The gaming and gambling sector in Colombia is going through one of its best historical moments, according to the balance presented by Marco Emilio Hincapié, president of Coljuegos, during a gaming industry fair held in the country. Among the most relevant announcements, the official confirmed that Keno will begin operating on April 1st, a date that marks a new chapter in the expansion of legal gaming offerings in Colombia.
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Keno arrives on April 1st: what it is and what resources it will generate
Keno is a lottery gaming modality in which participants select numbers and hope they match the drawn ones, with different prize levels depending on the number of correct matches. Its structure makes it an accessible game for a wide spectrum of players and with high frequency of operation.
According to Hincapié, Keno will contribute approximately 500 billion pesos—equivalent to approximately $116 million dollars—to the health system in the next five years. The collection will be allocated, as happens with the rest of the games administered by Coljuegos, to the subsidized health system that serves Colombians with lower incomes.
Record figures: how much Coljuegos has transferred to public health
The announcement of Keno comes in a context of unprecedented results for the entity. Since 2022, Coljuegos has transferred the equivalent of approximately $837 million dollars to the subsidized health system, which represents 41.84% of all resources generated by the sector since 2012.
In other words, in just three years, the current administration accumulated almost half of the contributions that the sector produced in its entire previous history. In 2025 alone, monopoly revenues generated transfers equivalent to about $256 million dollars, resources that allowed financing subsidized medical care for approximately 836,000 Colombians with limited resources.
To that figure are added the approximately $302 million dollars contributed by the 14 authorized online gaming operators, through VAT payments. According to the president of Coljuegos, those resources were used by the National Government to advance peace and reconciliation programs in the Catatumbo region.
The fight against illegality: numbers that support management
One of the central axes of Hincapié’s speech was the fight against illegal gambling operators, a problem that has historically affected both state collection and consumer protection.
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During the current administration, Coljuegos conducted 234 operations in 20 departments of the country, in which 8,113 illegal items were seized and 12,833 slot machines, bingo machines, online betting modules and other devices used without authorization were destroyed.
On the digital front, the entity issued a total of 41,884 blocking orders against illegal websites since online betting began operating in 2017. Of that total, 32,463 orders—more than 77%—were managed by the current administration, reflecting a significant intensification of oversight in the digital environment.
More legal games on the way: raffles and virtual sports betting
In addition to Keno, Coljuegos announced that it already has ready the technical annex for the regulation of raffles and the update of Virtual Sports Race Betting (ACDV), two modalities that are also part of the strategy to expand legal offerings.
The declared objective of the entity is twofold: on one hand, to strengthen the legality of the sector by displacing unauthorized operators; on the other, to offer more alternatives to bettors within a regulated framework that guarantees the allocation of resources toward social purposes.
Why it matters that Colombians gamble through legal channels
The Colombian model of games of chance and gambling is designed so that each bet made through an authorized channel translates into resources for the public health system. When players opt for illegal platforms, they not only expose themselves to scams and lack of consumer protection, but they also deprive the State of funds that finance medical care for the most vulnerable sectors of the population.
In that sense, the launch of Keno and the expansion of legal offerings seek to capture a greater proportion of gambling spending that currently leaks into the informal market, converting that demand into resources with social purposes.
