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Is my site blocked in Switzerland?
Swiss law makes internet providers block two kinds of sites: foreign gambling sites without a Swiss licence that appear on two regulators' lists, and domains with illegal pornography reported by the Federal Office of Police (fedpol). In practice both blocks work through the provider's DNS (the internet's address book, which turns a domain name into a server address). In July 2024 a mistake at fedpol put the news site 20 Minuten on the police list; that list apparently is not published, so a reliable answer needs a test through each provider's own connections.
Sources: Gespa, access blocking, checked 11 November 2026 · Suissedigital, 11 January 2021 · 20 Minuten, 4 July 2024 · Steiger Legal, 8 July 2024
Check your page in Germany, Poland or Norway
We cannot test providers in Switzerland yet. Enter a page and pick a country: we open it through connections of the main providers there (home and mobile; mobile only in Norway) and tell you provider by provider whether it opens. Free, about a minute, a few checks per hour.
Which sites must Swiss providers block?
The Gambling Act took effect on 1 January 2019; its blocking rules followed half a year later. Two regulators keep lists of domain names: the Federal Gaming Board (ESBK, its German initials) for online casino games, and Gespa, the joint gambling supervisor of the cantons (Switzerland's states), for lotteries, sports betting and skill games. ESBK lists only unlicensed games whose operators are based abroad or hide where they are, and that can be reached from a Swiss internet connection. Every Swiss internet access provider must block the listed domains; in practice they use DNS blocks. ESBK says federal courts have found these blocks lawful.
Sources: Federal Council, 8 November 2018 · ESBK FAQ, 12 March 2025 · Gespa, about, checked 11 November 2026 · Gespa, access blocking, checked 11 November 2026
A second law covers illegal pornography. Since January 2021 the Telecommunications Act has required providers to block the domains fedpol reports to them, which they do with DNS blocks. A fedpol spokesperson said the list holds every such domain known to fedpol, most of them involving child sexual abuse material. The list is updated by hand once a day and sent to providers automatically.
Sources: Suissedigital, 11 January 2021 · 20 Minuten, 4 July 2024
How does a gambling block work?
Each new ESBK list is announced in the Federal Gazette (Bundesblatt, the government's official journal) by a notice that refers to the list. That notice counts as formally delivering the blocking order to the site operators, who can object within 30 days. ESBK also notifies the providers directly, and they must apply the block within five working days. ESBK updates its list four times a year, so up to four and a half months can pass between a report and the block. Gespa also announces changes in the Federal Gazette and stresses that only that publication has legal force.
Sources: ESBK FAQ, 12 March 2025 · Gespa, access blocking, checked 11 November 2026 · Fedlex, Gambling Ordinance Art. 92, version of 1 January 2021 · Federal Supreme Court, 2C_91/2022, 18 November 2022
A visitor who opens a domain on ESBK's list is sent to a warning page that also lists the licensed Swiss online casinos. ESBK notes that a blocked site may still open for some people, for example those who use a different DNS service or a VPN (a service that sends their traffic through another network), or whose provider applies the block late or badly. In practice Swiss gambling blocks are DNS blocks, so they act on the domain name, not on the server's IP address (its numeric internet address). Other sites on the same server or CDN (a network that serves many sites from shared addresses) keep working. That is unlike the IP blocks that cut off unrelated sites in Spain and Austria.
Sources: ESBK FAQ, 12 March 2025 · RTR, 10 August 2023 · OONI, 30 June 2026 · TorrentFreak, 11 August 2023
Can fedpol's blocklist catch a legitimate site by mistake?
Yes. In July 2024 fedpol put the news site 20min.ch on its blocklist. The agency said the site was partly unreachable from the evening of 2 July until midday on 3 July. It blamed a single handling mistake during one of the tests it runs on the blocking system several times a year, and apologised. At least tens of thousands of people, many of them federal employees, could not open the site. The lawyer Martin Steiger points out that the list applies to every internet provider in Switzerland and apparently is not published, so you cannot check whether your domain is on it.
Sources: 20 Minuten, 4 July 2024 · Steiger Legal, 8 July 2024
Can a prosecutor or a copyright owner get a site blocked?
In July 2025 the public prosecutor of the canton of Vaud ordered several providers to block the web addresses of a supposed stock-investment platform, in a fraud case with losses of over 1.7 million francs. Init7, a provider in Winterthur, appealed. It says Swisscom, Sunrise and Salt obeyed the orders. On 12 October 2026 the Federal Supreme Court ruled that the general rules prosecutors use to seize and confiscate things do not let them order a provider to block a site in its DNS. It named the special laws that do allow blocking: the Gambling Act, the Telecommunications Act for illegal pornography, and the Unfair Competition Act. That last one works differently. The authority running the criminal case can have the domain name itself blocked where it is registered, not by internet providers, until the case ends. Anything wider is for parliament to decide.
Sources: Federal Supreme Court, 7B_52/2026, 12 October 2026 · Keystone-SDA via persoenlich.com, 5 November 2026 · Init7, 4 November 2026
Copyright holders have tried too. In February 2019 the Federal Supreme Court ruled that Swisscom could not be ordered to block sites with pirated films. Swisscom only provides internet access, the court said, and a duty to block would have to come from lawmakers, who had not created one. The copyright reform that Parliament approved on 27 September 2019 left site blocking out, and copyright is not among the special laws the court named in 2026.
Sources: Federal Supreme Court, 4A_433/2018, 8 February 2019 · TorrentFreak, 28 February 2019 · Keystone-SDA via swissinfo.ch, 22 November 2017 · Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property, checked 11 November 2026 · TorrentFreak, 17 September 2019 · Federal Supreme Court, 7B_52/2026, 12 October 2026
How do I search the ESBK and Gespa lists?
If you run a gambling, betting or lottery site, search both lists. ESBK's list grew from 39 domains on 3 September 2019 to 3,567 on 25 August 2026 and comes as a PDF. Gespa's list comes as a PDF, with a signature file to check that it is genuine. Gespa's server also has the list dated 25 August 2026 (still the latest on 11 November 2026) as a plain text file with one domain per line. The police list apparently is not published, so you cannot search it. OONI Explorer, a public database of censorship tests, has results from people who run the OONI Probe app on Swiss connections; on 11 November 2026 the newest result was from that same day. It covers only sites someone chose to test, and OONI warns that a flagged result is not always a real block.
Sources: ESBK, list page, 25 August 2026 · ESBK, domain count, 25 August 2026 · Gespa, access blocking, checked 11 November 2026 · Gespa, text list, checked 11 November 2026 · Steiger Legal, 8 July 2024 · OONI measurements, 11 November 2026 · OONI FAQ, checked 11 November 2026 · OONI Explorer guide, 15 March 2023
Does linkspect measure Switzerland?
We do not measure Switzerland yet; demand decides the order in which we add countries. Today linkspect is open in early access in Germany, Poland and Norway.
Facts checked on 11 November 2026.