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Does PAGCOR still publish a register of IGL-licensed casinos?

A PDF titled the List of Internet Gaming Licensees still returns HTTP 200 on PAGCOR's own site in September 2026, nineteen months after the licence class it names stopped legally existing.

Published 2026-09-02Not changed since publicationNo review date set yetSources not re-read since publication

This piece is about Philippines and is written for readers there. Rules, ages and licence classes differ by country and nothing here transfers to another one.

PAGCOR still serves a file called the List of Internet Gaming Licensees

The file sits at a stable address inside PAGCOR's own regulatory-pdf directory, inside a folder named offshore. We fetched it directly on 2 September 2026. It answered HTTP 200. It runs 1,359,229 bytes across two pages, and neither page contains extractable text.

Both pages are scanned images rather than typed documents, so the tool this project uses to read PAGCOR PDFs by searching their text found nothing to search. We cannot say from the file itself what date appears on it, which companies it names, or whether it was ever updated after the day someone scanned it. We can only say the URL still works, and that PAGCOR has not taken the file down.

The same offshore folder holds at least one neighbour with a different name: a file called List-of-Remote-Play-SM-Licensee.pdf, sitting beside the Internet Gaming Licensees file under the same path. Two differently titled lists in one folder, for a licence class the government ended nearly two years ago, is not what an actively maintained register looks like.

A working link is not the same claim as a current register. A casino review site can cite this exact URL today as proof an operator holds a PAGCOR Internet Gaming Licensee credential, and the 200 response will make that citation look solid. Nothing about the file's own content backs it up, because nothing about the file's own content can currently be read by anyone checking the claim the way this project checks one: by fetching the source and reading what it says.

The licence class the file names stopped existing at the end of 2024

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed Executive Order 74 on 5 November 2024, ordering every Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator and Internet Gaming Licensee to cease operations. The order set a hard deadline: 31 December 2024. Existing licences were not renewed. They were not extended either.

By the deadline, PAGCOR had cancelled all 42 internet gaming licences it had issued and all 18 authorised service-provider accreditations that supported them, according to the Presidential Communications Office. Roughly 304 physical POGO sites closed nationwide in the same window. The order also barred PAGCOR from renewing any offshore-related ancillary service tied to the banned class, reaching past the licensees themselves into everyone who supplied them.

The ban did not stay an executive order. The Philippine Congress passed Republic Act 12312, and Marcos signed it on 23 October 2025, declaring all POGOs illegal by statute rather than by presidential instruction alone. A law outlasts the administration that enacted the order behind it. That is the difference between EO 74 and RA 12312, and it is why the licence class the PDF names is not merely paused.

The page that would explain the current programme returns 404

PAGCOR's Electronic Gaming Licensing Department publishes its own page at pagcor.ph, and it answered HTTP 200 when we fetched it on 2 September 2026. It describes a different population entirely: traditional bingo, electronic bingo, electronic casino games, sports betting, specialty games, online poker and numeric games, all issued to operators licensed to work inside the Philippines. Every one of those is a domestic licence. None is an offshore or Internet Gaming Licensee credential.

A page that would describe the offshore programme by name, at a URL search results currently point to, answered 404 when we fetched it the same day. Not found. Nothing served in its place explains what replaced the Internet Gaming Licensee class, points to a current register, or tells a reader the class ended. The department that once processed these applications does not have a live public page a reader can currently reach through PAGCOR's own site to confirm any of this.

PAGCOR might have an ordinary reason to leave the file up

The fair objection is that PAGCOR runs a large regulatory site with hundreds of PDFs accumulated across a decade of licensing activity, and an orphaned file at a stable URL could be nothing more than ordinary neglect rather than anything deliberate. Government web teams do not always retire a document the day the programme behind it ends. That is a reasonable account of how the file could still be sitting there, and it does not require bad faith on anyone's part.

It does not rescue the file as a register, though. An unmaintained document proves nothing in either direction. If neglect is the explanation, the file has not been checked or confirmed since before the ban, so it cannot answer whether any specific brand holds a current licence, because there is no current licence class left to hold.

Two things could not be verified for this piece. What the two scanned pages actually say is one: no tool available here reads a scanned PDF's text, and this project does not guess at a document's contents. Whether PAGCOR has an internal reason for leaving the file live is the other. We found no PAGCOR statement addressing it, and this piece does not claim to have looked everywhere such a statement could exist.

What a reader can actually check in under a minute

Start with the claim itself. If a casino's marketing describes itself as PAGCOR IGL licensed, or PAGCOR offshore licensed, in September 2026, that describes a licence class Philippine law ended by 31 December 2024 and outlawed entirely under Republic Act 12312 in October 2025. The claim cannot be current, whatever a linked PDF does or does not say.

Checking PAGCOR for a domestic accreditation is a different, answerable question, and it belongs to a different page. The Electronic Gaming Licensing Department's page covers bingo, e-bingo, e-casino games, sports betting, specialty games and online poker for operators licensed to work inside the Philippines. That page works. It names a real, current licensing population, and it is the page to check if the question is whether a brand holds any current PAGCOR credential at all, rather than one that stopped existing.

This project's own PAGCOR-sourced records already carry a rule for exactly this pattern: a file that answers 200 is checked for a stated date before it is trusted. The Internet Gaming Licensees file carries no date to check. Until PAGCOR either republishes it dated or removes it, the honest answer to this piece's own question stays the one printed here. No current, checkable register exists, because no current programme exists to register against.

Questions this raises

What was PAGCOR's Internet Gaming Licensee (IGL) scheme?

IGL was the name PAGCOR gave its offshore online gambling licence class after retiring the POGO designation. It let some offshore operators run games aimed at players outside the Philippines under a Philippine-issued licence. PAGCOR issued 42 such licences before the class was terminated.

Is IGL licensing still active in the Philippines?

No. Executive Order 74, signed 5 November 2024, ordered every IGL and POGO operation to stop by 31 December 2024. Republic Act 12312, signed 23 October 2025, converted the ban into statute rather than leaving it as a presidential order alone.

Does PAGCOR still publish a register of IGL operators?

A PDF titled the List of Internet Gaming Licensees still returns HTTP 200 on PAGCOR's own site, but it is a two-page scanned image with no readable text and no visible date. Nothing found during this research explains why it remains online, and it cannot be verified as current.

What law ended POGO and IGL operations in the Philippines?

Executive Order 74 ordered the immediate cessation in November 2024, with a 31 December 2024 deadline. Republic Act 12312, passed roughly eleven months later, converted that order into a standing law.

What does a PAGCOR IGL licensed claim mean today?

It describes a licence category that stopped legally existing at the end of 2024. Any brand marketing itself this way in September 2026 is citing a credential Philippine law no longer permits, whatever page it links to as proof.

Where the figures come from

Not a bibliography — these are the addresses behind the numbers this site stores about the 0 records this piece is about, with the date we read each one. Anything the article argues from that we have not stored as a figure is not in this list, and we would rather say that than pad it.

This piece cites no stored figure, so there is nothing to list here.

Corrections

Nothing on this page has been corrected since it was published on 2026-09-02. When something is, it is listed here with the date and what changed — not quietly edited. How we handle a correction.

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