Investment banks Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan forecast that casino gross gaming revenue (GGR) in Macau will increase by at least 5 percent in the full calendar year 2026.
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc analyst Steve Pizzella said in a Thursday memo that Macau’s casinos would generate annual GGR of slightly more than US$32.77 billion in 2026 – the equivalent of MOP263 billion –, up by 5.8 percent year on year.
Mr Pizzella added that mass-market GGR for the 12-month period was likely to be just under US$23.42 billion, an increase of 4.3 percent compared with calendar-year 2025.
Deutsche Bank forecast that VIP GGR in Macao would rise by 10.0 percent, to nearly US$9.36 billion in full-year 2026.
“Our January [GGR] forecast of approximately US$2.53 billion is up 10.9 percent year-on-year versus consensus [expectations] of 9.3 percent,” Mr Pizzella wrote.
Macau’s casino GGR for calendar-year 2025 reached MOP247.40 billion (US$30.86 billion), the city’s government said on Thursday, New Year’s Day.
The full-year figure was up 9.1 percent year on year, according to data disclosed by the city’s casino regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau.
It was the highest annual GGR tally since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020. Full-year 2019 GGR in Macao stood at just under MOP292.46 billion.
In November, the local government’s 2026 fiscal budget plan estimated that the city’s casino GGR would reach MOP236 billion for full-year 2026.
In a note published on Friday, JP Morgan said it continued to model Macau GGR growth of between “5 percent and 6 percent” in full calendar year 2026, “led by stronger mass and slot” performance – up 7 percent to 8 percent –, versus “weaker VIP results”. The investment bank expected VIP GGR to decline by 5 percent year on year, “to reflect a high luck base” in 2025.
“More importantly, we forecast industry profit growth to finally – albeit modestly – outpace top-line growth in 2026, repairing the 2025 flow-through gap, when industry EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation] only rose 6 percent despite GGR going up 9 percent,” analysts DS Kim, Selina Li and Lindsey Qian wrote.
They added: “In other words, even with likely moderating GGR [growth], we see profit momentum sustaining, if not accelerating, in 2026.”
Looking back at the final three months of 2025, the JP Morgan team noted that “quarterly GGR increased by 15 percent year-on-year and 6 percent quarter-on-quarter to MOP66.1 billion (MOP718 million per day), marking the strongest quarterly revenue performance in six years. This was well ahead of the 9-percent growth that we and the market expected three months ago.”
