The Star Brisbane at Queen’s Wharf, and the offshore alternatives the ACMA has been working through

Updated September 2026

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Data current as of 24 September 2026, verified against the Australian Communications and Media Authority register and the Queensland Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation.

Brisbane has one licensed casino. It is the Star Brisbane, inside the A$3.6 billion Queen’s Wharf precinct, and it opened in a staged way from 29 August 2024. The venue it replaced — Treasury Casino, in the old Treasury Building — closed on 25 August 2024, so any guide written before that date now points at a door that is no longer a casino. The rest of the article is about the choice a Brisbane resident or visitor actually has: walk into the Star Brisbane, go to a different state’s casino, or look for an offshore online site, in which case the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 says there is nothing Australian-licensed to find.

Legality: what Australia does and does not license

Online casino games, online pokies and in-play betting cannot be offered to anyone in Australia. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 — strengthened by the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act 2017 — makes the provision of those services an offence, and no state or territory issues a licence for them. What is licensed is wagering on races and sport placed before the event, lotteries and keno, and in practice those wagering licences sit with the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission, which regulates 52 of Australia’s online bookmakers — Sportsbet, Bet365 and Ladbrokes among them — even though the commission has no full-time staff and meets once a month in Darwin.

The distinction matters because the offshore sites Australians encounter under search terms like “best casino in Brisbane” are not licensed in Australia, whatever licence they display. The Australian Communications and Media Authority investigates, issues formal warnings, and asks Australian internet service providers to block offending sites. The player is not the target of prosecution, but a blocked site gives no Australian consumer protection, no complaints body and no recourse if a withdrawal is refused, and a block can come down with a balance still on the account.

From the first blocking request in November 2019 through to the round reported on 26 June 2026, the ACMA had asked ISPs to block 1,751 illegal gambling and affiliate marketing websites, and more than 230 unlicensed services had left the Australian market since enforcement was strengthened in 2017. That round alone added twelve names — 7Signs, ChromaBet, Donbet, Duospin, Freshbet, Slots Gem, Jacks Club, Lucky Start, Pointsbetz, Spinrise, Vinyl Casino and Wildsino — to the block list.

Responsible play: who is covered, and what is not

The legal gambling age in Australia is 18. Inside a licensed venue such as the Star Brisbane, that age gate is enforced at the door and again at the gaming floor. Online, the same age rule applies, but the tools that sit behind it differ.

BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, went live on 21 August 2023 and covers every Australian-licensed online and telephone wagering service. It does not cover in-venue gambling — a person who wants to self-exclude from a physical casino uses the venue’s own process, which in Queensland runs through the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation. BetStop also does not bind an offshore casino, because the offshore site is not connected to the Australian register in the first place. The tool that reads as “national” on its face covers less than the name suggests.

The National Gambling Helpline — 1800 858 858 — is free, runs 24/7, and offers telephone, online chat and face-to-face financial counselling. It is funded by way of a harm-prevention levy and reachable from anywhere in the country. For someone in Brisbane, that is the same number as for someone in Perth, and it is the line that does work regardless of which licensed or unlicensed service a person has been using.

The land-based venue: from Treasury to Queen’s Wharf

Queensland’s licensed casino sits in Brisbane and only in Brisbane. Treasury Casino opened in the refurbished Treasury Building in April 1995 and, before its 2024 closure, ran three levels of gaming — 80 tables and more than 1,300 gaming machines — plus a hotel, six restaurants, five bars and a nightclub. Across Queensland more broadly, the state had 21,122 gaming machines operating in 351 venues as at October 2023, which puts the casino’s machine count in context: a single venue accounted for roughly six per cent of the state’s installed base.

Treasury closed on 25 August 2024. The Star Brisbane, the new venue at the Queen’s Wharf Brisbane precinct, began a staged opening four days later on 29 August 2024, with the main casino floor and the premium gaming rooms opening first. The precinct is a joint development between Star Entertainment Group and Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, and the project sits inside an A$3.6 billion build that also added hotels, restaurants and the public realm along the Brisbane River.

The opening sat inside a difficult period for the operator. In late 2022 the Queensland Government, acting on an independent review by former Court of Appeal judge Robert Gotterson, found Star Entertainment unsuitable to hold its Queensland casino licences, after concluding that the group had misled regulators and failed its anti-money-laundering duties. Star was fined A$100 million on 9 December 2022, with a 90-day suspension of the Treasury Brisbane and Star Gold Coast licences deferred to 1 December 2023 to allow remediation. Queen’s Wharf opened while that remediation was still being completed, and the licence position of the lead partner was a known concern at the time of the staged opening.

For a Brisbane resident the practical picture is straightforward. There is one casino, it is the Star Brisbane, it is at Queen’s Wharf, and it sits inside the same hotel, restaurant and riverside complex that the precinct was built around. Anyone who would have visited Treasury in 2023 now visits the same operator in a different building four minutes’ walk up the river.

What is on the gaming floor

Treasury’s old catalogue — 80 tables and more than 1,300 machines, plus six restaurants and five bars — gives a useful floor for what a Brisbane casino typically offers. The Star Brisbane runs on the same model: a large machine floor, a smaller but higher-stakes table floor, premium gaming rooms, and the surrounding bars and restaurants of the precinct. The detail that interests most readers sits at the table: baccarat, blackjack, roulette and the various poker derivatives are standard, and craps has a place where the operator chooses to staff it.

Online pokies — the search term that pulls a lot of Australian traffic — is a different question. Under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001, an online pokie offered to a person in Australia is a prohibited interactive gambling service, so a search for “brisbane casino online pokies” lands on a category the law does not allow. Any site returning a result for that search is doing so because it is offshore and unlicensed in Australia, and the ACMA’s blocking record is the standing answer to why that category keeps cycling through new domain names.

Mechanical enforcement

The table below is not a shortlist. It is a list of brands the ACMA itself has named in a formal warning, together with the operator the warning was addressed to and the month the warning was published. A formal warning under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 is the ACMA’s documented enforcement step before asking ISPs to block a service, and the date marks when the warning was issued, not when any individual player interacted with the site.

Two patterns are visible in the table. The first is operator-level, not brand-level: Dama N.V. alone accounts for four of the warnings, and Hollycorn N.V., Consolutetish S.R.L. and the predecessor TechSolutions entity account for several more. The second is recurrence: Bizzo Casino was the subject of a 2022 warning to TechSolutions before the July 2025 warning to Consolutetish S.R.L., and RocketPlay was first warned under Dama N.V. in May 2022 before the March 2026 warning to Pulsup Ltd. The ACMA’s enforcement bites at the operating company; the brand is the part the marketing rotates.

How fast the block list has grown

The arithmetic that belongs to this page is the rate at which the ACMA’s blocking list has been growing, because that rate is the closest proxy for how much unlicensed activity is being aimed at Australian residents. The headline figure — 1,751 sites blocked since November 2019, as reported on 26 June 2026 — covers roughly six and a half years. The June 2026 round alone added twelve.

At a steady read, the running total implies a long-run pace of around 250 to 270 blocks per year, with the recent rounds sitting well above that average. The exact pace varies by reporting date, and the ACMA publishes totals at the close of each blocking round rather than as a continuous feed, so the figure is best read as a band — somewhere north of 200 sites a year on the quiet side, and several hundred in a heavy enforcement year — rather than as one tidy rate. The acceleration matters more than the average: in the years immediately after the 2017 amendments, the totals grew steadily, and each round since has set a higher floor.

The other figure that earns its place is the H2 Gambling Capital estimate that Australians lose about A$3.9 billion a year to illegal gambling sites, with the share of gambling going through legal channels falling from 74% in 2021 to 64%. The drop in the legal share is what the blocking rate is the supply-side mirror of: every site that drops off the legal side is a site the ACMA is asking ISPs to block on the illegal side.

Practical shortlist for someone in Brisbane

A ranking of “the best casino in Brisbane” has to start by saying there is only one on the ground, so the comparison runs across what a person in Brisbane can actually do, ranked in the order most readers will consider them.

1. The Star Brisbane, Queen’s Wharf. The only Australian-licensed casino in Brisbane, opened in a staged way from 29 August 2024, inside the A$3.6 billion Queen’s Wharf precinct. Full table floor, large machine floor, premium rooms, the surrounding hotels and restaurants of the precinct, and the only option where winnings sit inside the Australian consumer-protection frame.
2. Star Gold Coast. The same operator’s other Queensland licence, at Broadbeach. Useful for a Brisbane resident who wants a casino experience with a beach attached and is happy to drive just over an hour south. The licence position is the same as the Star Brisbane.
3. The Casino Canberra. Useful mainly as a comparison: a smaller, table-only floor (39 tables, no poker machines), in the ACT, regulated under the Casino Control Act 2006. The ACT is the only Australian jurisdiction where the casino is not licensed to operate pokies, which makes it the cleanest read on what a table-only casino looks like in this country.
4. Adelaide Casino (SkyCity Adelaide). Sole casino in South Australia, in the heritage-listed railway station on North Terrace, 90 tables and 950 machines. Useful as the comparison point for licence scale — Adelaide’s licence runs to 30 June 2035 and allows up to 200 tables and 1,500 machines subject to redevelopment.

A fifth option, in practice, is “do nothing on the casino question and use the pubs and clubs instead”, which is where most Queensland gambling actually happens. Queensland had 21,122 gaming machines in 351 venues as at October 2023, against the Star Brisbane’s roughly 1,300. The pub and club machine sits under a different regulator — the Queensland Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation — and under a different maximum-bet and return-to-player regime than the casino floor.

What is deliberately not on the list is any of the offshore sites named in the ACMA warnings above. They are reachable from Brisbane, they are heavily marketed, and they are the subject of every formal warning the ACMA has issued in the last four years. The reason they are not on the list is not that they are unknown — it is that the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 says they cannot be licensed for Australian players, and the ACMA’s blocking record is what “cannot be licensed” looks like in practice.

What the Star Brisbane verdict is, for the reader

The Star Brisbane is the answer to “what is the casino in Brisbane”, and it is the only answer that holds up inside Australian law. It opened less than two years ago inside the largest entertainment precinct built in the country in a generation. It is operated by a group that paid a A$100 million fine in 2022 and was found unsuitable to hold its Queensland licences, with remediation deferred to late 2023 and the venue opening in August 2024 while that picture was still settling. That history is the reader’s reason to read the fine print on any promotional offer that comes out of the venue, and the reader’s reason to check the licence status on the Queensland Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation’s register before staking more than they can afford to lose.

The casino question and the online question are two different questions. On the casino question, the Star Brisbane is the venue. On the online question, the answer is that there is no Australian-licensed online casino, and the brands the ACMA has named are the proof.

Frequently asked questions

What is the name of the main casino in Brisbane?

The main casino in Brisbane is the Star Brisbane, inside the Queen’s Wharf Brisbane precinct. It replaced Treasury Casino, which closed on 25 August 2024, and opened in stages from 29 August 2024. The Star Brisbane is operated by Star Entertainment Group and is the only Queensland casino licence in the Brisbane metro area.

Where is the casino in Brisbane located?

The Star Brisbane sits at the Queen’s Wharf Brisbane precinct, on the north bank of the Brisbane River in the CBD. The precinct is a joint development between Star Entertainment Group and Chow Tai Fook Enterprises, and runs along the river between the existing George Street and the new public realm created as part of the A$3.6 billion build.

What is the minimum age to enter the casino in Brisbane?

The minimum age is 18, which is the legal gambling age across Australia. The Star Brisbane enforces the age gate at the door and again on entry to the gaming floor. Under-18s are not permitted on the gaming floor even when accompanied by an adult.

Does the casino in Brisbane offer table games such as blackjack and baccarat?

Yes. The Star Brisbane runs a table floor alongside its machine floor. Baccarat, blackjack and roulette are standard, with craps and poker variants on the floor where the operator staffs them. The old Treasury Casino ran 80 tables across three levels before its August 2024 closure, and the Star Brisbane’s table floor is the direct replacement.

Are there hotels within walking distance of the casino in Brisbane?

Yes. The Queen’s Wharf precinct itself contains hotels as part of the build, and Brisbane’s CBD hotels along George Street, Mary Street and the river are within a short walk. The Treasury Hotel that operated inside the old Treasury Casino building closed with the rest of the venue in August 2024, so the on-site hotel offer now sits inside the new precinct rather than the old one.

Can Australians legally play at an online casino instead of visiting the casino in Brisbane?

No. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001, strengthened by the 2017 amendments, makes it an offence to provide online casino games to a person in Australia, and no Australian state or territory issues a licence for them. Offshore sites that accept Australian players do so outside the Australian regulatory frame, and the ACMA’s blocking list — 1,751 sites since November 2019 — is the standing record of what that looks like in practice.

Written by the editors at Casino Mobile Hub AU.