New Slot Sites 2026

New Slot Sites 2026

1. How many new slot sites will launch in 2026?
2. Why play at a new slot site?
3. Are new slot sites always brand new?
4. Trends and what to expect in 2026

How many new slot sites will launch in 2026?

We confidently predict that there will be far fewer new slot site launches in 2026 than in 2025.  Why?  Because lots of regulatory changes have recently come in or are in the pipeline – stake limits, game design changes, marketing restrictions, financial vulnerability checks, tax hikes – that make launching a new site much more risky for operators.

The most important changes are

1. The new rules on bonuses which take effect in mid January
2. The tax rise from 21% to 40% that takes effect in April

These are bound to make operators ultra cautious about opening new slot sites in the UK.

We expect very slow start to 2026, then, but there might be more launches later in the year once these changes have actually happened and the effects on business are fully understood.

Why play at a new slot site?

Many players move on to new sites because they want to claim a fresh welcome bonus offer but there are lots of other reasons why you might want to try out somewhere new.

Range of games

• You want to try some games from new providers
• You want somewhere that’s quicker to add new release games
• You’d like a bigger and better selection of progressive jackpots such as Mega Moolah, Dream Drop and Red Tiger dailies
• You’d like a better selection of non slot games – bingo, instant win, crash, live casino etc
• You’d like to be able to place sports bets or lottery bets with the same wallet

Bonuses & promotions

• You want to play somewhere that has more and/or better offers for existing players
• You prefer free spins offers to bonus offers or vice versa, or maybe a spin the wheel style offer appeals to you
• You don’t like something in the terms and conditions at your current site – wagering requirements, bonus expiry, max conversion etc
• You’re specifically looking for prize draws, slots tournaments, player missions and/or other types of promotion that bump up the entertainment value

Trust, safety & fairness

• You’d prefer to play somewhere with a higher level of insolvency protection
• You’ve had a bad experience with customer service at your current site
• You’d be happier with the reassurance of a well known brand
• The casino you’ve been playing at has reduced the Return To Player on your favourite slot games. We expect to see a lot more of this in 2026 due to the increased tax burden on operators and you can find out more about it on our Best Payout Casinos page.

User experience

• The affordability and ID checks at the casino you’ve been playing at are too intrusive
• You’d like to be able to choose from a wider range of payment methods e.g. Trustly or Neosurf
• The casino you’ve been playing at has an outdated design that no longer works well on your device of choice
• You play on your phone and would prefer to use a mobile app with biometric login for added convenience and security
• You’re fed up with the look and feel of the slot site you’ve been playing at and fancy a change

New slot sites are safe to play at as long as you stick to sites that are licensed by the UK Gambling Commission. The slot games themselves are checked for fairness and the operators have to meet player protection safety standards.  We only review UK licensed sites and for added security, we also report on each site’s level of players funds protection.

Are new slot sites always brand new?

A new site doesn’t necessarily mean a brand new operator!  It can be any of the following:

• New site on a new platform – it’s rare to see independent slot sites which are genuinely and completely new to the UK but they do appear from time to time e.g Slots Temple.  As these operators have recently passed the rigorous vetting procedures for a UK Gambling Commission licence, players can feel confident about giving them a try.
• New site on an existing platform (skin) – the site’s owner may or may not be new to the industry, but the casino software, management and licensing is supplied by a white label provider such as Jumpman, Grace Media or Progress Play.  There’s certainly plenty of these! Some of them, however, restrict the number of accounts that one player can open and/or the number of welcome offers that one player can claim.  So you may not be eligible for the welcome offer or even be able to play at all if you’ve previously played at other sites on the same platform.
• New site on an existing platform (house owned) – this is when an already successful operator launches a new site on their own casino platform e.g. Quickbet from L&L Europe or Mega Riches from Videoslots.
• Sportsbook or lottery site that added a casino offer – this type of site has proved very popular with our users over the last couple of years (e.g. Fitzdares and Gentleman Jim) and we expect the trend to continue into 2025, with lottery betting sites such as Lottogo very much in the ascendant.
• Relaunches – it’s quite common for slot sites to open in the UK and not gain much of a player base, either because the operator doesn’t make much of an effort to promote their new site or because the welcome offer isn’t appealing.  When a site that few players have even heard of gets a makeover and a new welcome offer, we’ll add it to the listings here.
• Platform changes – sometimes casinos will close on one white label platform and reopen on another, e.g 666 Casino moving from White Hat to Aspire.  The player base usually does not transfer so these may as well be brand new sites, with everyone eligible to claim the welcome offer even if they’ve played there before.

We leave slot site listings on this page until we can see from our interaction data reports that no-one who’s looking for a new slot site is interested in them any more, so you may find some sites here that are a year old or even more.

Trends and what to expect in 2026

• Live casino game shows continue to flourish despite design changes  – We expect even more live casino game shows to come out in 2026, and more providers to join the market, despite the ban on autoplay which came in last year. We thought it would be a problem because with this type of game you only have a small window (typically less than 30 seconds) between games in which you can buy in, but so far at least, these games remain as popular as ever and have not been subject to the £5 maximum stake rules that slot games have.
• Some games not coming to the UK – this has been going on for years and the more restrictions are placed on game design, the more it happens because games providers think it is not worth producing a special UK version to comply with the restrictions – for example, disabling bonus buy on slot games and autoplay on live casino games.
• Even more slot games with higher variance and lower hit rate – An unintended side effect of the last round of game design changes is that because small “wins” that are less than spin value are now barely distinguishable from losing spins (in terms of what you see and hear rather than the effect on your bankroll) they no longer contribute to the entertainment value for most players.  Therefore, this type of “win” is less likely to be included in the design of future games and this is making everything higher variance, with more losing spins and fewer, bigger wins. The popularity of Big Bass Bonanza (and its even higher variance friends and relatives) is a perfect illustration of this trend and there’s even some slot games now (such as the Money Cart games by Relax Gaming) where any spin in the base game has just two possible outcomes – the bonus round or no win.
• Payment method changes – High tech payment methods such as Trustly, Muchbetter and Astropay now have increasing presence at UK online casinos.  This is because they are safe and secure for players while allowing operators to be sure that a credit card (which isn’t allowed for gambling transactions) hasn’t been used at any stage of the process.  Apple Pay and Google Pay are also gaining traction. Depositing using mobile phone billing, on the other hand, is likely to decline as almost every operator now charges a hefty fee for this service and there’s a rather low ceiling on what you can deposit.  Prepaid voucher payment methods are also likely to decline as players using them now have to be classified as high risk.
• Mobile slots – As so many players now do all of their play on mobile devices, new slot sites that are designed to work on mobile and/or with the safety and security of a mobile app are in the ascendant, often – like Vegas Moose,  Winomania and Happy Tiger – with unique mobile slot games you won’t find anywhere else.
• Financial checks are standardised and become less of an annoyance – two levels of affordability checks (or as we must now call them, financial vulnerability checks) are in the process of being rolled out.  The lower level “light touch” financial vulnerability check is fairly unobtrusive (at least for those with an established residence and credit history) and started with a trigger level of £500 of net monthly deposits (i.e. the check would be done on any players that deposited £500 more than they withdrew over the last 30 days).  The trigger has now been reduced to £150 net monthly deposits. The higher level financial vulnerability checks are also intended to be “seamless” (i.e. not requiring players to share financial data via open banking or directly provide evidence of affordability to the operator). A trial was run with a few big operators using historical data and more than 95% of the checks were able to be carried out without requesting anything from players.  Implementation is expected soon.
• Underwhelming welcome offers – Operators are getting squeezed by the increased burden of regulation and taxation and simply can’t afford to do super generous offers any more.  It’s not just the size of the bonus that’s coming down, either – changes in the terms and conditions affecting bonus expiry, caps on what you can win and restrictions on which games you can play with your bonus are all factors that can make a bonus less valuable to the player.  No deposit offers are also getting noticeably smaller. The Gambling Commission has now decided not to ban wagering requirements completely, but to cap them at 10x bonus to take effect in January 2026 and that will also undoubtedly result in smaller bonuses. Offers that involve cross selling between different types of product are also not going to be allowed.
• Some operators leaving the UK – For some, we expect the new tax rate to mean they simply can’t afford to stay.

What certainly won’t be slowing down in 2026 is the rate of release of new slot games; the sheer number of different game providers in the market now ensures that there’s always something new to play!  We expect slot game providers to concentrate on two things:

• The next Megaways.  New game mechanics such as BTG’s new Megadozer and PlayNGo’s Blitzways haven’t captured the imagination of players in the way Megaways did but sooner or later, something will!
• Sequels!  With so many new slot games coming out all of the time, a great way to attract the attention of players is to put out a sequel to a game they’ve previously played and enjoyed.  And so it was last year with further instalments in PlayNGo’s Rich Wilde saga (which began with the iconic Book of Dead), any number of increasingly wacky variations on Big Bass Bonanza , new Immortal Romance, Double Bubble and Fluffy Favourites games, more Pirots and Nitropolis games, and the release of Avalon III more than 10 years after the previous instalment in the series! We expect more of the same in 2026.