Nebraska Had No Casinos in 2021. It Has Five Now, and Council Bluffs Has Lost 15 Percent of Its Business.

Nebraska's racetrack casinos won $261.9 million in 2025, up from $145.7 million the year before, and $240.9 million in the first nine months of 2026. Across the river, Council Bluffs' three casinos won $402 million last year against $472 million in 2022. The money did not disappear. It stopped crossing the bridge.

Published 2026-11-09.

The Nebraska Racing and Gaming Commission's September 2026 report lists five open casinos with $25.9 million in gross gaming revenue for the month and $240.9 million for the year to date. In 2024 the full year was $145.7 million; in 2025, $261.9 million. The commission's 2025 annual report, filed with the Legislature in January, reads like the record of a state building an industry from nothing in four years, because that is what it is.

Nebraskans voted in November 2020 to allow casino gaming at licensed horse tracks, and the first temporary casino opened in Lincoln in September 2022. This is where the five stand now, who runs them, what they have, and what it has done to the Iowa casinos across the Missouri that used to take Omaha's money.

The 2020 initiatives wrote casinos into the constitution at licensed racetracks and nowhere else, which is why every Nebraska casino sits beside a track and why each has to run live racing to keep its license. The statute, amended this year, sets the minimum for the established tracks at five race days and 50 races a year through 2030, rising to 15 days and 120 races from 2031; an operator that misses it has to stop running games until it is fixed. In 2025 Fonner Park in Grand Island ran 31 days, Lincoln and Columbus 15 each, Horsemen's Park in Omaha four.

The tax is 20 percent of gross gaming revenue. Three-quarters goes to the state, and 70 percent of that to the Property Tax Credit Cash Fund, which is how the measure was sold; the remaining quarter is split between the host county and city. In 2025 that was $52.4 million in tax and $36.7 million for property tax relief.

Nebraska's Clean Indoor Air Act has banned smoking in workplaces and public places since 2008 and has no casino exemption, so every floor in the state is non-smoking, vaping included. WarHorse built outdoor gaming patios instead, with more than 130 slots at Lincoln and 115 at Omaha. Sports betting is legal only in person at the five casinos, through Kambi at the WarHorse books, Caesars Sportsbook at Columbus and IGT at Grand Island and Lake Mac. Initiatives 440 and 441, which would have added mobile betting, were rejected by voters on November 3, 2026, so that is settled for a while. Our smoke-free list and tribal gaming explainer cover the wider context; note that WarHorse's casinos are commercial, not tribal, even though a tribe's company runs them.

WarHorse Gaming is a division of Ho-Chunk Inc., the economic arm of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, in partnership with the Nebraska Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association. It holds the two biggest casinos in the state and is building a third.

WarHorse Omaha opened on August 6, 2024 at Horsemen's Park on Q Street, about seven miles from downtown, with 800 slots and 20 tables, and expanded in 2025. The commission's year-end count is 1,157 slot machines and 18 tables, and in 2025 it won $95.2 million, the most in the state; September 2026 was $10.2 million. There is a sportsbook, no poker and no hotel, although a 200-room hotel was in the plans announced in 2024; we found nothing saying it has started.

WarHorse Lincoln is at Legacy Downs on South 1st Street, 67 miles and about an hour and 20 minutes from downtown Omaha by OpenStreetMap routing. It opened as a temporary casino in September 2022, moved into its permanent building in November 2024 with 830-plus slots and ten tables, and began a third phase in February 2026 that will take the floor to more than 1,100 slots and 18 tables, with a Nebraska Ale Haus and a Big Fire Chop House, through the summer of 2027. Expect construction. It won $82.3 million in 2025 and $7.2 million in September 2026. The card at both is WarHorse Rewards. There is no poker room at either; the FAQ says so plainly.

Harrah's Columbus Racing & Casino is the first Caesars property in Nebraska and, by Caesars' own property table, the smallest casino the company runs: 19,500 square feet, 400 slots, 10 tables, no hotel, owned rather than leased. It opened as a temporary casino in June 2023 and in its permanent building on May 17, 2024, with a Caesars Race & Sportsbook. It won $25.4 million in 2025 and $1.9 million in September 2026. Columbus is 88 miles and just under two hours northwest of Omaha, and the case for driving there is Caesars Rewards: it is the only place in Nebraska to earn or use the card, and a small Caesars floor tends to be a well-treated one.

Grand Island Casino Resort at Fonner Park is the most complete property in the state. Elite Casino Resorts, the Kehl family's Iowa company, opened a temporary casino in December 2022 and the $185 million permanent resort on April 10, 2025, with a 162-room hotel and what the commission calls the state's first poker room; the property advertises $1/$2 and $2/$5 no-limit hold'em and pot-limit Omaha. The year-end count is 732 slots and 26 tables, and it won $54.6 million in 2025 and $5.2 million in September 2026. The card is Elite's Resort Club, which also works at Lake Mac and the company's Iowa casinos. Fonner Park's 31 live race days are the longest meet in the state, and Grand Island is the one Nebraska casino where the racing is a reason to come rather than a licensing condition.

Lake Mac Casino Resort & Racetrack in Ogallala, in the far west of the state near Lake McConaughy, is the fifth. Its license was the Hastings license, moved to Ogallala with the commission's unanimous approval in 2024, and Elite opened a temporary casino there on August 19, 2025 with 313 slots and no live tables; the 2026 figures show table win, so tables have since arrived. It won $4.4 million in its first four and a half months and $1.3 million in September 2026. The permanent plan is $100 million with a 37,000-square-foot floor, 650 slots, 14 tables, a hotel and a truck stop, with no timeline published. It is a temporary casino for now, and should be judged as one.

WarHorse broke ground on August 27, 2026 on a $100 million casino at Atokad Downs in South Sioux City, with about 600 slots, 16 tables and a 100-room hotel planned over two phases and no opening date announced. Applications for new tracks and casinos elsewhere, including Bellevue, Norfolk and the Scottsbluff area, were before the commission in 2026 with saturation its stated concern; we found no decisions.

For 30 years Omaha's casinos were in Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the Missouri: Horseshoe, Ameristar and Harrah's, 7.5 miles from downtown Omaha. The Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission's annual reports show what the Nebraska casinos did to them: $471.8 million in 2022, $402.0 million in 2025, a 14.8 percent drop over three years while Iowa as a whole was flat. The commission's own comment is telling: a 7.4 percent fall in 2025, "but the projected impact for this market was much higher." Ameristar's answer is a $180 million to $200 million land-based replacement that will reopen as a Hollywood Casino. Our Iowa guide has the rest of that state.

The usual advice, still repeated, is that an Omaha visitor goes to Council Bluffs. For a Caesars Rewards member it is still right, because Horseshoe and Harrah's are both Caesars and Columbus is a long way. For everyone else the WarHorse floor on Q Street is bigger than any single Council Bluffs casino, closer to most of Omaha, and non-smoking, which none of the Iowa three can say. The Iowa side keeps two things Nebraska does not have: hotels attached to the casinos, and mobile sports betting on your phone.

The other piece of folklore is that Nebraska's casinos are small-town racinos. Two of the five are, by design, and Lake Mac is a trailer with slot machines until the resort is built. But Omaha and Lincoln are full commercial casinos in a state of two million people that is now keeping a quarter of a billion dollars a year at home. The state list with distances is on Nebraska casinos, with casinos near Omaha and near Lincoln ranking both sides of the river. If gambling has stopped being something you decide the cost of in advance, 1-800-GAMBLER is free and confidential.

Topics

• nebraska
• omaha
• lincoln
• warhorse
• midwest

Related guides

• Minnesota Has About Twenty Tribal Casinos, No Craps, No Roulette and No Sports Betting. Here Is How to Pick One. — Minnesota's 11 tribes signed their gaming compacts in 1989 and 1991, the compacts never expire, they allow slo
• Kansas Owns Its Four Casinos. The State's Cut Is 22 Percent, Except in Dodge City, Where It Is 24. — Kansas's four commercial casinos won $431.6 million in the fiscal year to June 2026, and the state took 22 cen
• 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 repo
• Every Casino on the Las Vegas Strip, in Order From South to North: 28 Floors, 11 Players Clubs, and the Slot and Table Counts the State Publishes — A list you can walk: every casino on Las Vegas Boulevard from Mandalay Bay to the STRAT, with the side of the

More casino guides