Are prediction markets legal in Europe?

Prediction markets are one of the most talked-about ideas in forecasting right now, but if you live in Europe the first practical question is rarely "how do they work?" It is "am I even allowed to use them?" The honest answer is that it depends on your country, and in 2026 the picture is changing almost month to month. Here is where things actually stand.

Why the law struggles with prediction markets

A prediction market lets you buy and sell shares in the outcome of a future event — an election, a football result, an interest-rate decision — at a price that moves like a probability. To the people who build them, that looks like a forecasting tool or a financial contract. To most European gambling regulators, it looks like something much more familiar: you pay money, you pick an uncertain future outcome, and you get a payout if you are right.

That second description is the one that matters legally. Under nearly every European gambling framework, staking money on an uncertain event for a prize is the definition of gambling, regardless of whether the platform calls the stake a "contract" and the winnings a "return." Because almost no prediction-market operator holds a local gambling licence, regulators have increasingly concluded that residents should not be able to reach them. If you want the underlying mechanics first, our primer on what a prediction market is is the place to start.

France: from warning to a full block

France has moved the furthest. Its gambling authority, the ANJ, first intervened in November 2024, after which Polymarket geoblocked financial transactions from French users. That did not stop people reaching the site — the ANJ reported hundreds of thousands of French visits in mid-2026 — so in February 2026 it formally reclassified prediction markets as illegal gambling, citing the absence of stake limits and self-exclusion tools. On 16 July 2026 it went all the way, ordering French internet providers to block Polymarket outright.

Czechia: a fresh block in July 2026

Czechia is one of the newest additions to the list. On 13 July 2026 the Czech Ministry of Finance added Polymarket to its public register of unauthorised internet games, which requires internet providers to block access within fifteen days. Officials made the same argument as their French counterparts: a platform where bets are dressed up as "contracts" and winnings as "returns on investment" is still, in substance, unlicensed gambling.

Poland and Germany: closed doors by different routes

Poland got there earlier. Under its 2009 Gambling Act, only licensed sports betting is permitted online, and everything else — prediction markets included — needs authorisation nobody has obtained. Poland added Polymarket to its blocked-domains register back in January 2025, leaving Polish users in a "close-only" position: able to exit existing bets, but not open new ones.

Germany reaches a similar destination through its State Treaty on Gambling. In September 2025 the German joint gambling authority, the GGL, warned that betting on non-sporting events like elections or court rulings is illegal under the treaty. In theory a prediction market could be run as a regulated financial derivative under BaFin instead, but no operator has taken that route, so in practice the door is shut.

The bigger pattern

Zoom out and the trend is unmistakable. Polymarket is now restricted in more than thirty jurisdictions worldwide, with Switzerland, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Romania, Hungary and others all taking action alongside the countries above. The direction of travel across Europe is toward more restriction, not less, so a country that is reachable today may not stay that way. We cover the wider crackdown in more detail in why European regulators are warning about prediction markets, and if you are wondering about access specifically, can Europeans use Polymarket walks through it.

One thing worth stressing: trying to slip past a national block with a VPN breaks these platforms' own terms of service and can get an account frozen with funds locked. It is not a workaround, and it does not change the legal position where you live.

What this means if you just want to learn

Here is the part that gets lost in the regulatory noise. The skills that make prediction markets interesting — reading a price as a probability, thinking in expected value, sizing a position sensibly — have nothing to do with which platform is blocked this week. They are the same everywhere, and you do not need to risk real money, or navigate a legal grey zone, to build them.

That is exactly what Outcomer is for. It is a European-built place to practise the same kinds of markets — elections, sport, macro, culture — with virtual money, no wallet setup and no regional guessing game. Read how trading with virtual money works and try a few markets for yourself. None of this is financial advice; it is simply a safe way to learn how the odds move before any real stake is ever involved.