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Ukraine’s lottery relaunch has moved to its next stage after PlayCity closed the application window for state lottery licences on 29 December 2025, drawing bids from three incumbent domestic operators and no new entrants. The regulator said LLC M.S.L., FDI Ukrainian National Lottery (UNL) and PJSC Patriot filed applications, pointing to a process that preserves continuity while lawmakers reconsider how the lottery market should be structured during wartime.
PlayCity director Hennadiy (Gennady) Novikov said the tender is constrained by current legislation and the realities of martial law. “Therefore, licences will be issued not for 10 years, but for the period of martial law plus one year, but no more than three,” he said, adding that the shortened term is designed to give the Ministry of Digital Transformation and parliament time to rewrite the rules and relicense the market on an updated basis that could allow international participation later.
A domestic-only race, shaped by the law
The absence of foreign bidders did not surprise industry observers. In an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, Novikov said the timetable was driven by statutory requirements rather than regulator preference. “Current legislation obliges the regulator… to hold a new competition within three months after approving the licensing conditions,” he said, explaining that one stage of that process is document submission.
Novikov argued that a modern tender designed to attract international interest would need far more runway. “If the legislation were updated, such a competition should be announced a year in advance so that international companies could assess the conditions, prepare, and participate,” he said.
Those constraints matter because the lottery market is being rebooted in the middle of a broader regulatory reset. Since February 2025, gambling policy has been coordinated by the Ministry of Digital Transformation, and the Cabinet of Ministers established PlayCity in March 2025 as a new central executive authority to replace the former regulator KRAIL from 1 April 2025.
A “re-licensing” moment after a decade-long fee gap
PlayCity and the Ministry are also using the tender to close what they describe as a long-running gap in oversight and state revenue.
Interfax-Ukraine quoted Novikov saying lottery operators have effectively worked for more than 10 years without paying licence fees, because Ministry of Finance-issued lottery licences expired in 2013–2014 and were never replaced with an updated system. “Lottery operators have been operating for more than 10 years without paying any license fees at all, since the licenses previously issued by the Ministry of Finance expired in 2013–2014,” Novikov said.
The Government has framed the tender as a reset toward equal starting conditions and compliance-led competition. Deputy minister of digital transformation Natalia Denikeieva said: “We are finally launching a market where the starting conditions are the same for everyone… where access to ‘old schemes’ does not win, but product quality, technological feasibility and compliance with the law.”
Entry rules kept the door narrow
The tender conditions themselves make fast entry difficult for newcomers. Publicly reported requirements include at least three years of lottery-market experience, a website in the .ua domain, authorised capital of at least UAH 30m, and confirmation that the applicant has no direct or indirect links to the “aggressor country.”
Novikov has been blunt that the state should eventually rethink how it measures capability. “Opening the market to everyone is my personal position,” he told Interfax-Ukraine. “I don’t know what the final decisions will be, but I believe the market should be open not only to companies with previous experience in lotteries, and not necessarily only to state-owned ones.”
Source: Interfax Ukraine
