Where Is Sports Betting Legal? Every State, Explained (2026)

As of mid-2026, sports betting is legal in 39 states plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Thirty-one of those states, plus D.C., offer statewide online betting; the other eight limit wagering to casinos, tribal venues, or lottery-run systems. Eleven states, including the two biggest, California and Texas, still have no legal sports betting at all. The newest arrival is Missouri, the 39th state, live since December 1, 2025. The newest online law is Wisconsin’s, signed in April 2026, though its statewide apps cannot launch until tribal compacts are updated, and no official has set a date for that.

Every state wrote its own rules, which is why “is it legal here?” ranges from “yes, pick any of a dozen apps” to “yes, but exactly one app” to “not for years.” This page is the map. The state pages linked throughout go deep on each market.

The map, in three lists

✅ Statewide online betting (mobile apps work): Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware*, Florida*, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada**, New Hampshire*, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon*, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island*, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, plus Washington, D.C.*

*Asterisked = single-operator or lottery-run: legal, but you don’t choose your app. Florida is the extreme case; see below.

🏟️ Legal but limited (retail-only, tribal-only, or venue-tied): Mississippi (casino apps, but only on the property, and not the parking lot), Montana (one lottery-run app, but bets must be placed inside a licensed bar), Nebraska (online measures pending certification for the November ballot), New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington (tribal casinos only, and betting online from home is a felony), Wisconsin (criminal bar lifted April 2026, but a statewide app still needs a tribal compact amendment published in the Federal Register)

**Nevada has full statewide mobile betting, but you cannot place your first wager until you show a photo ID in person before a book employee, normally at the casino. Nevada Gaming Commission Reg. 5.225(7)(b) withholds from sports accounts the remote ID check every other kind of Nevada wagering account gets. That is friction, not absence: once the account is live, you bet from your phone statewide. It is one-time only if you keep betting, because an account with no wagers for 16 consecutive months must be suspended and reactivation takes another in-person ID check (Reg. 5.225(16)).

❌ No legal sports betting (the 11 holdouts): Alabama, Alaska, California, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah

The five market models

Knowing your state’s model tells you what “legal” actually means there:

Connecticut sits between two of these models and is worth calling out: its online market is capped at exactly three apps by statute, one skin each for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, the Mohegan Tribe and the state lottery. Not an open market, not a monopoly, and no fourth app can enter without the legislature.

The model also decides what your account is worth. Tax rates and promotional rules vary as widely as the legality rules do, which is why the same signup offer is generous in one state and thin in the next. That side is covered in sportsbooks, accounts and money.

The same lens explains app availability everywhere. See which betting apps are legal in your state for the operator-by-operator view, including the five jurisdictions that still allow betting at 18 (New Hampshire, Montana, Rhode Island, D.C., and Wyoming; Kentucky left that club on July 15, 2026, when its rise to 21 took effect, three months after lawmakers overrode a veto to pass it).

The college rules are where states differ most

“Legal in your state” tells you whether you can bet. It does not tell you what you can bet, and college sports is where that gap is widest. Two states can both be open markets with a dozen apps and still give you completely different menus for the same Saturday game. There is no national rule here, and the restrictions come from four different places depending on the state: a statute, a regulator’s rule, an approved-events catalog, or a tribal compact.

Four patterns cover almost everything:

1. Team bets yes, player props no. The most common setup. You can bet the spread, moneyline, total, and futures on any college team including your local one, but you cannot bet on an individual athlete.
2. Everything allowed. A shrinking minority still permit college player props.
3. In-state teams carved out. Some states let you bet college sports generally but not the schools inside their own borders.
4. Restricted by where the game is played, not just who is playing.

How that lands in specific states:

Two takeaways. First, if you are moving or traveling, check the college menu separately from the legality question, because the state that welcomes your bet may still refuse the specific one you want. Second, these rules change through channels most people never watch: Indiana’s sits in a directive and an approved-events list rather than a statute, Maryland’s ban lives in a catalog the regulator can revise, and Washington’s depends on tribal compact amendments. None of those require a new law.

When did sports betting become legal? The 30-second history

• 1992: Congress passes PASPA (the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act), freezing sports betting nationally. Four jurisdictions are exempt. Nevada keeps full sportsbooks. Delaware and Oregon keep state lottery sports games, and both were narrower than the shorthand suggests. Delaware’s was limited on two axes rather than one: a federal appeals court held in 2009 that its exemption covered parlays and only NFL games. Oregon’s was a statutory duty the Lottery was ordered to carry out, and Oregon voluntarily ended it in 2007, eleven years before the ban fell. Montana’s exemption preserves something different in kind: licensed sports pools and Calcutta auction pools, run privately in bars under state license since 1974 and 1987. Montana’s own lottery sold no sports product until 2008 and ran no sportsbook until 2020.
• May 14, 2018: The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down PASPA in Murphy v. NCAA, ruling Congress can’t commandeer states into keeping betting bans. New Jersey, which spent seven years litigating for this, wins. Legalization becomes a state-by-state choice.
• 2018–2020: The first wave. New Jersey launches within weeks; Delaware needs no new legislation at all and opens 22 days after the ruling, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and a dozen others follow. Tennessee opens the country’s first online-only market on November 1, 2020.
• 2021–2024: The big-state wave. Michigan (which opened sports betting and online casino together in January 2021), Arizona, then New York (whose January 2022 online launch instantly became the largest market in the country), Ohio (a same-day universal launch on January 1, 2023), Massachusetts, Kentucky, North Carolina. Florida’s Seminole compact survives its five-year court war, ending at the Supreme Court in June 2024.
• 2025–2026: The stragglers move. Missouri squeaks through a ballot measure by a few hundred votes and launches December 1, 2025. Wisconsin lifts the criminal bar on tribal online betting in April 2026, though a live app still waits on compact talks that began that June. What remains are the hard cases.

Who’s next? The holdout watchlist

Ranked by realistic odds of moving:

• Nebraska (not a holdout, but the likeliest next map change): retail betting is already legal at its five casinos, and backers filed roughly 350,000 signatures on June 26, 2026 to put statewide online betting on the November 2026 ballot. It is not certified yet: signature verification is still running, with a September 11 deadline to decide. Even if it qualifies and passes, the statute does not take effect until January 2027, so no Nebraska app launches in 2026 under any scenario.
• Georgia & Minnesota: the perennial “almost” states, and both said no again in 2026. Georgia’s House killed its amendment 63-98 in March; Minnesota’s bill died at adjournment while the state made national news banning prediction markets instead. Both are genuine candidates for 2027.
• Oklahoma: the closest near-miss of 2026, and not for the reason usually reported. HB 1047 failed on the Senate floor 21 to 27 on April 22, 2026, four votes short of the 25 needed, so it never reached Gov. Kevin Stitt. The obstacle was partly intertribal: the Cherokee Nation objected to a design that would have confined each tribe’s app to its own boundaries, because drawing those lines requires the state to define former reservation lands. Stitt is term-limited and leaves office in January 2027, and the next window is that year’s session.
• Texas: 60% public support, every pro-team owner on board, but a biennial legislature and a Senate blockade. Next window: the 2027 session. Launch 2028+ even if it passes.
• California: the biggest prize in American gambling, frozen since voters demolished both 2022 measures ($450M spent, Prop 27 lost 82 to 18). Nothing on the 2026 ballot; a tribal-led 2028 initiative is the realistic scenario.
• Alabama, South Carolina, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, Utah: no serious momentum. Utah and Hawaii are the only two states with no legalized gambling of any kind.

The wildcard: prediction markets

One 2026 storyline scrambles the whole map. Federally regulated prediction markets (Kalshi and others) offer sports-outcome contracts nationwide, including in California and Texas, under CFTC derivatives regulation rather than state gambling law.

Only one federal appeals court has actually ruled on whether state gambling law still applies. On April 6, 2026 the Third Circuit sided with Kalshi, 2-1, out of the New Jersey case. That decision is binding precedent only in the federal district courts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and it came at the preliminary-injunction stage: the court held that Kalshi had a “reasonable chance” of winning its preemption argument, not that it wins. A second appeals court, the Sixth Circuit, has acted only on emergency relief, refusing in April 2026 to stop Ohio enforcing while the appeal proceeds, calling the issues “close” and fast-tracking the case. So despite what you will read elsewhere, the appeals courts are not yet split. The real conflict today is one level down, among federal trial judges: courts in New Jersey and Tennessee have sided with Kalshi, while Ohio, Maryland, and Manhattan have sided with the states.

The Sixth Circuit is the court to watch. It heard argument on July 30, 2026 in two consolidated cases, Ohio’s and Tennessee’s, which reached it from opposite trial-court results, and it had not ruled as of July 31, 2026. A ruling against Kalshi there would create the genuine circuit split that does not exist yet. An argument date is not a decision date. Separately, New Jersey now has until September 3, 2026 to ask the Supreme Court to review the Third Circuit ruling: Justice Alito granted an extension to August 4 on July 1, 2026, then extended it again on July 24. No petition has been filed and the Court has not agreed to hear anything.

Meanwhile the states keep moving, and they are increasingly winning in their own courts. The CFTC has sued nine states, Michigan’s state court extended its ban in July 2026, giving Kalshi until August 12 to block the state or face $500,000 a day, Nevada holds an injunction and a geofence order, and settled its contempt motion for an August 12 geofencing deadline (both dates passed with no compliance finding published as of August 13, 2026), Washington won an injunction whose operative order requires a full geofence by August 26, 2026, Massachusetts won a first-in-nation injunction now before its highest court, Arizona brought the country’s first criminal case against a prediction market and a federal judge blocked it, and Minnesota went furthest, enacting the country’s first felony ban, only for a federal judge to block it on July 27, 2026, five days before it was due to take effect. The newest is Washington, which won a preliminary injunction against Kalshi on July 20, 2026, a state judge holding that federal commodities law does not preempt Washington gambling law and that Kalshi’s marketing was unfair or deceptive under consumer-protection law. That order’s actual terms are not set until August 5, so Washington is not yet a blocked state. Then on July 29, 2026 a federal judge in Wisconsin refused to stop that state enforcing its gambling laws, finding the federal regulator unlikely to win. Look at the calendar those three make: in the space of ten days, trial courts in Washington, Minnesota and Wisconsin answered the same question two different ways. Note what none of this is: these are state and trial courts, so the appeals courts remain unsplit. However it resolves (Supreme Court or CFTC rulemaking), it will redraw what “legal in your state” means. We track it because your state’s betting rules may soon matter less than federal ones.

State-by-state guides

Deep dives on each market: which apps work, the age rule, what’s restricted, what’s changing.

• Connecticut: legal, with exactly three apps, the statutory three-way split
• Florida: legal, but Hard Rock Bet only, the compact monopoly explained
• California: not legal, and why, the $450M ballot disaster and the 2028 path
• Texas: not legal until 2027 at the earliest, the biennial-legislature bottleneck
• New Jersey: legal, the state that started it all, the Murphy v. NCAA story and the deepest market
• New York: legal, the biggest market in America, 8 apps, a 51% tax, strict college rules
• Pennsylvania: legal, high-tax, college-friendly, a 36% tax but you can bet Penn State
• Michigan: legal, plus online casino, a rare dual sports-and-casino market
• Ohio: legal, big market at a 20% tax, the state leading the Kalshi court fight
• Arizona: legal, low-tax, fighting Kalshi in court, the 10-tribe/10-team model and a first-in-nation criminal case
• Colorado: legal, and the tax funds the water plan, one of the largest app markets in the country
• Illinois: legal, but the country’s steepest bettor fees, a graduated tax and a first-in-nation per-bet surcharge
• Massachusetts: legal, strict, with an odd college rule, no betting on in-state schools outside tournaments
• North Carolina: legal, funds college sports, allows college props, a new 23% tax and one of the few states that still lets you bet college players
• Nebraska: legal in person only, with online on the November ballot, five casinos, and yes, you can bet the Huskers on the road
• Nevada: legal, statewide apps, but you must show ID in person once, the origin state, the lowest tax, and the one rule nobody else has
• Wisconsin: signed into law, but no app is live yet, tribal casinos take bets now while the enabling compacts get negotiated
• Washington: legal in tribal casinos, a felony from your couch, the strictest online gambling law in the country, explained precisely
• Maryland: legal, 11 apps, and the tax pays for schools, plus the appeals case that could split the courts
• Virginia: legal, but betting a Virginia college team is a crime, where the law names the bettor and college props are banned nationwide
• Kentucky: legal, and the age just went from 18 to 21, where the change landed on July 15, 2026 and the state’s own rulebook still says 18
• Delaware: legal, statewide online, and exactly one app, where the state is the operator, there is no sports betting tax, and every bet helps pay horse racing purses
• Oregon: one app, and college is off it, the other state-run market, where nothing in law bans college betting and you can place one in person at a tribal casino
• Indiana: legal since 2019, and college player props are still live, but a regulator vote on September 24 could end that
• Tennessee: legal and online-only, 9 apps, zero casinos, one unique tax
• Missouri: the newest legal state, a launch that passed by hundreds of votes
• Georgia: not legal, rejected again in 2026, the 63-98 vote and the supermajority wall
• Minnesota: not legal, and now a prediction-market ban, the strangest holdout explained
• Oklahoma: not legal, and the 2026 bill lost by four votes, casinos everywhere and not one sportsbook, plus the horse-racing rule that became a felony
• Montana: legal at 18, one lottery app, and you can only bet inside a bar, a restriction written into a statutory definition rather than a rule
• Mississippi: legal since 2018, but not from the parking lot, the sentence that legalized betting is the one that keeps you in the building
• Which apps are legal where you live, the five market models by operator

More state pages ship regularly. The goal is all 50.

FAQ

What’s the minimum betting age? 21 in almost every legal state. Five jurisdictions allow 18+: New Hampshire, Montana, Rhode Island, Washington D.C., and Wyoming.

Can I bet on college sports? In most legal states, yes on teams and no on individual players. But the exceptions are large: New York and New Jersey block their own schools entirely, Massachusetts allows in-state schools only in tournaments, Illinois blocks its schools completely, and Nevada, North Carolina, and Michigan still allow college player props. See the college table above for your state.

Do I have to live in a state to bet there? No, you have to be there. Apps verify physical location by geolocation; visitors can bet like residents while inside the state.

Is betting from a banned state ever legal? No. Sites that accept you from California or Texas are offshore and unregulated. No state or federal agency protects your funds there, and in some states the law reaches the bettor as well as the operator. See offshore sportsbooks.

Why did everything change in 2018? One Supreme Court case: Murphy v. NCAA (decided May 14, 2018). New Jersey argued PASPA unconstitutionally forced states to keep bans on their books. The Court agreed, and the state-by-state era began.

How fast is the map still changing? Missouri launched in December 2025, Wisconsin passed its online law in April 2026, Kentucky’s age rise to 21 took effect in July 2026, and Minnesota passed the first state prediction-market ban in May 2026. This page carries a “last verified” date because the map genuinely moves every few months.

Sources

• Murphy v. NCAA, 584 U.S. 453 (2018): Supreme Court opinion
• Fox Sports: where is sports betting legal (2026 full list)
• CBS Sports: where all 50 states stand on online sports betting
• Missouri Gaming Commission: launch notice (Dec 2025)
• Skadden: Third Circuit affirms Kalshi injunction (Apr 2026)
• AP: Wisconsin legalizes online sports betting (2026)