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Romania’s gambling register, 26 October 2026

Slot halls near schools: every slot hall in Romania’s gambling register and how close it stands to a school

The public register of ONJN, Romania’s gambling regulator, lists 22,318 gaming machines in use, in 2,102 slot halls across 147 towns and communes and in 652 agencies of the state lottery. Of the 1,946 halls that could be placed on the map, about 1,142 (59%) stand within a 300-metre walk of a school or kindergarten.

The map starts with the whole country. Pick a town or type your street: it shows the halls, the schools, and the streets from which a school is less than the chosen distance away on foot.

You can also click the map: a town, a hall or a school.

Distance from a school
How it is measured
What counts

Slot halls near schools: all 2,102 slot halls in Romania’s gambling register and the walk to the nearest school
slot hallstate lottery agencyschool or kindergartenstreets within a 300 m walk of a school

Each hall stands at its address in the register. Where the register gives only the street, or a number OpenStreetMap does not have, the hall is drawn as a line along the whole street, and its distance is a range.

Three hundred metres is the distance Romania’s Senate voted for in 2023, in a bill that has stayed in the Chamber of Deputies ever since. Since 2026 each town council may decide where halls can open: Bistrița chose 125 metres, Botoșani 150.

2,102slot halls, in 147 towns and communes
≈ 59%of the mapped halls within a 300-metre walk of a school or kindergarten
81%if the 300 metres are measured in a straight line

#How many slot halls are close to a school?

Of the 2,102 halls, 1,946 could be placed on their street and 828 at the exact number in the register. Half of the latter are at most 252 metres on foot from the grounds of the nearest school or kindergarten.

Between 574 and 1,464 halls are within a 300-metre walk, depending on how precisely each address is known. The town-by-town estimate is 1,142, holding 10,931 machines. Within 100 metres there are about 212 halls (11%); within 500 metres, almost all (86%). The percentages refer to the mapped halls.

on foot, schools and kindergartens59%on foot, schools only43%straight line, schools and kindergartens81%

The count depends heavily on how distance is measured. In a straight line, 81% of halls fall within 300 metres: on foot, the route goes round blocks, fences and railway lines. Counting schools only, without kindergartens and crèches, the share drops to 43%.

Are slot halls closer to schools than shops are?

Slightly. On the streets around the halls (within a kilometre of them), 56% of shops, cafés and bars and 49% of numbered addresses are also within a 300-metre walk of a school, against 61% of the halls placed exactly. At 100 metres, halls, shops and addresses have almost the same share: 13%, 12% and 12%.

Share within this many metres on foot of a school or kindergarten
25%50%75%100%5010015020030050050 m: 6.0%100 m: 13.3%150 m: 22.7%200 m: 35.9%300 m: 61.4%500 m: 86.1%61%50 m: 4.8%100 m: 12.4%150 m: 22.2%200 m: 33.6%300 m: 55.9%500 m: 80.5%56%50 m: 5.6%100 m: 12.4%150 m: 20.4%200 m: 29.7%300 m: 48.9%500 m: 75.3%49%slot hallsshops, cafés and bars on the same streetsnumbered addresses on the same streetsmetres on foot to a school or kindergarten

Schools are dense in Romanian towns, so their reach covers much of the streets where halls and shops both stand. A 300-metre walking rule would concern about 59% of the mapped halls; a 100-metre rule, about 11%.

How many schools have a slot hall nearby?

In the towns with halls, the map holds 5,199 schools and kindergartens. At least 719 have a slot hall within a 300-metre walk of their grounds, and up to 2,260 counting halls for which the register gives only the street. Within 100 metres: between 116 and 937.

#Which towns have the most slot machines?

Bucharest, Romania’s capital, has the most machines, 13.4 per 10,000 residents, above the national average (8.9). The most per head are in small and mid-sized towns of the south-west: Caransebeș (97.2 per 10,000 residents), Drăgășani (88.7), Filiași (68.8), Balș (64.1) and Râmnicu Vâlcea (58.8).

Machines in slot halls per 10,000 residents, by county
Vâlcea21.6Dolj20.0Mehedinți18.7Gorj17.5Hunedoara14.7Olt13.4București13.4Constanța12.8…Botoșani4.0Bacău3.6Cluj3.1Tulcea2.9

By county, the top four are all in Oltenia, the south-western region: Vâlcea (21.6 machines per 10,000 residents), Dolj (20.0), Mehedinți (18.7) and Gorj (17.5). Cluj county has 3.1, seven times fewer than Vâlcea.

Which towns have the most slot machines?
TownCountyHallsMachinesPer 10,000 residentsHalls within a 300 m walk of a schoolLottery agencies
BucharestBucharest1922,83113.4113 (82–120)65
CraiovaDolj1011,12340.357 (34–68)12
Râmnicu VâlceaVâlcea7765658.844 (37–49)12
TimișoaraTimiș6859120.233 (16–47)15
ConstanțaConstanța6551417.639 (24–47)18
Târgu JiuGorj5049655.730 (6–44)10
Drobeta-Turnu SeverinMehedinți6248950.736 (23–45)7
IașiIași5144812.133 (18–38)27
PiteștiArgeș3042926.815 (4–22)17
BrașovBrașov3540314.319 (14–22)20
GalațiGalați3933911.727 (15–30)18
Baia MareMaramureș3231423.525 (17–26)11
OradeaBihor2529814.08 (4–15)12
Alba IuliaAlba2426936.39 (5–13)6
Satu MareSatu Mare4126724.227 (13–33)10
CaransebeșCaraș-Severin2326597.215 (9–19)2
PloieștiPrahova1425812.68 (7–9)19
SibiuSibiu2225816.118 (11–19)8
TârgovișteDâmbovița2224128.311 (3–16)11
DevaHunedoara1723537.39 (1–14)5
BistrițaBistrița-Năsăud2323424.718 (7–20)5
Târgu MureșMureș2422416.312 (10–14)4
AradArad3421312.913 (10–16)14
Piatra-NeamțNeamț2821120.222 (12–24)4
MediașSibiu2619737.319 (16–19)3

#What distance from schools does the law require?

No national law sets a minimum distance in metres between a gaming hall and a school. The law bans halls inside a school, its campus or their designated perimeter.

Bill PL-x 166/2023, passed by the Senate on 13 March 2023, would have banned halls within 300 walking metres of schools, playgrounds, and cultural, health and religious institutions. In the Chamber of Deputies, which has the final vote, it has been put on the agenda “subject to the committee report” several times since May 2026, most recently for 12 and 14 October, without a vote.

Since February 2026, emergency ordinance 7/2026 lets local councils decide whether and where gaming halls may open; halls already authorised come under the new rule when their authorisation expires. Botoșani asked for 150 metres on foot from high-school gates, and the prefecture, the central government’s office in the county, took the decision to court. In Bistrița, the council voted in April 2026 for 125 metres from kindergartens and schools, instead of the 100 first proposed. Lugoj banned gambling in physical premises, and Vaslui banned gaming halls except traditional lottery and sports betting; operators asked for the decisions to be revoked. The buttons beside the map show what a 100, 150, 300 or 500-metre rule would mean in each town, on foot or in a straight line.

#Where are slot halls still allowed?

Law 107/2024 introduced a 15,000-resident threshold for slot halls from 28 April 2024; emergency ordinance 80/2024, in June 2024, specified that it means the population by domicile of the commune or town, and slot-type machines. The government then estimated the rule would take about 24,000 machines out of use, in about 3,500 locations.

In today’s register, every slot hall is in a place above the threshold, with one exception: a single entry marked in use in Jilava (10,760 residents), with blank authorisation dates, a discrepancy only ONJN can explain. Dobroești, with 28 machines, had 15,547 residents on 1 January 2026, its first year above the threshold.

#The state lottery runs gaming machines too

The other 652 addresses in the register are agencies of Loteria Română, the state lottery company, with 2,948 video lottery terminals. The 15,000-resident threshold does not apply to them: the law ties it to slot-type machines. About 67% of the mapped agencies stand within a 300-metre walk of a school or kindergarten. They have their own colour on the map.

#What the register keeps

ONJN’s register appeared in October 2025 and lists every machine with its serial number, address, operator, licence and status. For class I it holds 61,676 records: 22,318 machines in use, the rest withdrawn, sold, returned to their owner or scrapped.

The register keeps 4,199 addresses where machines were registered. At 1,445 of them no machine is marked in use any more. In Bucharest, 257 of 541 addresses still have machines marked in use. The register does not record when a machine was withdrawn, so it cannot say when halls closed.

From now on a copy of the register is made every month. Comparing two copies shows the changes recorded between them: addresses gaining their first machine in use or losing their last, machines moved or withdrawn.

Further reading

For Bucharest, the education outlet Școala9 published an analysis in March 2026 with the same 300-metre walking limit, starting from the capital’s list of schools. The map here covers the whole country, with the register of 26 October 2026.

Why slot machines are hard to walk away from: Voința de păcănele (in Romanian), on how the machines and the mind work.

#How the map was made

ONJN’s register was copied in full on 26 October 2026, one page per second: 61,676 class I machines, 22,318 of them in use. A hall is one address in the register. An address with at least one slot machine or roulette counts as a hall; one with only state-lottery video terminals, as an agency.

Addresses were looked up on OpenStreetMap, inside the commune or town given by the register, by street name and number, with no approximate matching. 1,115 addresses were found at their number, 89 at the number without its letter (23 for 23B, with an 80-metre margin), 268 between two known numbers on the same street and 1,111 only on the street. For the last two groups the distance is computed for the whole street and shown as a range. 171 addresses could not be found and enter no distance.

Schools come from the Ministry of Education’s 2025–2026 school network and from school and kindergarten grounds on OpenStreetMap. Crèches and kindergartens are included; post-secondary schools for adults are not. 3,204 of the 5,238 units in towns with halls were found at their address or grounds. Another 649 were placed at coordinates the ministry published in 2017, only where those lie within 50 metres of the street given by the 2025 list; checked on 1,456 schools placed both ways, half fall within 61 metres of the address.

Walking distance is the shortest route along public streets and paths on OpenStreetMap. Counting private paths as well moves the 300-metre share only slightly, from 61.4% to 62.0% for the same halls. Distances end at the outline of the school grounds, or at the school’s point where OpenStreetMap has no grounds, not at the gate. The national estimate applies, in each town, the share among halls found at their number to halls found only on their street; where a town has fewer than five halls found at their number, the national share is used.

The comparison with shops uses the same method for every shop, café, bar and numbered address within one kilometre of the halls in the same town; each town counts in proportion to its halls found at their number.

The map shows the brand under which a hall operates and its address in the register. Operating companies and their registered offices are not shown. A hall is an address with machines marked in use in the register, not a site visit; halls with no machines in the register do not appear. Population is by domicile on 1 January 2026 (INS).

#Sources