cryptocurrency in 2026 and future years and to lead the way, we predict a flurry of cryptocurrency bonuses with low wagering requirements or none at all.
Keep an eye out for our Casinoplusbonus news pages. We’ll be on the hunt for the most valuable crypto bonuses online. Also, if you are already hungry for a crypto bonus, then it’s tough to beat those offered by BetandPlay and Lucky Hunter. Every time you deposit, the casino matches your crypto with 7% or 10% added on top of your balance. The key point that makes these offers stand out is that each of them comes with 0x wagering.
You can find both these online casinos and their respective cryptocurrency bonuses covered in our Free Deposit Match Crypto Bonus guide.
What’s New on Casinoplusbonus?
We’ve changed our domain name for the English-language site from casinoplusbonus.com to en.casinoplusbonus.com. We also plan to make our news easier to browse and to add more no-deposit bonuses and casino reviews specific to our readers’ location. We’ll continue to cover the Irish, British, Canadian and Kiwi iGaming markets predominantly, and also enhance our coverage of online gambling in India and South Africa.
The changes are minor, and to the URLs of our site, so you don’t need to do anything. In the meantime, stay tuned as we add more helpful content to help you make informed decisions when you gamble online.
