Breaking! France officially bans Polymarket, 30 countries coordinate to crack down—will regulated prediction markets be wiped out entirely?

This came suddenly, but the data had long shown signs.

On July 16, the French National Gambling Regulatory Authority (ANJ) issued an official ban ordering all domestic internet service providers to block Polymarket—a prediction trading platform that uses cryptocurrencies to bet on real-world events. Regulatory measures escalated from warnings to a hard lock, after four years of back-and-forth, until the deadlock was finally broken.

The key lies in its classification: regulators did not treat it as an unlicensed crypto exchange. They directly categorized it as illegal gambling, placing it on the same footing as online casinos and sports betting. This classification directly determined enforcement intensity and also provided other European regulators with a clear reference template.

Data is the hardest evidence. The French ANJ cited Similarweb data: in June 2026 alone, independent visitors in France reached 205,057, with a total of 578,751 visits. The prohibition on fund transfers introduced in November 2024 allowed users to bypass it with just a VPN, rendering the rules essentially meaningless. The regulator’s conclusion was explicit: not blocking the site is equivalent to not regulating it.

Two developments drove regulators to go for the hard line. First, Météo-France, France’s national meteorological service, filed a complaint that someone had tampered with temperature sensor data, manipulating the weather contracts on Polymarket. On May 4, the Paris Prosecutor’s Office’ cybercrime division had already opened a case. Second, the account “Fredi9999” intentionally changed the odds for 2024 U.S. election bets through large-position holdings; French regulators are currently reviewing the matter.

As early as February 2026, ANJ had reclassified this kind of prediction market as illegal gambling, for a simple reason: the platform lacks risk-control mechanisms such as betting limits that French legal gambling institutions are required to have, and user opt-in exclusion channels—leaving consumer safety at zero.

This is not only a French issue. More than 30 countries and regions worldwide have already acted: Switzerland banned it in November 2024; Poland, Singapore, and Belgium followed in early 2025; Portugal moved in January 2026; in May, Spain issued a temporary blocking order and launched an investigation. Brazil, Argentina, India, Indonesia, as well as Italy, Germany, Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine have all rolled out restriction policies.

But France is the largest economy in the European Union by economic size, and it is also the first member state to require all national operators to uniformly block websites. The official documents repeatedly use the same language as before—“addictive attribute,” “harm to consumers”—matching earlier wording used in regulators’ case of game “loot boxes” and gray-area gambling.

The deeper impact is whether this standard will land across the entire EU. France classifying prediction markets as gambling directly conflicts with the EU’s existing Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework. If other member states copy France’s logic, crypto prediction markets would be uniformly banned across the EU under gambling laws, rather than being regulated compliantly under financial regulations.

This directly slaps U.S. compliant platform Kalshi in the face. Kalshi is regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and is expanding its business with U.S. institutions, with an original plan to enter Europe. If the EU classifies it as gambling, Kalshi’s European expansion will face a fundamental fracture—not because users can’t access it, but because its regulatory positioning and brand image would be completely disconnected from its U.S. domestic operations.

France is now the regulatory test case for the EU. If operator blocking measures can significantly reduce traffic, and the weather data-tampering case also succeeds in prosecution, other EU regulators will immediately replicate this playbook. This prediction market track could see a compliant “winter” arrive faster than people think.

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