Prediction Markets in Europe: Ten Blocking Orders, and Only Two Are Measured

Spain's regulator has until about 26 November 2026 to decide the sanction case it opened on 26 May; on 1 October it told Vultax it could not say whether it had ruled. In Italy the administrative court in Rome refused on 5 August to suspend the block and still has to decide the merits. In the Netherlands, Polymarket has taken the 420,000 euro penalty to court. Czech internet providers have had to block kalshi.com since 15 October. Lithuania's authority is reviewing other prediction-market sites. In Gibraltar, the first authorisations under the July regulations are awaited. In Britain, the FCA is talking to the operators and has changed no rule.

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Each row is one public action by a European authority: a block, a penalty, a warning, a licence, a statement or a written answer to Vultax. The source column links the authority's own document where Vultax has read it; where only press reports exist, the row says so. Platform geoblocking decided by Polymarket itself is not an action by a regulator and is listed separately below.

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Polymarket's restrictions page, read on 19 October 2026, lists the countries where its own website and API refuse new positions. In Europe these are Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom on both the website and the API, and Ireland, the Netherlands and Malta on the website only, with Malta marked sports only. Ukraine appears for three regions, not the country.

Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Czechia, Lithuania and Romania do not appear on that page. In those six countries the regulator's block rests on internet providers alone, and the Spanish tests below show what that means in practice: the block holds on some networks and not on others.

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A blocking order is a document. Whether a site actually fails to load is a measurement, and in Europe it exists for only two of the ten blocking countries. The Open Observatory of Network Interference collects web-connectivity tests run by volunteers on their own connections. Vultax read its aggregate counts for polymarket.com and kalshi.com from 21 July to 19 October 2026.

In France, 385 of 472 tests of polymarket.com did not load: 327 were marked anomalous against the control and 58 failed outright. In Spain, 381 of 791 tests were anomalous, which matches the earlier finding that the block holds on Telefónica and Vodafone and barely applies on Orange. For kalshi.com, Spain is the only country with tests: 1,059 of 1,621 were anomalous.

From Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Hungary, Czechia, Lithuania, Romania, Belgium, Ukraine, Poland and Greece there were no tests of either site in the window. Switzerland and Sweden had a handful, almost all loading. Nobody is checking whether most of Europe's blocks work.

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Gibraltar is the only European jurisdiction with a regime written for prediction markets. The Prediction Market Regulations 2026 came into force on 13 July 2026 under the Gambling Act 2025. They create an authorisation that is not a gambling licence, with a public register and core conditions in a schedule; press reports name Predict Street Limited and Wire Alternative Markets Limited on the register, and a separate fees instrument is reported to set a 30,000 pound application fee, a 100,000 pound annual fee and a levy of 0.15 percent of commission. Vultax has read the regulations and not the register or the fees instrument.

Malta has no dedicated regime. Its authority told Vultax on 17 October that some prediction-market products may fit existing betting licences, and two days earlier Hacksaw Group announced that the authority had extended its supplier licence to Type 3 gaming services for a peer-to-peer prediction-markets platform.

Britain splits the question in two. The Gambling Commission said in February that a prediction-market business could require a betting intermediary licence. The FCA's perimeter work treats the financial contracts it examined as binary options, which cannot be sold to retail clients, and on 6 October its markets executive director said the authority is engaging with operators on their UK plans. No rule has changed.

At EU level, ESMA's statement of 3 July says an event contract whose question concerns a financial underlying is a derivative: it falls under the national bans on binary options for retail clients and may be distributed only by an authorised investment firm. Its risk report of 10 September adds that the largest platforms hold no EU authorisation, that insider trading is a live risk, and that the platforms restrict some EU countries and not others.

Vultax asks European authorities the same questions and publishes their answers with the date. Five have answered so far: Germany's GGL on 7 October, Spain's DGOJ on 1 October, Lithuania's Gaming Control Authority on 30 September, Czechia's Ministry of Finance on 2 October, and the Malta Gaming Authority on 17 October. Each answer is on its own page, linked from the record above. Estonia's and Finland's authorities have not yet been asked.

An action enters the record when a public authority, a court, or a regulator's written reply to Vultax records it. The date is the document's own date; where Vultax has read only press reports, the row says reported and the date is the report's. Polymarket's own restrictions come from its geographic-restrictions page and describe its published policy, not tested access. Kalshi publishes no comparable page and most of its contracts are offered to United States residents only.

The network measurements are OONI's aggregate counts by probe country. Volunteers choose when and where to run tests, so the counts are not a sample of all connections, and an anomalous result is evidence of interference rather than proof that a block applies on every network. Where no tests exist, Vultax says so rather than inferring anything.

The record covers the European Union, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Gibraltar and Ukraine. It is updated when a new document is read; the changelog records material changes. Challenge a row at [email protected].