Online Keno in Australia (2026): The Odds by Spot Count, and Which Casinos Carry It

Two kenos: the licensed draw and the casino game

The licensed draw is the one on the screens in venues: twenty numbers from eighty, drawn on a fixed cycle, tickets bought at the counter or, until 31 December 2026 and in the states that permit it, through the operator's own site or app. It is lottery-style gambling under state and territory licences, and the operators publish their own rules and paytables. Its payout chart is further down; where it is sold online in 2026, and the federal change from 1 January 2027, are just below; results and the app are on the operator's own site.

The casino game is a random-number title in an online casino lobby — drawn instantly by the game's RNG each time you press play, with a paytable set by the studio. The grid is not always 80 numbers: Spribe's Keno, below, uses 36. No Australian licence covers it: the Interactive Gambling Act prohibits providers from offering online casino games to people in Australia, and the offshore operators below serve Australians under foreign licences or none. What that means for the player is on its own page.

Can you play licensed keno online in Australia?

Until 31 December 2026, in five states and territories, according to keno.com.au: Victoria, the ACT, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania. From 1 January 2027, a federal Act ends the exemption that lets keno be sold online; keno in venues continues (details below the table). keno.com.au's FAQ, read on 11 October 2026, says: “We don't currently offer Keno online to residents of QLD, NSW and WA due to legal and regulatory restrictions.” On a phone, play also needs location services switched on.

What changes on 1 January 2027. The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Act 2026 (No. 72, 2026, assented to on 26 August 2026) amends the Interactive Gambling Act from that date. Today that Act allows online keno because it counts as an “excluded lottery service”. Schedule 4 of the Act ends that exemption for a “keno-type lottery” that is not a “place-based gambling service”, meaning keno provided to customers at a venue on the terms the Act sets. The Revised Explanatory Memorandum says online keno will then be “prohibited from being supplied in Australia”, and that “keno games can continue to be played in land-based venues such as Returned Services League clubs and casinos”.

Under section 15 of the Interactive Gambling Act, the offence is committed by the person who “provides” a prohibited service; we found no new offence for players in the amending Act. Whether a ticket bought on an app inside a venue counts as place-based is a legal question we do not settle. The keno.com.au and KenoGO FAQ pages we read on 19 October 2026 did not mention 2027 in the text we could see, so what happens to online accounts is not known yet.

Every account holder must be 18 or over. keno.com.au checks identity through a third-party provider, GreenID; until the check is done “you won’t be able to deposit funds or purchase tickets”, and an account not verified within three days is suspended (account FAQ, 11 October 2026).

KenoGO is a separate licensee with its own game. It says it operates under a Victorian licence regulated by the VGCCC, online only, with a draw every three minutes that “is different from what is displayed in pubs and clubs”. Its FAQ says it “is now available to all Australian residents” aged 18 or over, which differs from keno.com.au's position on NSW, Queensland and WA. Both are the operators' own statements, read on 11 October 2026; we do not rule on which applies. KenoGO is online keno, not venue keno, so by our reading of the Act the change from 1 January 2027 covers it too; its FAQ, read again on 19 October 2026, still gave the same availability and did not mention 2027.

How the casino game works

One ticket is one pick and one draw, with nothing to decide in between. The steps are for the 80-number game; a 36-number title such as Spribe's Keno draws from a smaller grid.

1. Pick between one and ten numbers (“spots”) from a grid of eighty, or let the game pick for you.
2. Press play: the game's RNG draws twenty numbers at once.
3. The game counts how many of your numbers are among the twenty.
4. You are paid from the paytable for the number of spots you picked. A one-spot ticket pays only if your single number is drawn; a ten-spot ticket pays a small amount for five hits, a large amount for ten, and often nothing for fewer than four.
5. There is no decision after the pick and no way to influence the draw; the next ticket starts again at step 1.

Every game of online keno is therefore a bet on one question: how many of my n numbers are among 20 drawn from 80? That question has an exact answer.

The odds by spot count

These figures do not depend on the casino, the studio or the paytable; they follow from 80 balls and 20 draws and are the same at every table.

Read the ten-spot row, which is the ticket the big-jackpot advertising is built on. Two hits is the single most likely result, five hits happens on 5.1% of tickets, six on 1.2%, seven on one ticket in 600, and all ten on one in 8.9 million. A ten-spot ticket that pays nothing for fewer than four hits, as Keno Classic's does, loses on 79% of plays. That is not a criticism of the game; it is the shape of it, and the shape is what the paytable is priced against.

Keno payout charts: what each spot count pays, state by state

On the Keno Classic table used in NSW, Victoria and the ACT, an A$1 ticket gives back between 63.6 and 75.1 cents on average, depending on the spot count, by our arithmetic; the other A$1 tables we read run from 59.9 cents (TASkeno, nine spots) to 78.4 cents (KenoGO Classic, nine spots), with jackpots at their starting value. The one casino keno paytable we read, Spribe's 36-number Keno, is stated at 97% by the studio, but it is a different game, set out further down.

NSW, Victoria and the ACT, and Queensland

These payouts are from Keno's Game Guides for NSW, Victoria, the ACT and Queensland, downloaded on 19 October 2026. The first three print one table. Queensland's guide (dated 2016, still published) pays differently in twelve cells; keno.com.au showed our Australian connection the Victorian table, so we could not confirm that Queensland venues still use the 2016 one.

On 20 and 40 spots, missing every number pays: A$100 and A$250,000.

The NSW Keno Rules (Government Gazette No 266, 12 July 2024) set the prize fund contribution for Regular Keno, sold as Keno Classic, at “75% of Subscriptions” — a figure for the whole game, not per spot count; we have not checked whether later rules replaced it. The NSW guide also warns: “Some Keno prizes are subject to abatement. Jackpot prizes are subject to sharing.”

Mega Millions, Superplay and KenoGO

Keno Mega Millions is the A$2 game in the same three guides: ten spots pays from A$5 million for all ten, one spot A$6. By our arithmetic it returns 66.4 to 76.5 cents per dollar staked on one to ten spots, and 80.4 cents only on 40 spots. The Gazette sets its prize fund contribution at “76.5% of Subscriptions”, again for the whole game.

Super Bet is a Keno Superplay ticket: in keno.com.au's example, shown to a Victorian location on 19 October 2026, one A$1 line each on the 7, 8, 9 and 10-spot jackpots, A$4 a ticket. We found no separate Super Bet prize table on that page or in the guides. If each line is paid from the ordinary Keno Classic table — our reading — the ticket returns 64.2%; but the ACT guide says “To win a prize on a Keno Superplay ticket, you must match all numbers within a singular line”, and we have not read Superplay rules that settle it.

KenoGO Classic, the Victoria-licensed online game that the change of 1 January 2027 covers by our reading (above), prints its own A$1 table: Queensland's guide with four low prizes raised (four hits on seven, eight and nine spots, five hits on ten). By our arithmetic from KenoGO's prize list it returns 72.2 to 78.4 cents, the top figure on nine spots. We have not read KenoGO's rules on prize fund, sharing or pro-rating, so the figures above 75 cents are arithmetic only.

South Australia and Tasmania

Neither uses the Keno Classic table. SA Lotteries' prize table (dated December 2020, still published by The Lott) has one jackpot, on ten spots, and fixed prizes on seven to nine; The Lott's keno pages did not show us a South Australian version, so its current status is not confirmed. TASkeno pays from the settlement schedule in the Rules for TASkeno, Version 1.0, approved 3 February 2023.

SA's table adds that “SPOT 10 PRIZES ARE SUBJECT TO SHARING”. The table refers to the Lotteries (Keno) Rules for details; we could not find them online on 19 October 2026, so we give no prize-fund percentage for SA. TASkeno's rule 17.1 provides “an overall Seventy Five per cent (75%) return to Players” from the schedule and cash bonus prizes together, and rule 7.2 pays any jackpot share on top of the schedule amount. By our reading, that is why nine spots, with its jackpot left out, works out at 59.9 cents.

Northern Territory keno payouts: not verified (19 October 2026). In Western Australia, Crown Perth's keno page says keno was to be retired at Crown Perth, with Sunday 28 June 2026 the final day to play (read 19 October 2026); keno elsewhere in WA was not verified.

Casino keno: Spribe's paytable

Spribe's Keno draws 10 numbers from 36, so neither the odds table above nor the state tables apply to it. The multipliers below are what the studio's demo showed (in USD), opened from a server in Germany on 19 October 2026 because the game did not load through our Australian connection. Spribe gives a return to player (RTP) of 97% on its page; by our arithmetic the multipliers return 96.9% at one pick and 97.0% at two to ten.

A casino can run another configuration; what any Australian lobby runs is not verified. Spribe's Keno was listed in 8 of the 9 casino lobbies we read on 19 October 2026 (King Billy, Woo Casino, Ricky Casino, Casinonic, CasinoChan, PlayAmo, Golden Crown, Dundee Slots), which is not the same as the game opening for an Australian account. For the other keno titles there, from Mascot, InOut, TaDa and others, we found no paytable or RTP published by the studio.

How to read a keno payout chart

Each row lists the prize for each number of hits; the return is every prize multiplied by the exact chance of that many hits (the method behind the odds table), added up. A worked example, our arithmetic, for A$1 on four spots at Keno Classic: 0.003063 × A$130 (four hits) + 0.043248 × A$3 (three) + 0.212635 × A$1 (two) = 39.8 + 13.0 + 21.3 cents = 74.1 cents. That is an average over many tickets, not what any one ticket pays: about three four-spot tickets in four pay nothing.

Every return figure in this section takes jackpots at their starting value and leaves out jackpot growth, bonus multipliers, cash bonus prizes, abatement, pro-rating and sharing. That is why seven to ten spots look low where the jackpot grows, and SA's fixed seven-to-nine-spot prizes do not. These are our figures, not the operators'.

Where the house edge lives: the paytable

Because the probabilities are fixed, a keno title's return is entirely a matter of what it pays for each number of hits, and two games that look identical on screen can return very different amounts. Multiply each outcome's probability by its payout, add them up, and the total is the return to player; whatever is left of 100% is the house edge. The return can differ by spot count within one game: by the table above, Keno Classic in NSW returns 75.0% on one spot and 63.6% on eight. For a casino title the answer is in its rules or paytable; Spribe's demo showed one on 19 October 2026 (see above). The same check we recommend for pokies applies here.

The practical consequence: the only strategic decision in keno is which title and which spot count to play, and the rules screen answers both. Everything after that is variance.

Which casinos carry keno, and how the bonus terms treat it

Keno is a background title at most sites and a headline one at very few. Title counts are what each operator's own game search returned for “keno” from an Australian IP address on 11 October 2026; rows dated 19 September 2026 were not re-checked. Bonus treatment is quoted from each casino's terms on the date in the row. Scores are the current ones from our reviews and reflect the withdrawal terms, not the keno floor.

Grand Rush's terms are the exception in this table. Every other set of terms we read leaves keno unnamed, and most count table or “other” games at 5%; Grand Rush, on 19 September 2026, counted keno at 100% and named it as an eligible game for its first three bonuses. That does not make Grand Rush a good site — a 48-hour pending period, an A$100 minimum withdrawal and a 60× playthrough on deposit-match bonuses (terms read 11 October 2026) are why it scores 4.5 — but it is the one place in this table where playing keno with a bonus is explicitly allowed. Elsewhere, read the offer page before assuming.

Spots, variance and the myths

Spot count is mainly a volatility dial. A two-spot ticket pays often and small; a ten-spot ticket pays rarely and, when it pays big, enormously. The return can also differ by spot count — by more than 11 points at Keno Classic, in the paytable table — and it always changes what a session feels like: at ten spots, the table above says you will see nothing at all on about one ticket in twenty-two and a top prize essentially never. Pick the spot count to match how many games you want to play and how much swing you can stand, then check that the rules screen does not price your chosen spot count worse than the others.

Hot and cold numbers do not exist. Each draw is independent and the RNG does not remember the last one; a number that has “not come up for 30 draws” is exactly as likely as any other on the next. The history panels that some keno titles show are decoration.

Autoplay is the real cost multiplier. Casino keno draws instantly, and at three or four tickets a minute an A$1 stake on a title returning 92% (an example figure, not a particular game) costs about A$16 an hour in expectation — comparable to a pokie and several times the cost of baccarat on Banker. The licensed venue draw runs a game every few minutes and, whatever its return, cannot be played faster.

FAQ

Sources and method

Hit probabilities are exact hypergeometric values for 20 numbers drawn from 80 without replacement, computed for each spot count from one to ten and for 15, 20 and 40 spots; for Spribe's Keno, 10 drawn from 36. Keno Classic and Keno Mega Millions payouts are from Keno's Game Guides for NSW, Victoria, the ACT and Queensland on keno.com.au, downloaded on 19 October 2026; Super Bet from keno.com.au's Superplay page and the ACT guide; KenoGO Classic from kenogo.com.au's how-to-play page; South Australia from SA Lotteries' prize table (December 2020) hosted by The Lott; Tasmania from the Rules for TASkeno, Version 1.0, linked from taskeno.com.au; Western Australia from Crown Perth's keno page; all read on 19 October 2026. The return columns are our arithmetic from those payouts and the same probabilities, with jackpots at their starting value. The only casino title's paytable and return given are Spribe's Keno: multipliers from the studio's demo, opened from a server in Germany, and 97% from spribe.co, both on 19 October 2026; no other casino title's return is asserted. Licensed operators and online availability are from the NSW Government Gazette No 266 (12 July 2024), the VGCCC, Business Queensland, keno.com.au and kenogo.com.au, read on 11 October 2026; kenogo.com.au's FAQ and keno.com.au's online-play FAQ were opened again on 19 October 2026 to look for any mention of 2027. The change from 1 January 2027 is from the text of the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Act 2026 (No. 72, 2026) on the Federal Register of Legislation, the bill's Revised Explanatory Memorandum on the Parliament of Australia website and sections 8D and 15 of the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 as compiled before the change, all read on 19 October 2026; this is our reading of the law, not legal advice. Casino-level facts were read from an Australian IP address: keno title counts from each operator's own game search, bonus terms, and Grand Rush's withdrawal terms on 11 October 2026, Spribe's Keno lobby listings on 19 October 2026, Ozwin's terms on 6 October 2026, and the remaining rows from landing pages and general terms on 18–19 September 2026. We earn a commission through links marked “Visit”; it did not decide the order of the table.

No online casino is licensed in Australia. Gambling is a cost, not an income; you must be 18 or over. Free, confidential support is available 24/7 on 1800 858 858 through Gambling Help Online.