Jamaica’s First Casino Licence, Explained

After more than a decade of legislation, the island’s tourism industry has a new category attached to it.

Jamaica’s Casino Gaming Commission granted the country’s first casino operator licence on July 29, ending more than a decade of legislative preparation that began with the Casino Gaming Act in 2010. The licence goes to Adamas Grand Casino Limited, which will operate inside the Princess Grand Jamaica Resort in Green Island, Hanover — a stretch of coast between Montego Bay and Negril.

What Was Actually Approved

The Casino Gaming Act doesn’t allow standalone casinos. The legislation deliberately links casino gaming to large integrated resorts rather than standalone gambling venues — hotel first, casino embedded within it, never the reverse. Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett has said explicitly that Jamaica isn’t positioning itself as a casino destination, but as a destination where casino gaming happens to exist.

The casino itself will run under a management agreement with Grupo Orenes, a Spanish gaming and hospitality company with decades of casino operations across Spain, Mexico, and Andorra. Jamaica is a genuinely new market for the company — Adamas Grand Casino in Hanover and a second property opening in Puerto Rico’s historic district represent Orenes’ first moves into the Caribbean.

Why It Took Fifteen Years

The Casino Gaming Act became law in 2010, but the regulations needed to actually operationalise it took far longer. The Casino Gaming (General) Regulations, 2025 — which set out the Commission’s licensing rules, internal controls, and enforcement powers — cleared the House of Representatives in February 2026 and the Senate that April. Only once that framework was fully in place could the Commission begin processing a real licence application. The Princess development, already under construction and furthest along of any integrated resort proposal, became the first project able to satisfy both the commercial and regulatory requirements once the rules existed to apply.

“Jamaica isn’t positioning itself as a casino destination, but as a destination where casino gaming happens to exist.”

The Resort Around It

Princess Grand Jamaica and its adjacent property, Princess Senses The Mangrove, together form an approximately US$400 million integrated resort development with roughly 1,005 rooms combined, officially opened in December 2024. The casino floor itself will run over 1,000 square metres — slot machines mixing established formats with newer releases, positioned as entertainment rather than a high-stakes gaming hall.

The casino component was originally targeted for late 2025, then pushed further as the regulatory framework caught up. Bartlett now expects operations to begin during the fourth quarter of the year, timed ahead of peak winter tourist season, though no fixed date has been confirmed.

Who Can Actually Go

Jamaican law doesn’t bar Jamaicans from patronising licensed casinos — a point regulators have stated directly. But because the casino sits inside an integrated resort rather than functioning as a standalone public venue, access runs subject to the resort’s own entry policies rather than being open-door.

“The Adamas Grand licence functions less as a one-off approval than as the template the Casino Gaming Commission will now apply going forward.”

What Comes Next

Bartlett has confirmed at least three other integrated resort developments are exploring casino licences of their own, including a proposed Hard Rock property in St. James. The Adamas Grand licence functions less as a one-off approval than as the template the Casino Gaming Commission will now apply going forward — due diligence on ownership structure, financial capacity, and business competence, the same process this project went through, now with a precedent attached.

Whether this becomes a meaningful new category of Jamaican tourism or a single high-profile property comes down to how many of those other three developments clear the same bar.