Are prediction markets legal where you live? A dated table, not advice

Whether a prediction market is legal for you depends on where you are, which company you trade with and what kind of contract you buy, and I am not going to answer it for you. What I can do is list what regulators, courts and the platforms themselves have published, with dates and links, so you can see the state of play before you check your own situation. In the United States the federal regulator oversees event contracts on registered exchanges and lost in court to Kalshi in 2024, while states are fighting over sports contracts in the appeals courts. In Europe several regulators have blocked or blacklisted Polymarket. This page is a dated record, not legal advice.

How to read this page

Three questions decide which rows apply to you.

• Which platform. Kalshi is a US exchange designated by the CFTC. Polymarket runs two products: polymarket.com, which says it “is not regulated by the CFTC”, and Polymarket US, run by QCX LLC, a CFTC-designated contract market. A rule about one does not automatically cover the others.
• Which contract. The US court fights of 2024 were about election contracts. The 2026 fights are about sports contracts. A country can treat the two differently.
• Where you physically are. Polymarket’s help centre says trading permissions follow your physical location. A state line or a border can change the answer.

Two things also need keeping apart. A platform’s restricted list is a contract term: the operator refuses you. A regulator’s order is a public act: the state refuses the operator. Both appear below, labelled. Neither tells you what happens to you personally if you trade anyway, and I do not speculate about that.

United States: the federal record

At the federal level, event contracts on a registered exchange fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The dated record I could source:

So the federal position, as of this review, is that two US-regulated exchanges list event contracts, the CFTC has abandoned both its appeal and its restrictive proposal, and new rules are promised but not published. polymarket.com itself blocks US trading with a banner pointing to polymarket.us.

United States: the states and the courts

States regulate gambling, and several have argued that sports event contracts are sports bets under their laws. Two appeals courts have now disagreed.

• New Jersey. On 6 April 2026 the Third Circuit, in KalshiEX LLC v. Flaherty (No. 25-1922), affirmed Kalshi’s preliminary injunction against the state’s gaming regulator. New Jersey petitioned the US Supreme Court; the case was docketed on 8 September 2026 as No. 26-299, with a response due on 9 November 2026.
• Nevada. In late August 2026 a Ninth Circuit panel ruled unanimously against Kalshi, letting Nevada enforce its gaming laws against sports event contracts, according to reports by Front Office Sports and Bloomberg Law. The same reports describe the result as a split with the Third Circuit and say sports were 72% of Kalshi’s volume through August 2026. I have not read the opinion itself.

Other state actions against prediction markets have been reported, including in Maryland, Michigan, Massachusetts, Ohio, Arizona and New York. I have not verified them from primary orders or dockets, so I state none of their details here. When a court has two circuits on opposite sides and a petition pending, the honest summary is that the question is open.

For comparison: how states treat offshore sportsbooks

The state tools are easier to see with offshore books, which do not claim federal cover. The Michigan Gaming Control Board ordered BetUS on 7 May 2025 to halt its online gambling operations in Michigan. The Massachusetts Attorney General sent cease-and-desist letters to BetOnline and SportsBetting.ag in June 2025. Bovada’s own terms (§2.3) list 19 states plus DC where it refuses players, and say a balance accessed from one “may be considered void”. None of that is about prediction markets; it shows the difference between an operator’s list and a regulator’s order.

United Kingdom

On 4 February 2026 the Gambling Commission’s Brad Enright said prediction markets could not be classified as non-gambling, that operators would need a betting intermediary licence, and that unlicensed ones must avoid GB consumers, as reported by InterGame. I have not read a written Commission document on it. Polymarket’s own lists include the UK: close-only in the developer docs and “completely restricted” in the help centre.

France, Belgium and the rest of Europe

The French report adds two numbers: 578,751 French visits to Polymarket in June 2026, and a penalty of up to €100,000 for advertising an unauthorised gambling site. The Cointelegraph report counts 33 countries geoblocking the platform. I list the last five rows because they are reported consistently, but I have not opened the regulators’ own registries, and I mark them as secondary until I do.

Polymarket’s own restricted lists

Polymarket publishes its restrictions in two places, and they differ slightly. These are the operator’s rules, which apply whatever your local law says.

The help centre instead lists 39 countries as “completely restricted”, adding among others Russia, Venezuela and several sanctioned states, and gives Singapore, Poland, Thailand and Taiwan as close-only examples. South Korea appears only in the docs. The terms add that Polymarket “strictly prohibits the use of VPNs or similar tools to bypass geographic restrictions”. I do not explain how to get around any of this, and the VPN guide covers why operators treat it as a breach.

Kalshi is not Polymarket

Kalshi is a CFTC-designated exchange that requires full identity verification before you deposit: government photo ID and a live photo, and its help centre says further documents such as proof of address or source of funds may be required. Its help centre also says “Kalshi is now accessible internationally” and that restricted jurisdictions are set out in Section VI of its Member Agreement. I could not read that document: kalshi.com sits behind a security checkpoint that I did not bypass. Kalshi adds that it “does not provide individual legal or eligibility advice”.

Secondary sources give a rough picture. A Yogonet report of October 2025 put Kalshi in more than 140 countries, without the UK, Australia or Canada at the time. Wikipedia says that as of June 2026, 55 jurisdictions restrict access, including Australia, Canada, France, India, Russia and the UK. Treat both as leads, not lists. I have not published a Kalshi review yet; the prediction markets category lists the platforms I have reviewed, starting with Polymarket.

What decides your own answer

1. Your physical location at the moment you trade, not your passport or your account’s country.
2. The entity. A US-regulated exchange, an international site that says it is not CFTC-regulated, or an offshore sportsbook with a “predictions” tab are three different legal positions.
3. The contract type. Sports, elections and economic data have been treated differently by courts and regulators.
4. The platform’s own list. If you are on it, the operator has already decided, and breaking it is a breach of contract with consequences in the terms.
5. Your regulator’s published list. Several European gambling regulators publish lists of blocked domains, as the Belgian and Polish rows show; check yours directly.
6. A lawyer where the money matters. Tax treatment is a separate question this page does not cover.

Offshore crypto sportsbooks sit on the same map. Cloudbet’s terms (7.1.3), for example, exclude by physical location a list that includes the US, the UK, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands, and say it applies to withdrawals too. Those books are in the crypto sportsbooks category.

What would change this table

• The US Supreme Court deciding whether to hear New Jersey’s petition, No. 26-299, after the response due on 9 November 2026.
• Further proceedings after the Ninth Circuit’s Nevada ruling, and other state cases reaching appeals courts.
• The CFTC’s new event-contract rulemaking, announced on 4 February 2026.
• Any written Gambling Commission guidance in Great Britain, and new blocking orders in Europe.
• Changes to Polymarket’s or Kalshi’s restricted lists, which happen without notice.

I date every row and log each change in the changelog. If you see an order or a ruling I have missed, send me the primary link.

The short version

There is no single answer, and anyone who gives you one without asking where you are is guessing. In the US, the CFTC regulates Kalshi and Polymarket US as exchanges, lost in court over election contracts and withdrew its restrictive rule, while two appeals courts disagree about state power over sports contracts and the Supreme Court has a petition pending. The UK regulator has said prediction markets need a betting licence, France and Belgium have acted against Polymarket, and Polymarket’s own lists close the site in the US, the UK and much of Europe. Read how Polymarket works and how it compares with a sportsbook, then check your own location against the primary sources.