GamStop

GamStop is the UK's national self-exclusion scheme. Register once and every UKGC-licensed casino, bookmaker, and bingo site locks you out for the period you choose: 6 months, 1 year, or 5 years. There's no early exit. Once you sign up, the minimum window runs to completion.

It's a serious tool, not a cooling-off switch. Designed for players who've decided gambling isn't working for them and want a system that can't be bargained with at 2am. The cross-operator coverage is what makes it effective; a player can't simply switch from Bet365 to Sky Vegas and keep playing, because both sites check the same exclusion list on every sign-up.

You'll sometimes see sites advertising as "non-GamStop casinos." Those operate under offshore licenses (Curacao, Anjouan) and fall outside the UK scheme by design. Whether that's a feature or a red flag depends entirely on why you're looking at them in the first place. A player returning to gambling after a cooling-off period probably has a solid reason. A player trying to bypass GamStop while still actively self-excluded does not.