It’s official – Sweden will no longer have a land-based casino industry after the country’s parliament, the Riksdag, initiated the liquidation of Svenska Spel’s final remaining venue in Stockholm, the capital.
Final Casino Cosmopol property to close in Sweden
The state-owned Casino Cosmopol already shuttered operations in its locations in Gothenburg and Malmö in February 2024, with Stockholm the last remaining venue of the three. However, the Stockholm casino will also be closing on January 1, 2026, and the country will de facto finalize its divorce with the land-based casino sector.
This comes six years after Sweden legalized online casino gambling in the country, but the decline in the sustainability of land-based casinos was not necessarily occasioned by the arrival of regulated Internet gambling.
Although Svenska Spel and Casino Cosmopol warned of job cuts and property closures, the country’s population was already headed in the direction of interactive entertainment, with the pre-2019 years marked by increasing participation in black market and offshore gambling websites.
The regulation of the industry made it possible for Sweden to monitor and regulate the industry in the open. Casino Cosmopol has been lastly seen as an anachronism, with the government insisting that the brand had struggled to generate profit and was no longer fit for purpose as fewer and fewer people were playing at land-based properties or seeking in-person gambling entertainment.
Sweden’s land-based industry is not that old
Svenska Spel CEO Ola Enquist said, nevertheless, that the closure would be an emotional moment, with the immediate priorities now set for the remaining 240 members of staff transitioning to other career opportunities.
Casino Cosmopol does feel like an end of an era, although the Stockholm property opened not so long ago – in 2003. The Swedish casino experiment lasted a little over two decades, with the country quickly switching to an online-only model and choosing to go pretty much its own way when it comes to gambling regulation.
