Inside Nairobi's Plan to Tax the Leisure and Events Economy

Nairobi County is expanding its revenue collection system into the business of entertainment by bringing concert tickets, hotel rooms, Airbnb units, commercial filming, streaming platforms, and even monetised influencer events under a new tourism and entertainment levy.

• The new schedule in the Nairobi City County Finance Act 2026 creates charges across a wide stretch of the city's leisure and event economy. 
• Much of the schedule is built around physical amenities like rooms, premises, screens, grounds and facilities.
• However, the digital categories acknowledge a different kind of entertainment business, one in which the product can be produced in a studio, distributed through a platform, and consumed without the audience ever entering the premises where it was made.

The provision goes beyond licensing premises and sets annual fees for money generated by events and sources of entertainment that no longer require conventional venues at all. For instance, concert organizers will pay 5% of ticket sales, while local and international live performances attract fixed charges of KSh10,000 and KSh20,000 per event respectively. 

Additionally, nightclubs will face an annual KSh50,000 charge and corporate events will be slapped with KSh8,000 per event.

For the creative industry, the levy will target commercial local filming which is charged KSh8,000 per shooting, while external commercial filming is charged KSh 50,000. Religious and private filming attracts KSh8,000 per shooting and music-video production KSh 10,000. Content-creation studios will also face an annual KSh40,000 charge.

Television stations face an annual KSh 200,000 charge and radio stations KSh150,000. Local streaming platforms will pay KSh100,000 annually, while digital-content platforms face KSh80,000. Online entertainment events are charged KSh 15,000 per event, e-sports events KSh 20,000, and influencer monetised events KSh 10,000.

County Taxation

The practical effect will depend heavily on how the categories are applied. The more commercial and organised the activity becomes, the easier it is to fit into the framework of annual premises charges or event-based fees. The less physical and more fluid the business becomes, the more important the boundaries between a platform, a studio, an event and an individual creator are likely to become.