List of Banned Websites in Australia (2026): What's Blocked

There is no single official list of banned websites in Australia. Blocking happens under at least four separate schemes — copyright injunctions from the Federal Court, gambling blocks directed by the ACMA, eSafety Commissioner actions, and a mandatory filter for the worst illegal material — each with its own legal basis, its own list, and its own level of public visibility. Some of those lists are published, some are buried in court orders, and one is deliberately secret. This guide maps out what is actually blocked in Australia in 2026, who ordered each category, and what is lawful for you to do about it.

The four blocking regimes, at a glance

What gets blocked	Legal basis	Who orders it	Is the list public?
Piracy-linked streaming and download sites	Copyright Act, section 115A	Federal Court, on application from rights holders	Yes — the injunctions are public court documents
Offshore gambling and in-game "skin betting" sites	Interactive Gambling Act 2001	ACMA directs ISPs to block	Partially — the ACMA announces blocks and totals, but does not maintain one clean public list
Abhorrent violent material and crisis content	Online Safety Act 2021	eSafety Commissioner	No — blocks are announced case by case, often temporary
Child sexual abuse material	Telecommunications Act interception framework	Interpol "worst of" list, implemented by ISPs with the AFP	No — deliberately secret

On top of these, adult sites have become a fifth, messier category since Australia's age-assurance rules began rolling out — more on that below, and in our dedicated age verification and VPN law guide.

Copyright blocks: the biggest list by far

The bulk of Australia's blocked domains come from section 115A of the Copyright Act, which lets rights holders — film studios, TV networks, sports bodies — ask the Federal Court to order Australian ISPs to block overseas sites whose primary purpose is infringing copyright. Since the first orders in 2016, successive judgments have accumulated to cover well over a thousand individual domains, including piracy streaming portals, sports-stream aggregators and their endlessly rotating mirror domains.

Because the orders are public court documents, this is the closest thing Australia has to a published ban list — but nobody maintains a friendly consolidated version, and the lists go stale quickly as blocked sites hop to new domains and rights holders go back to court to add them. If a streaming or download site you have heard of suddenly stopped resolving on Telstra, Optus or TPG, a 115A order is the most likely reason.

Our Australian internet censorship overview tracks how this regime has expanded year on year.

Gambling blocks: the ACMA's running campaign

Since late 2019 the ACMA has directed ISPs to block offshore gambling and affiliate sites operating illegally under the Interactive Gambling Act — unlicensed casinos, betting sites that ignore Australian consumer protections, and "skin gambling" sites aimed at gamers. The ACMA announces new blocks in batches and reports running totals in the hundreds of sites. Unlike the copyright regime, the driver here is consumer protection: these operators take Australian deposits with no local licence, no dispute process and no obligation to pay out.

eSafety blocks: violent material and crisis events

The eSafety Commissioner can direct ISPs to block material that depicts or promotes abhorrent violent conduct — a power created after the Christchurch attack livestream — and can order rapid, usually temporary, blocks during terror or extreme-violence incidents while platforms remove the material. These blocks are narrow and event-driven rather than a standing list of banned sites.

The secret list: child sexual abuse material

Australian ISPs also implement blocking of child sexual abuse material based on Interpol's "worst of" list, working with the Australian Federal Police. The list is secret by design, and this is the one category where there is no legitimate debate: the material is criminal to access in any form, with or without any tool, and this site's guidance on lawful VPN use has nothing to do with it.

Adult sites and age verification: the newest layer

Since Australia's age-assurance rules began taking effect, several major adult platforms have chosen to restrict or gate Australian access rather than build compliant verification systems, and search engines have added their own age-based filtering for signed-out users. This is not a government "ban list" in the traditional sense — in several cases it is the site itself walling off Australia — but from the user's chair the result looks identical: a page that no longer loads. We cover the mechanics and the state of play in our Pornhub Australia guide and the broader age verification guide. Alongside this, from December 2025 the under-16 social media minimum-age rules forced major platforms to deactivate accounts held by younger teens — an account restriction rather than a website block, but often lumped into the same conversation.

How the blocking actually works — and why it is so shallow

Nearly all Australian site blocking is DNS-level: your ISP's resolver simply refuses to translate a blocked domain into an IP address, or redirects it to a "this site has been blocked" landing page. The website itself is untouched and remains reachable from networks that are not subject to the order. That is why the same site works from overseas, from some smaller ISPs before orders propagate, or through an encrypted tunnel.

This shallowness is deliberate — DNS blocking is cheap and low-risk for ISPs — but it means overblocking happens too. Domains that share infrastructure with a blocked site, or mirror domains that changed hands, have been caught in orders after the original target moved on. Because the consolidated lists are not user-friendly, an ordinary reader usually cannot easily check whether a dead site is blocked, broken, or simply gone.

Is it legal to get around these blocks?

Three things are true at once, and this site tries to keep all three visible:

• VPN use is lawful in Australia. There is no law against encrypting your traffic or choosing your DNS resolver. Our VPN legality guide covers this in detail.
• The block and the underlying conduct are separate questions. A VPN changes whether a page loads; it does not change copyright law, gambling law or criminal law. Accessing a pirated stream is still infringement however you reach it, and depositing money with an unlicensed offshore casino is still a consumer-protection nightmare with no recourse when they refuse to pay out.
• Plenty of blocked-page encounters are legitimate to route around. Overblocked domains, age-gates you can lawfully pass as a verified adult, geo-restrictions on services you pay for, and simple privacy from ISP-level filtering and the metadata your provider must keep for two years under the mandatory data retention scheme.

None of this is legal advice — where real money or real legal exposure is involved, get advice for your situation.

If you decide you want a VPN

Any reputable paid VPN will carry its own DNS resolution inside an encrypted tunnel, which is all that ISP-level DNS blocking cannot see. Our current shortlist and per-provider verdicts are in the best VPN for Australia guide; the current pricing snapshot from our provider table has NordVPN from A$4.79/mo (2-year), Surfshark from A$3.49/mo (24-month) and Proton VPN from A$5.59/mo (2-year), each with a 30-day refund window. Treat advertised rates as first-term pricing — renewals are often two to three times higher — and be wary of free products: as our free VPN guide shows, a tool that exists to see your traffic is a strange choice for privacy. You can also check what is currently inaccessible by category on our blocked content tracker.

Who should not act on this guide

If your goal is free access to paid movies, sport or pokies, a VPN will not make that lawful, safe or sensible — infringement remains infringement, and unlicensed casinos remain unaccountable to Australian players. And if you are trying to help a under-16 family member back onto age-restricted platforms, the minimum-age rules exist precisely because Parliament decided that trade-off for you. This guide is for adults who want to understand what is filtered on their connection and make lawful choices about their own privacy.

Frequently asked questions

Is there an official list of banned websites in Australia?

No single list exists. Copyright blocks live in public Federal Court orders, the ACMA announces gambling blocks in batches, eSafety blocks are case-by-case, and the child sexual abuse material list is deliberately secret.

How many websites are blocked in Australia?

No authority publishes one combined total. Copyright injunctions have accumulated to well over a thousand domains since 2016, and the ACMA's gambling blocks number in the hundreds of sites, so a reasonable combined estimate runs into the thousands of domains.

Why does a blocked site still work on my mobile hotspot or at a friend's place?

Blocking orders bind specific ISPs and propagate at different speeds. A smaller provider may not yet implement an order that Telstra, Optus and TPG already have, and DNS-level blocks vanish entirely on networks outside Australia.

Is it illegal to visit a blocked website in Australia?

Visiting a blocked page is generally not an offence in itself — with the absolute exception of child sexual abuse material, which is criminal to access in any form. But the conduct a block targets, like copyright infringement or illegal gambling, keeps its own legal consequences regardless of how you reach the site.

Do VPNs get around Australian website blocks?

Usually, yes — most Australian blocking is DNS-based, and a VPN resolves domains inside its encrypted tunnel. That is a statement about the mechanism, not an endorsement of any particular use; the legality of what you do on the other side is unchanged.

Why was a harmless site I use suddenly blocked?

Possibly overblocking: shared hosting, an expired domain picked up by a blocked operator, or a mirror domain caught in a copyright order. There is no simple public appeals page, but the court order naming the domain is public and the ISP's blocked-page notice usually names the scheme responsible.