The short answer: Cambodia has a deep, everyday gambling culture - from festival card games and cockfighting to lotteries and football betting - yet formal gambling is legally reserved for foreigners and sits in tension with the country’s Buddhist values. Casinos are a major, tourist-facing industry concentrated in Phnom Penh and the border towns, but Cambodian citizens are legally barred from gambling, producing a striking gap between law, culture and daily reality.

A short history

Gambling in Cambodia has long existed informally, but the modern picture was shaped by two laws. The 1996 Law on the Suppression of Gambling made gambling by Cambodian citizens illegal while allowing licensed casinos to serve foreigners. Over the following decades a casino industry grew rapidly - from dozens of venues in the mid-2010s to a much larger sector - clustered along the Thai and Vietnamese borders and in coastal Sihanoukville (Preah Sihanouk province). In 2020 the Law on the Management of Commercial Gambling (LMCG) modernised the framework and created the Commercial Gambling Management Commission (CGMC) as regulator. By recent official reporting, Cambodia had granted operating licences to around 195 casinos, the great majority in Preah Sihanouk province, with only one licensed casino in the capital, Phnom Penh.

Inside casinos, baccarat is the headline game, alongside poker and roulette; slot machines are available to foreign patrons (machines were banned for Cambodian citizens outside casinos and hotels in 2009 after concerns over debt-driven violence and problem gambling). Away from the tables, Cambodians bet on almost any contest: cockfighting, football (soccer) and Kun Khmer (kickboxing), plus lotteries. There is even a traditional betting game, chak teuk phliang, in which people wager on when and how much it will rain.

Casinos and the border towns

The flagship venue is NagaWorld, the Phnom Penh integrated resort operated by NagaCorp, which holds a long-term licence and a monopoly over casino activity within a radius of the capital. Beyond it, casino clusters line the frontiers - Poipet on the Thai border and Bavet on the Vietnamese border - drawing cross-border gamblers, while Sihanoukville boomed into a major coastal casino hub.

Culture and attitudes

Gambling is woven into Khmer social life, especially card and dice games around Khmer New Year and festivals, yet it sits uneasily with Buddhist values: the belief in karma frames gambling as indulgent and reckless, and it is widely viewed as a path to ruin. That tension - popular in practice, frowned upon in principle, and legally off-limits to citizens - defines Cambodia’s relationship with gambling. In recent years authorities have also linked unregulated online betting to scam and human-trafficking operations, sharpening official concern.

18+ only. Gambling can be addictive - if it stops being fun, stop. Gambling by Cambodian citizens is illegal.

Sources