Lithuania Is Evaluating Other Prediction Markets After Blocking Polymarket

Lithuania's Gaming Control Authority is looking at other prediction markets after blocking Polymarket. "GCA is currently evaluating websites related to prediction market and which offers can be available for customers in Lithuania," the authority wrote in a reply to questions from Vultax on 30 September 2026. It did not name any site.

Polymarket's operator has not appealed, the authority says. "As of today, we have not received any response or appeal from the company," the authority wrote of Adventure One QSS, Inc., the Panama company that has run Polymarket since at least January 2022, according to a 2025 settlement with the Ontario Securities Commission.

The authority announced the block on 8 September, calling Polymarket the first "prediction market" website it had blocked. Its investigation found that visitors could open an account, deposit money, stake it on real-world events at predetermined odds and win or lose, which it treats as betting run without a licence. Neither the no-appeal answer nor the review of other prediction markets appears in that announcement or in the trade-press reports of it that Vultax found.

The block rests on a ruling by the Regional Administrative Court dated 24 August 2026, in case eS-17030-983/2026. Neither the authority's reply nor its announcement gives the case number or the ruling's date; both are printed on the authority's public list of illegal gambling operators, where polymarket.com is entry 2,204, added by director's order DIE-314 of 2 September. The updated list, No. NLV-20, is dated 3 September, five days before the announcement.

The authority's director sends the instruction through Vasaris, a dedicated information system, to every licensed electronic communications provider in Lithuania, and to every payment service provider licensed by the Bank of Lithuania. Network providers must block the domain; payment providers must stop all transactions with Adventure One QSS, Inc., which also appears on the authority's separate list of 199 operators for payment institutions. The authority keeps a landing page for redirected visitors, which tells them the site they tried to reach is blocked because it consists of illegal remote gambling.

The reply did not give a deadline for providers to comply.

No other prediction market is on the list. Checked on 30 September, it has no entry for kalshi.com, predictit.org, manifold.markets, limitless.exchange or myriad.markets. The list is not new to person-to-person markets: betfair.com, the Betfair betting exchange, has been entry 193 since a Vilnius Regional Administrative Court ruling of 28 September 2017.

The 2,204 entries cover 2,201 different domains, since three domains are listed twice. That total, and the Vasaris system, were already public; the authority repeated the count in its reply.

Polymarket publishes the places from which it refuses new orders. Its geographic-restrictions page, checked on 30 September 2026, names Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom among the countries where users may only close positions, and Ireland and the Netherlands among those restricted on its website alone. Lithuania is not on it.

Lithuania's block therefore works from the Lithuanian side, through network and payment providers, not through Polymarket's own checks. How completely each network applies it has not been measured independently: OONI, the open network-measurement project, has run about 111,000 web tests from Lithuanian networks since 1 August, and none of them tested polymarket.com or kalshi.com.

The authority's case is that Polymarket works as betting on real events. What the venue trades bears on that reading. In the 24 hours to 09:05 UTC on 30 September 2026, a Wednesday, sports and esports events took 65.2% of the 119.2 million contracts traded on Polymarket, counting every event that traded in that window. Crypto markets took 17.1% and politics 10.1%.

Vultax has read the same count every three hours since the evening of Sunday 27 September. In all 22 readings, sports and esports took between 64.1% and 84.4% of the contracts traded over the previous 24 hours, highest after the NFL Sunday. A contract pays $1 if it wins, so the count weights events by contracts traded, not by the price paid for them.

Vultax sent four questions to the Gaming Control Authority on 26 September 2026. The reply came on 30 September from Skirmante Paukstiene, chief specialist in the authority's Gaming Devices Type Approval and Register Division. The answers are quoted as sent, with one spelling corrected.

Could you send the decision, or its reference number and date? The authority replied with the substance of its 8 September announcement: "The GCA obtained a decision from the Regional Administrative Court and issued mandatory instructions to network service providers to block access to the Polymarket website, and to payment service providers to terminate all payment transactions with Adventure One QSS, Inc., the company engaged in the illegal gambling operation." It added that "a total of 2,204 illegal remote gambling websites have been blocked" and did not give a reference number or date.

How many telecom and payment providers were told to block it, and by what deadline? "The GCA Director's decision containing mandatory instructions to block the domain and payment transactions related to an illegal operator, as provided for in the Gaming Law of the Republic of Lithuania, is transmitted through the dedicated information system “Vasaris” to all licensed electronic communications service providers operating in Lithuania, and is also sent to all payment service providers operating in Lithuania and licensed by the Bank of Lithuania (Lietuvos bankas)."

Has the operator, Adventure One QSS, Inc., responded or appealed? "As of today, we have not received any response or appeal from the company."

Is any other prediction market, such as kalshi.com, under review? "GCA is currently evaluating websites related to prediction market and which offers can be available for customers in Lithuania."