Finland's licensing window opened on 1 March 2026. By early April the National Police Board had received 24 applications. By late May the figure had reached 41, and in June the Board's Gambling Administration confirmed 50, noting that the majority came from companies based outside Finland. In August the number was still described as around 50.

What the regulator has not done is name any of them.

Two companies have spoken for themselves

LeoVegas was the first. Speaking at NEXT Summit Valletta in late May, the group's Managing Director for the Nordics, Fredrik Wastenson, confirmed that LeoVegas had filed two Finnish licence applications roughly two months after the window opened. He also made two points that have been less widely quoted: that being live on the first day of the market was not necessarily critical, and that parts of the Finnish rulebook still required clarification.

The second is the incumbent. Veikkaus confirmed in its first-half results that it has applied for both the exclusive licence and a gambling licence for the competitive market, having split itself into two subsidiaries in May to satisfy EU competitive neutrality rules. The state operator is therefore an applicant in the market it is losing exclusivity over.

Two more names, at lower confidence

Finnish media reporting during the opening phase named Hippos ATG Oy, a joint venture between Sweden's AB Trav och Galopp and Suomen Hippos, as filing for sports betting, online casino games and horse-race betting.

In March, platform provider Finnplay announced an agreement to power two brands for SpinCore Group in Finland, and its Managing Director Jaakko Soininen stated that SpinCore had submitted its application. That is the more interesting of the two, because of where it came from.

The supply chain is the disclosure channel

Operators have little reason to announce a Finnish application. Suppliers have every reason to announce a client win, and doing so necessarily discloses that the client has applied.

That asymmetry is likely to define what becomes knowable over the next eighteen months. Platform, payment and content providers will publish deal announcements through 2026 and into 2027, and each one surfaces an applicant the operator itself would not have named. Anyone mapping this market should be reading supplier press releases as closely as operator results.

Why the field stays hidden otherwise

In several European markets the regulator publishes a running list of applicants. Finland has not. That leaves three ways to establish who is applying: the company says so, a commercial partner or filing implies it, or someone with direct knowledge talks.

Each has limits. Listed operators disclose market-entry plans on their own schedule, usually at quarterly results. Private companies may never say anything. Conference remarks are useful but often imprecise about dates and licence counts.

The practical consequence is that any list of Finnish applicants circulating publicly is, at present, largely inference. Some of the names being repeated are plausible. Plausible is not the same as sourced.

A deadline that was not a deadline

One piece of confusion is worth correcting. Industry reporting in the spring suggested applications would close in August 2026. The Police Board subsequently clarified that there is no fixed cutoff and that applications are accepted continuously, with a target processing time of six to eight months.

For operators still deciding, that matters: the door has not closed. But the processing target means an application filed late in 2026 is unlikely to be decided much before the market opens, and the audits and regulator integration that follow a licence still have to fit in after that.

What we publish

Our Licence Tracker holds four named records and one aggregate row. That is not because we believe only four companies have applied. It is because four are sourced, and each carries a visible confidence tier: LeoVegas and Veikkaus Confirmed, Hippos ATG and SpinCore Reported.

The alternative, publishing a list of likely applicants and hoping it holds up, would be faster and less useful.