Pokies in Brisbane: where the machines are and when you can play

Ten Brisbane venues

Every venue here says on its own website that it has a gaming room. The machine count is the Queensland register’s “operating” figure, which we matched against the venue where it publishes one.

Broncos Leagues Club’s page says 250 machines; the register shows 200 operating out of 300 approved. We’ve used the register figure and its date. Every link is under Sources.

Brisbane by the numbers

The state’s List of Gaming Sites, updated on 16 September 2026, has 1,058 clubs and hotels across Queensland with 40,809 machines operating. Brisbane City Council’s area holds 159 of those sites — 55 clubs and 104 hotels — with 7,644 machines operating, the most of any council area. The Gold Coast is next with 5,469.

Many Brisbane hotels sit at exactly 45 machines, and the biggest clubs, Carina Leagues and Easts Leagues, at 300.

When you can play

Queensland’s Gaming Machine Regulation 2002 sets the periods when a club or hotel must not run gaming:

• Any ordinary day: not before 10am, unless the venue’s gaming hours are carrying on from the previous day.
• ANZAC Day: not before 1pm.
• Good Friday and Christmas Day: no gaming all day.

Inside those limits, each venue’s hours are fixed by the commissioner and can’t run more than 2 hours past the time its liquor licence stops sales. That’s why 10am to 4am is so common on the list.

The Queensland rules

• Return to player: clubs and hotels between 85% and 92% over a machine’s lifetime; casinos 85% with no ceiling.
• Maximum bet: $5 a spin in clubs and hotels; not set for casinos.

Queensland is the only state with an upper limit, so a club machine here can’t be set above 92%. The RTP by state page has the rest of the country.

The Star Brisbane

The casino at Queen’s Wharf is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with machines on the Main Gaming Floor on Level 5 and in its Premium Gaming Rooms. It doesn’t publish a machine count; the Queen’s Wharf site says the operator holds an entitlement to 2,500 gaming machines.

Ainsley Duff

Editor, Payback Notes · Published 29 September 2026 · Checked 29 September 2026

Ainsley Duff writes Payback Notes from Adelaide. She reads RTP where it is actually published — state technical standards, provider game sheets and help files, venue pages — and puts a date and a link beside every figure.

What I checked for this page (29 September 2026): read the List of Gaming Sites in Queensland on data.qld.gov.au (updated 16 September 2026), matched nine venues’ machine counts against it, read each venue’s gaming page and The Star Brisbane’s opening hours, and took the gaming-hours rule from the Gaming Machine Regulation 2002, s 15. Not done yet: the number of machines at The Star Brisbane, which it doesn’t publish, and whether its operator changed in 2026.

How figures get in: how we verify RTP · sources for this page · how we earn. A commission never changes the RTP figures we publish or the order they appear in.