The Macau government’s 2026 GGR forecast of MOP$236 billion (US$29.4 billion) has been described as “overly conservative”, with healthy demand trends – particularly from the VIP segment – expected to sustain far greater industry growth in the short-term.
CreditSights, a unit of Fitch Solutions, stated in a Tuesday report that it expects healthy growth in the first half of 2026 followed by moderate but steady growth in the latter months. This comes after Macau’s gaming revenues reached MOP$247.4 billion (US$30.9 billion) in FY25, around 3.5% higher than the government’s revised forecast.
Notably, the government’s 2026 forecast of MOP$236 billion would represent a 4.5% decline from 2025 although BMI pointed out that this forecast was issued alongside the 2026 fiscal budget back in November.
“Government officials noted that its outlook reflects prudent financial management, citing uncertainties in the external environment and economic conditions,” said CreditSights analysts Nicholas Chen and David Bussey. “Even so, we view this guidance as overly conservative.
“We expect the healthy demand trends as witnessed in 2H25, particularly from the VIP segment, to carry into early 2026 and an easy year-on-year comp should support healthy growth to start the year.
“While the year-on-year comp becomes more challenging in the back half of 2026, we still see the potential for moderate (low-to-mid-single digit) GGR growth in FY26.”
More difficult, the analysts added, will be generating greater per visitor GGR growth given that visitor arrivals from the more affluent regions of China have already mostly recovered back or surpassed pre-COVID levels. Further visitation recovery is likely to come largely from the less affluent regions with less spending power, they explained.
“We think this could offset any upside from more higher-spending punters from the VIP segment,” the analysts wrote.
Macau welcomed a record 40.06 million visitor arrivals in 2025, although GGR per visitor fell 5% year-on-year to MOP$6,174 (US$769).
