Where Polymarket is blocked in 2026, country by country

As of September 2026, Polymarket is blocked or barred by order in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Belgium, the Netherlands, Brazil, India, Indonesia and Australia, and it is closed to Ontario residents under a 2025 securities settlement. Almost every order came from a gambling regulator, not a crypto regulator. The reasoning repeats: an event contract is a bet on an uncertain outcome, so it needs a domestic licence.

Last checked: 4 September 2026.

This is not legal advice.

Which countries is Polymarket blocked in?

The table below lists jurisdictions where a public authority has ordered a block, a ban or an exit, with the regulator, the legal instrument and the date of the act. It does not list countries where Polymarket simply has no users, and it does not list sanctioned territories excluded by the platform's own terms.

Jurisdiction	ISP or platform block in force	Regulator	Legal instrument	Date of the act	Source
Australia	Yes, ISP block	ACMA	Interactive Gambling Act 2001	13 August 2025	Crikey
Belgium	Yes, blacklist plus ISP block	Kansspelcommissie	Belgian Gaming Act blacklist	30 January 2025	Casinonieuws.nl
Brazil	Yes, offer prohibited	CMN and Banco Central do Brasil	Resolução CMN 5.298	24 April 2026, in force 4 May 2026	Banco Central
Canada, Ontario	Yes, permanent bar on offering	Ontario Securities Commission	Multilateral Instrument 91-102	April 2025 settlement	OSC
Canada, Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec	Yes, by Polymarket's terms of use	none named in the terms	platform terms of use	6 July 2026	Casino.org
France	Yes, ISP block	ANJ	administrative blocking order by the ANJ president	16 July 2026	ANJ
Germany	No published ISP block	GGL	Glücksspielstaatsvertrag 2021, no licence	warning of 5 September 2025	GGL
Hungary	Yes, temporary block	SZTFH	prohibited gambling proceeding	19 January 2026	Telex
India	Yes, blocking order	MeitY	Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act 2025	May 2026	Yogonet
Indonesia	Yes, ISP block	Komdigi	national online gambling prohibition	22 May 2026	Bitcoin.com News
Italy	Yes, ISP block	ADM	article 102 of Decree Law 104/2020	listed 10 July 2026, ISPs by 27 July 2026	ADM
Netherlands	Yes, order under penalty	Kansspelautoriteit	Wet op de kansspelen	20 January 2026	Ksa
Portugal	Yes, ISP block	SRIJ	no licence, ban on political betting	January 2026	ECO
Spain	Yes, precautionary block	DGOJ	Ley 13/2011 de regulación del juego	26 May 2026	Ministry of Consumer Affairs

Other countries are often listed as restricted on affiliate pages, including the United Kingdom, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan. This page does not list them because no public order from the named regulator could be opened and read as of 4 September 2026.

Why is Polymarket blocked, in one sentence per regulator?

Gambling law, not crypto law, is the reason in almost every case. The Spanish Ministry of Consumer Affairs put the test plainly when it opened its case on 26 May 2026: prediction markets are gambling when the bet is on an uncertain future result, and offering them in Spain therefore needs an administrative licence. Every European order in the table rests on the same step.

The Dutch regulator went further and separated the product from the subject matter. The Kansspelautoriteit ordered Adventure One QSS Inc. to stop on 20 January 2026 under the Wet op de kansspelen, then rejected the company's objection on 23 June 2026 and moved to collect 420,000 euros of the penalty. Betting on political events is not licensable in the Netherlands at all, so a licence would not have solved it.

Germany reaches the same result without an ISP block. The Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder warned on 5 September 2025 that bets on elections, court rulings and disasters, which it calls Gesellschaftswetten, cannot be licensed under German law, and that organising, promoting and taking part in them are all punishable.

Brazil is the one large exception to the gambling framing. There the instrument is financial. Resolução CMN 5.298, published on 24 April 2026 and in force since 4 May 2026, forbids offering or trading derivatives whose underlying is a sports event, an online game event, or a political, electoral, social, cultural or entertainment event that the securities regulator does not consider an economic or financial reference.

What does a block actually do?

A block is an instruction to internet access providers, not a seizure of accounts. In Italy the ADM lists a domain and providers must make it unreachable and redirect the user to an institutional page. As of the list published on 5 August 2026, with effect from 20 August 2026, polymarket.com and kalshi.com both appear among the 12,637 entries on the ADM list of inhibited gambling sites.

Effects differ by country. In the Netherlands the platform moved Dutch users to a view only state rather than closing accounts. In Brazil the prohibition is on the offer itself, so the constraint sits on the platform and its intermediaries rather than on a domain list. In Ontario the bar comes from a settlement approved in April 2025 with the Ontario Securities Commission over Multilateral Instrument 91-102, which prohibits short term binary options for individual investors, and it is permanent for Ontario residents.

What changed in 2026?

The pace changed. Belgium blacklisted Polymarket on 30 January 2025 and Australia's ACMA asked providers to block it on 13 August 2025, but 2026 brought a cluster: Hungary and Portugal in January, the Netherlands in January, India and Indonesia in May, Spain in May, France and Italy in July.

Italy also shows that a block can be lifted and reimposed. ADM first listed polymarket.com on 22 October 2025, then removed it and restored access on 15 December 2025, then listed it again on 10 July 2026 with providers required to comply by 27 July 2026. The Lazio regional administrative court refused an urgent suspension in early August 2026, and the company withdrew its interim request on 19 August 2026 while keeping the case on the merits alive.

Which jurisdictions punish the user, not just the platform?

Two of them do, explicitly. In Italy, article 4, paragraph 3 of Law 401 of 13 December 1989 punishes anyone who takes part in games or bets run without a licence with detention of up to three months or a fine of 51 to 516 euros, outside cases where the person is a co-organiser. In Spain, article 41.f of Ley 13/2011, added in 2021, makes it a minor infringement to take part from Spain, using techniques that mask a Spanish IP address, in gambling offered through pages other than the legally authorised ones. Article 42 sets the penalty for minor infringements at a written warning or a fine of up to 100,000 euros.

Germany states that participation in illegal Gesellschaftswetten is punishable. The other orders in the table are addressed to the operator. That difference matters more than the block itself if you are considering a workaround.

What can you legally do from a blocked country?

You can forecast. What gambling law regulates is a stake: something of value risked on an uncertain outcome for a prize. Remove the stake and the prize and the activity falls outside the definition that every order in the table relies on. That is why the same regulators that blocked Polymarket have not acted against forecasting tournaments, research platforms or public prediction records.

Three things stay available almost everywhere. Reading prices, because a published probability is information, not a wager. Forecasting for a score, as Metaculus and the Good Judgment tournaments have done for years. And putting a dated, public prediction on the record so it can be checked later.

insiderz belongs to the third group. It lists the same yes or no events as Polymarket, and a user posts a call: yes or no, plus how sure they are. The call is locked with the time and the Polymarket price at that moment, and it cannot be edited or deleted. When the event resolves the call is scored against that price. There is no money, no prize and no token, so there is nothing at stake in the legal sense.

You can browse the open events and the insiders ranking without an account. Identity is a wallet signature, so no email or name is required.

Why we do not recommend a VPN

Affiliate pages that rank for these queries usually end with a VPN link, because that link pays them. It is worth being clear about what a VPN does and does not do.

A VPN moves your apparent location. It does not change the law that applies to you, it breaks the platform's own terms of use, which can mean a closed account and stranded funds, and in Italy and Spain it can convert a blocked page into a personal sanction, since both countries have written participation into their statutes. Spain's article 41.f names IP masking specifically.

If your reason for wanting Polymarket is the forecast rather than the money, a no stake platform gives you the same events with none of that exposure. If your reason is the money, then the block is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

How this page is maintained

The method is simple and worth stating, because most pages on this query are undated. Every row starts from a document published by the named authority, or, when the authority publishes no press release, from a national outlet that quotes the order and names the instrument. Every row carries the date of the act, not the date we read it. Rows we cannot source to a named regulator and a named instrument are left out, even when several aggregator pages assert them.

This page is checked monthly and the "Last checked" line above moves only when a row is verified again. For the country specific detail, see Polymarket blocked in Italy, Polymarket blocked in Brazil and Polymarket in Spain. For the underlying legal test, see Is it gambling if there is no money?.