Casino Welcome Bonuses UK: Everything You Need to Know

Real and safe UK online welcome bonuses can only be claimed by creating a new account with a licensed online casino that operates in the UK and following the bonus instructions. We’re always aware that we only have one chance to claim a welcome offer at a new online UK casino, so we’re careful not to waste it! These are the most common steps:

1 . Choose a casino that’s right for you

Just like different bonuses will suit different players, the casino that you choose will make all the difference to whether or not you enjoy your welcome offer. We’ve extensively tested all the top online casinos in the UK for fairness, safety, licensing, game selection, withdrawal times, and more. Check out our expert reviews and find a casino that suits you here.

Why is it so important to check if a casino is licensed? Can’t we just assume that most casinos online are safe to play with? Unfortunately not - as we can see from this research from the UK Betting and Gaming Council, the number of British players using unlicensed black market casinos in 2022 was around 460,000 (double that of 2020, and still rising). If we can’t trust the casino, we can’t certainly trust the welcome bonus.

2 . Read the T&Cs of your chosen welcome bonus

Once you’ve chosen your perfect online casino, many sites will tell you to go ahead and create an account. In the course of our research, we’ve found out that this is where many players get caught out! You cannot assume that you’ll be eligible for every welcome bonus offer, or that you’ll be able to get it by simply making an account. 

It’s extremely important to read through the terms of the offer you want to claim BEFORE you make an account to check whether you qualify for the bonus, and what you need to do to claim it. Check our “small print” section below for more information on this.

3 . Follow the instructions carefully

To access real casino welcome offers, online casinos in the UK will often require us to enter a code when you register to activate the promotion. Sometimes they will apply automatically when we create an account, and sometimes we need to reach out to the casino to help you apply the bonus to your account.

If we find any of the terms confusing, we’re not shy to reach out to the casino’s customer support to ask them to clarify - we have rated the customer support methods of every top UK online casino in our detailed reviews. 

Although there are many, many different types of welcome offers, our research has uncovered that some are just worded cleverly to make us think that we’re getting more than we are. A general rule of thumb is: if it looks too good to be true, it probably is! It is sometimes possible that a casino decides to be extra generous, however, unless these offers are reviewed or displayed here on Casino Reviews, we cannot verify that it’s a genuine up-to-date offer and not a scam. 

Another thing to note is that sometimes a casino might combine two or more of these bonus types to create a ‘welcome package’, but unless this is clearly stated, you can almost never combine different kinds of welcome bonuses - it’s usually one offer per customer.

With this in mind, we’ve investigated and reviewed the three most common online welcome bonuses in the UK. In our experience, these are the promotions that you’ll find most often at large, verified casinos:

Match deposit online welcome bonuses are promotions whereby the player deposits a certain amount, and the casino gives them the same amount of credit (or more) to play with on their site. For example in the case of a 100% match deposit bonus, if we deposit £30 we’ll get an extra £30 worth of casino credit to play with.

Pros: 

Cons: 

Best for: Experienced players 

Some casinos will give us free spins to use on any slot, or one particular slot, if we sign up with them. There are two types of free spins welcome offers: no deposit free spins bonuses (where we get free spins without putting in any money of your own), and ‘wagering requirement’ free spins. Free spins are often offered along with other bonus types as part of a larger welcome package.

Pros:

Cons:

Best for: The slot enthusiast

No deposit bonuses give us account credit, free spins, or bonus cash just for creating an account. This is the true something-for-nothing promotion that most players look for! We find that this is a great way to get access to a new online casino to have a look around and get a feel for whether or not we’d enjoy playing there with our own cash. It’s also great for newbie casino players to practise online casino games and get used to them. However, we’ve also found that no-deposit welcome offers are unlikely to be very high value.

If we ever feel suspicious of a no-deposit bonus, we always refer back to this fantastic informative video from the UK Gambling Commission. 

Pros:

Cons:

Best for: the newbie player

Although these are less common, there are some other legitimate welcome types worth mentioning, since you may come across these in the wild. These include welcome bonuses for depositing with a certain payment method, welcome bonuses from game providers when they release a new game, or seasonal offers around special occasions like Christmas or Halloween.

Wagering requirements for welcome bonuses use the bonus amount to figure out how much you need to bet before you can withdraw any winnings. If we get £10 in bonus funds from the casino, and they have a 10x wagering requirement, that means that we’d need to bet 10 times the amount of our bonus funds (£100 of our own money) before we can withdraw our winnings.

Usually, higher welcome bonuses have higher wagering requirements. We’ve found that wagering requirements usually have to be fulfilled within a certain timeframe after the welcome bonus is credited to our account. We also found that they need to be cleared one at a time, meaning that we’d need to complete the wagering requirements before we could start contributing to another bonus offer. This is also why checking and clarifying the terms and conditions is so important!

You can learn more about wagering requirements and a lesser-known clause about immediate withdrawal of funds here at the UKGC’s glossary page.

One of the best ways we’ve found to make the most of our bonus funds is to place the maximum bet amount every time. Once we get the bonus funds into our account and we get to the relevant game that we have to use them on, we’re able to select the bet amount that we’d like to play with. We always choose the maximum amount! We’ve noticed that this gets us through the wagering requirements faster - we’ve learned not to fall into the trap of making small bets to make our bonus funds last longer, as it doesn’t work out best in the long run.

In our experience, these are the most common ways we’ve been disappointed when trying to claim an online welcome bonus in the UK because we didn’t read the small print correctly - have a look at this list before trying to claim a welcome bonus, and maybe you can avoid making the same mistakes:

Terms and conditions from online casinos will always be strict to some extent but if we feel that the terms of a new casino are severely unfair, or we have a hunch that something isn’t right, we find this checklist from the UK Competition & Markets Authority to be extremely useful.

We keep up to date with the continuous evolution of gambling technologies and regulations, and we’ve compiled a list of what we could see in the future of welcome bonuses:

AI programs used to scan our gambling preferences will become far more sophisticated, allowing online casinos to tailor their welcome bonuses more specifically and entice us by speaking to us more directly

Tech experts at Deloitte believe that ‘beacon’ technology, which wirelessly transmits signals through your mobile phone or other physical devices, will help casinos use your location and data to send you customised notifications about welcome offers and gameplay.

Although there is already a small selection of legitimate casinos that allow deposits in certain cryptocurrencies, the future could see a rise in the use and adoption of digital currency among online casinos. This will allow those looking to use up their crypto coins to spend them on a welcome bonus and try out new casinos.

With the nature of social media constantly evolving, we believe that the lines between gameplay and socialising will blur even further. Online casinos may mimic the look and feel of social media platforms with welcome bonuses in the form of contests, challenges, and quizzes - designed to introduce social media users to their games.

Online casinos may create immersive gameplay experiences for players using virtual reality or augmented reality devices. This could mean fully interactive welcome bonuses are on the horizon - we might find ourselves using a VR headset to feel like we’re actually sitting at a new casino table or unlocking welcome bonuses in a virtual treasure hunt!