Virginia Went From No Casinos to Five in Four Years. Two Are Temporary, and One Is 132 Slot Machines in a Hall.
The Virginia Lottery counts five operating casinos. Three are finished resorts with 300-room hotels. One is a temporary Live! casino in Petersburg that already out-earns many permanent regional casinos. One is a Norfolk gaming hall with 132 slot machines and no tables, holding a place for a $750 million resort due in late 2027.
Published 2026-11-02.
The Virginia Lottery's September 2026 report lists five operating casinos. Three of them, in Danville, Portsmouth and Bristol, are finished resorts that did not exist in 2022. One, in Petersburg, is a temporary building that opened in January and won $13.1 million in September, more than many permanent casinos in older states. And one, in Norfolk, is called The Interim Gaming Hall, has 132 slot machines and no tables, and exists so that Boyd Gaming and the Pamunkey Indian Tribe can keep a license warm until a $750 million resort opens on the Elizabeth River in late 2027.
Virginia legalized casinos in 2020 for five named cities, made each hold a referendum, and let the market build itself. This is where it stands in November 2026, and it will not stand still for long.
How Virginia got here
The 2020 law allowed one casino in each of five cities, Bristol, Danville, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Richmond, subject to a local vote. Four said yes in November 2020. Richmond said no by fewer than 1,500 votes in 2021 and no again by 62 to 38 in 2023, and the General Assembly moved the fifth license to Petersburg, which approved it with more than 80 percent in November 2024. A 2025 bill to add a sixth city was tabled.
The tax is tiered by casino and calendar year: 18 percent of adjusted gross receipts on the first $200 million, 23 percent on the next $200 million, 30 percent above $400 million, with the host city taking six or seven points of that. In the fiscal year to June 2026 the casinos won $1.07 billion and paid about $211 million in tax; March 2026 was the first $100 million month. The regulator is the Lottery, which also licenses the ten mobile sportsbooks that have taken bets since January 2021. Online casino play is not legal, and the roundtable the state held in September 2026 on gambling harms did not change that.
Danville, Portsmouth, Bristol: the three that are finished
Caesars Virginia opened its temporary Danville Casino in May 2023 and the $800 million permanent resort on December 17, 2024: a 320-room hotel that is the tallest building in the city, more than 90,000 square feet of gaming, a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, a spa and pool, and a World Series of Poker branded poker room. The Lottery counted 1,542 slots and 88 table positions in September 2026 and $36.1 million in gross receipts for the month, $11.2 million of it from tables, a higher table share than any other Virginia casino. It has been the state's top earner every month we checked, $401 million in fiscal 2026. The WSOP circuit stopped here in September 2026 with 100 tables running, and the Lottery notes a return planned for January 2027. The card is Caesars Rewards, which is the point for anyone who also plays in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, and the market is as much North Carolina as Virginia: Danville sits on the state line, with Greensboro the nearest big city.
Rivers Casino Portsmouth opened on January 23, 2023, the first permanent casino in Virginia, at 3630 Victory Boulevard. Rush Street built it as a single-level regional casino: about 1,430 slots and 90 table positions in September 2026, a poker room that opened with 24 tables, a BetRivers sportsbook, a 3,000-seat event center, and a restaurant row that now includes a Yard House alongside Admiral's Steak & Seafood. Receipts were $25.9 million in September and $320 million for the fiscal year. The piece that has been missing is a hotel, and it is nearly here: The Landing Hotel Portsmouth, 106 rooms including 32 suites, eight stories with a covered walk to the event center, is on schedule for early 2027 by both Rush Street's and the Lottery's account. The card is Rush Rewards, the same account as Rivers Philadelphia and Rivers Pittsburgh. Rivers set half its floor non-smoking a week after opening.
Hard Rock Bristol ran a temporary casino in the dead Bristol Mall from July 2022 until the $500 million permanent resort opened on November 14, 2024: 303 rooms, about 1,320 slots and 73 table positions by the Lottery's latest count, a 14-table poker room added in January 2025, a Hard Rock Live venue for 2,000, Council Oak and a Hard Rock Cafe among seven places to eat, an indoor-outdoor pool and a spa. The former temporary casino space reopened in December 2024 as a non-smoking gaming floor with its own entrance; smoking is allowed in designated areas of the main floor. Self-parking is free, valet $12 unless you are a hotel guest. Receipts were $21.6 million in September and $262 million for the year, third of the three, which is what you would expect of a casino whose market is the Tri-Cities, Knoxville and the mountains rather than a metro. The card is Unity, portable across Hard Rock's casinos and cafes, and the host city's tax share goes to a regional commission for all of Southwest Virginia rather than to Bristol alone.
Norfolk and Petersburg: the two that are not
Norfolk's casino was supposed to be first. The city's vote passed in 2020, the project changed names, partners and sites, and what finally opened on November 7, 2025 was The Interim Gaming Hall: 132 slot machines, no table games, no sportsbook, open 10am to 2am, with a ghost kitchen and a Boyd Rewards desk. It won $840,000 in September 2026. One percent of its tax goes to the Virginia Indigenous People's Trust Fund, a line no other casino in the country carries. The permanent resort, which Boyd and the Pamunkey broke ground on in October 2024 just east of Harbor Park on the north bank of the Elizabeth River, is budgeted at $750 million with a 200-room hotel, 1,500 slots, 50 tables and eight restaurants, and is scheduled for late 2027; the Lottery is reviewing a request to run the hall for a second year. Nobody should drive to Norfolk for the hall. Portsmouth is across the river.
Petersburg is the opposite case: a temporary casino that is already a real one. Live! Casino Virginia opened on January 22, 2026 at 301 Wagner Road off exit 48B of I-95, a 75,000 square foot building with 926 slots and 32 live tables by the Lottery's September count, a Luckies quick-service restaurant, a bar, more than a thousand free parking spaces, and 24-hour operation. It won $13.1 million in September and $77 million between opening and June 30. Next to it, Cordish and Bruce Smith Enterprise topped out the permanent Live! Casino & Hotel Virginia on October 8, 2026: a 200-room hotel, more than 1,600 slots, 70-plus live tables including a 35-table poker room, a 70,000 square foot event center and about 20 restaurants, due in late 2027 as the first phase of what the developers call a $1.4 billion master plan. The card is Live! Rewards, shared with Live! Philadelphia, Maryland Live! and Live! Pittsburgh. For Richmond, a short drive up I-95, this is the casino the city voted against, twice.
Rosie's, Richmond, and the things that are not casinos
Virginia had slot-like gambling before it had casinos. Rosie's Gaming Emporium, owned by Churchill Downs through Colonial Downs, runs historical horse racing machines, which pay out of pari-mutuel pools on old races and look and feel like slots, at eight sites: New Kent at the track, Vinton, Richmond, Hampton, Emporia, Collinsville, a new Roseshire parlor in Henrico, and The Rose in Dumfries, a $460 million resort with 1,600-plus machines and a hotel that opened in the fall of 2024 to catch Northern Virginia on its way to Charles Town or Maryland. There are no table games at any of them, they are regulated by the Racing Commission rather than the Lottery, and they are not taxed as casinos. Two more counties, Pulaski and Amherst, vote on Rosie's sites this month. Our Kentucky HHR explainer covers how the machines work; the Virginia version is the same idea with a Rosie's sign.
Richmond has a Rosie's and no casino. The two defeats were close in 2021 and decisive in 2023, and the people who would have been its customers are now driving to Petersburg.
Five casinos, five cards, and the smoke
Each Virginia casino carries a different national brand, which is unusual: Caesars Rewards in Danville, Rush Rewards in Portsmouth, Unity in Bristol, Boyd Rewards in Norfolk and Live! Rewards in Petersburg. A Virginian who plays all five is carrying five cards, and only two of them, Caesars and Unity, lead anywhere a vacation is likely to go. Pick one home casino and let the other four be where you play unrated, or play rated and ask for a match when you move.
Smoking is legal on a designated portion of a Virginia casino floor under state law, with separation and ventilation where practicable. Bristol and Portsmouth both run large non-smoking sections with their own entrances or boundaries; Caesars Virginia's practice we could not confirm from the property and leave to you to ask.
Where the usual advice is wrong
The usual advice, from the moment the permanent buildings opened, has been that Virginia now has Las Vegas-grade resorts and that Caesars Virginia is the one to see because it is the biggest. Scale that. Caesars Virginia's best month is about $36 million in receipts. Borgata's September was $56 million from the casino floor alone, and Borgata had a bad month. These are well-built regional casinos with 300-room hotels, sized for people who drive two hours and stay one night, and they are good at that.
What Virginia genuinely offers that its neighbors do not is poker and tables for the Carolinas and the Tennessee valley. North Carolina's casinos are all tribal and all west of Charlotte; Tennessee has none. Caesars Virginia's table share and its WSOP room, Bristol's 14 tables, and the 35-table room drawn for Petersburg are a bet that table players will cross state lines, and so far the Danville numbers say they are right. For a Virginian in Hampton Roads the advice is simpler: Portsmouth now, with a hotel in 2027, and ignore Norfolk's hall until the real thing opens. For Richmond, Petersburg, which gets a hotel the same year. The full list with distances is on Virginia casinos.
Topics
- virginia
- richmond
- virginia-beach
- new-casinos
- mid-atlantic
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