How Many Casinos Are in Las Vegas? 28 on the Strip, 64 That Deal Blackjack, 217 Licenses, and Why the State Still Lists the Tropicana
Every answer to this question is a different definition. The Nevada Gaming Control Board's September 2026 reports list each licensed location by name, which makes it possible to say exactly how 28 casinos on a street become 58 on a spreadsheet and 217 in a county.
Published 2026-11-10.
There are 28 casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, 12 hotel-casinos around Fremont Street downtown, and 64 casinos across the Las Vegas valley that dealt blackjack in September 2026. Nevada's regulator, counting differently, had 217 licensed gambling locations reporting in Clark County that month, and its list of locations still includes the Tropicana, which was imploded in October 2024 and is on the state's books with one slot machine and one craps table.
All four numbers are correct.
They answer different questions, and most of the confusion about how many casinos Las Vegas has comes from quoting a license count as if it were a list of places with a craps pit. The Nevada Gaming Control Board publishes enough detail to take the count apart, so that is what follows.
On Las Vegas Boulevard from Mandalay Bay north to the STRAT: 28 casino floors, or 27 if you stop at Sahara Avenue, where Clark County says the Strip ends. Downtown: 12 hotel-casinos, 11 of them with dealers. Casinos in the valley that dealt blackjack in September 2026: 64. The Board's "Las Vegas Strip area": 58 reporting licensees, of which 38 have slot machines and 34 deal blackjack, and it includes the airport. Clark County: 217 nonrestricted licensees. Statewide: 453 reporting, plus 2,072 restricted licenses for bars and convenience stores. Closed since 2024: the Tropicana and the Mirage. Opened since late 2023: Fontainebleau, Durango and Cadence Crossing.
The walkable answer is 28
Start at Mandalay Bay, the southernmost resort, and walk north. You pass 27 casino floors before Sahara Avenue, where the county puts the end of the Strip, and a 28th at the STRAT, which is inside the Las Vegas city limits and which every visitor counts anyway. Our south-to-north list names each one with its cross street, operator and players club.
The ownership is narrower than the count. MGM Resorts runs nine of the 28 and Caesars Entertainment eight. Phil Ruffin owns two, Treasure Island and Circus Circus. The Venetian and the Palazzo are two casino floors on one license, and so are Wynn and Encore, which is why the state sees 26 licensees where a pedestrian sees 28 casinos. The other five have one each: Casino Royale, Resorts World, Fontainebleau, the Sahara and the STRAT.
The Strip itself is about 4.2 miles of Las Vegas Boulevard in the unincorporated towns of Paradise and Winchester. It is not in the City of Las Vegas. A few places that look like Strip casinos are not on this count: the OYO is a block east on Tropicana Avenue, and Slots-A-Fun is a separate building that belongs to Circus Circus and has no line of its own in the state's list.
What the state counts, and how it gets to 58
Nevada issues two kinds of gambling license to a location. A restricted license covers 15 or fewer slot machines and no table games, in a bar, a tavern or a convenience store, and there were 2,072 of those statewide on June 30, 2025. A nonrestricted license covers anything with 16 or more machines, or any machines at all alongside a table game or a sportsbook; there were 456. The Board's monthly revenue report covers only the nonrestricted ones. For September 2026 it had 453 licensees reporting statewide and 217 in Clark County, which it splits into seven areas.
| Board reporting area | Licensees reporting, September 2026 | With slot machines | Dealing blackjack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Las Vegas Strip | 58 | 38 | 34 |
| Downtown Las Vegas | 23 | 17 | 12 |
| North Las Vegas | 15 | 10 | 3 |
| Boulder area (Henderson and Boulder Highway) | 40 | 29 | 6 |
| Balance of county | 56 | 48 | 9 |
| Laughlin | 16 | 9 | 5 |
| Mesquite | 9 | 6 | 3 |
| Clark County | 217 | 157 | 72 |
The Strip's 58 is the figure that gets repeated as a casino count, and it is not one. The Board's separate count of games and machines, dated September 30, 2026, lists every location by name, and there are 60 in the Strip area. Twenty are race and sports books that hold their own license inside somebody else's casino, so Caesars Palace appears twice. Two are closed sites, the Tropicana and the Hard Rock project where the Mirage stood, each listed with a single slot machine and a single table. One is the slot concession at the airport, with 1,125 machines. Two are the Stage Door, with 38 machines, and the Peppermill coffee shop, with 11.
Ten more are full casinos that the Board files under the Strip although they stand a block or a mile off it: the Palms, Palace Station, Gold Coast, the Rio, Westgate, Virgin Hotels, Tuscany, Ellis Island, Silver Sevens and the OYO. What is left is 25 licenses, and those are the 27 Boulevard casinos south of Sahara Avenue.
The money is more concentrated than any of these counts. Twenty-five Strip-area licensees each won more than $72 million in the twelve months to September, and together they took $8.5 billion of the area's $8.99 billion.
Downtown is 12, plus a tower that is not downtown
The Board's Downtown Las Vegas area has 23 licensees, 17 with slot machines and 12 dealing blackjack. One of the 12 is the STRAT, which the state files under Downtown because it is in the city, though it stands on Las Vegas Boulevard just north of the Strip.
Take it out and Fremont Street and the blocks around it have 11 casinos with dealers: Circa, the Golden Nugget, the D, El Cortez, the Plaza, the Fremont, the California, Four Queens, Binion's, Main Street Station and the Downtown Grand. The twelfth hotel-casino is the Golden Gate, which opened in 1906 and in October 2025 became the first downtown casino to replace its dealers with electronic games. The September count has it at 416 machines and no tables.
The other four locations with machines are slot rooms, from Wildfire Fremont with 208 down to the Gold Spike with 16. Circa is the biggest floor downtown at 1,283 machines; the Golden Nugget has the most tables, 69, and the only poker tables on the Board's downtown count. Our downtown versus Strip post covers what the difference means for a player.
Most of the count is in the neighborhoods
Leave out Laughlin and Mesquite, which are other towns, and 192 licensees reported in September from the five areas that cover the Las Vegas valley. Sixty-four of them dealt blackjack: 34 in the Strip area, 12 downtown, 3 in North Las Vegas, 6 in the Boulder area and 9 in the balance of the county, which is where the Board puts Summerlin and the south and west of the valley. If a real casino is one with a dealer, 64 is the best single answer for the valley.
The rest are machines only. Twenty-one locations in the balance of the county have exactly 35 slot machines on the September count, nine of them Dotty's taverns. There are PT's pubs, a Smith's supermarket with 17 machines and a Cardenas market with 17. They hold the same class of license as Bellagio because they crossed the 15-machine line.
The neighborhood casinos that matter are larger than a visitor expects. The biggest slot floor in Clark County on September 30 was not on the Strip. Red Rock had 2,680 machines, the Venetian and Palazzo together 2,450, Durango 2,420, Boulder Station 2,251, Green Valley Ranch 2,215 and Santa Fe Station 2,200. Bellagio had 1,378. That gap is the argument of our locals casino post, and the Station and Boyd card explainers cover who earns what there.
The balance-of-county figure also reaches past the valley. Primm is in it, with the Primm Valley Resort listed at 440 machines and no tables and Buffalo Bill's at one machine, a story told in our Primm post. So 192 slightly overstates the valley, and 64 does not.
What changed, and the number we would use
Two Strip casinos have closed since the last time most lists were updated. The Tropicana shut on April 2, 2024 and was imploded on October 9; a ballpark for the Athletics is under construction on the site and due in 2028. The Mirage closed on July 17, 2024 and is being rebuilt as a Hard Rock, with an opening its chairman last described as late 2027 or early 2028, which is the subject of our Hard Rock Las Vegas post. Off the Strip, Boyd Gaming imploded the Eastside Cannery on March 5, 2026; it had never reopened after the March 2020 shutdown. Poker Palace in North Las Vegas closed on September 30, 2025, was bought by Truckee Gaming, and is on the September 2026 count as Club Fortune Casino North with 450 machines.
Going the other way, Durango opened on December 5, 2023 and Fontainebleau on December 13, 2023. Boyd opened Cadence Crossing in Henderson in March 2026 in place of Jokers Wild, and the Board lists it with 486 machines. The Cromwell became The Vanderpump Hotel on June 11, 2026 without closing its casino, which changed a sign and no count; that is our Vanderpump post.
The tempting answer to the question is the biggest one, because the state publishes it and it sounds like Las Vegas. Our own Las Vegas directory page says 63, which is how many properties we have written up, one of them the unopened Hard Rock. That is a catalog, not a census.
Use 28 for the Strip, 40 for the Strip plus downtown, and 64 for the valley. Use 217 only if you also mean to count the sportsbook inside Caesars Palace, a supermarket, and the slot machines at the airport. The Tropicana's craps table, wherever it is kept, is on the state's list too.
Topics
- las-vegas
- nevada
- strip
- downtown
- industry
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