Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) has scheduled a public hearing on the country's betting ban for 3 November 2026. Justice Luiz Fux, rapporteur in ADI 8.027, signed the order setting the session for 10am in the room used by the court's Second Panel.
The hearing comes before any ruling on the ban, and no injunction has been granted. Congress must decide the fate of Provisional Measure 1.394/2026 by 23 November. Fux's order landed a day after the date on which the MP had ordered gambling licences extinguished.
26 participants are called: the plaintiffs in ADIs 7.721, 7.749, 8.024, 8.027 (ANJL and IBJR), 8.028 and 8.035, the Attorney General's Office (AGU) and the Ministry of Finance, ABERT, ABRACRIM, UERJ Reg, CNI, ABLE and AIGAMING, 10 football clubs and the CBF. The order fixes neither the topics nor the format, and rules nothing on the injunction. Whether Fux publishes a programme, speaking times and broadcast details, as the court did in 2024, is still open.
Fux's record
The hearing will be chaired by a justice who has already set out his position on gambling. In August, in RE 966.177, Fux voted to keep running games of chance a criminal offence, citing the damage to bettors' finances and mental health, and to uphold Article 50 of the 1941 Criminal Misdemeanours Act against the 1988 Constitution. 'The state protects the individual from himself,' he said. Dias Toffoli signalled agreement. Flávio Dino backed the ban but wants online betting judged in the same case and paused the judgment.
The route past the court
ANJL and IBJR filed ADI 8.027 three days after president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed the ban. The associations want the ban on fixed-odds betting struck down and the laws it replaced upheld, the MP suspended until Congress or the court decides, or failing that a transition period for licensed operators. Fux waited until after the runoff to avoid accusations of favouring Lula or Flávio Bolsonaro. Lula's re-election keeps a government behind the ban in power, and he said during his campaign that gambling will not return. Bolsonaro had signalled keeping sports betting while banning online casinos. The Federal Police asked the STF to investigate whether he was a hidden partner in the operator Best Bet; he denies it.
More filings are likely: an opinion from the Prosecutor General's Office (PGR), decisions on pending amici curiae requests, further urgent petitions. The 90-day review Dino requested in the August case ends in early November. Operators can still bring their own actions in other courts, as Stake did before an appeals court suspended its injunction. Folha de S.Paulo reported, without confirmation, that the hearing could open the way to a settlement between the government, operators and clubs.
In Congress, the joint committee that must review the MP had not been installed as of 21 October. Most of the more than 90 amendments tabled would keep sports betting and ban online casino games. The MP starts blocking votes in the house where it sits on 9 November. Its first 60-day period ends on 23 November but extends automatically, and with the year-end recess not counted it could stay in force until March 2027. If it lapses, licences would not automatically return, since acts carried out under an MP remain valid unless Congress regulates them within 60 days.
