France Cracks Down on Polymarket, 30 Countries Follow Suit, Pressuring EU to Redefine Prediction Markets
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France Cracks Down on Polymarket, 30 Countries Follow Suit, Pressuring EU to Redefine Prediction Markets
Regulatory authorities did not treat Polymarket as a financial trading venue violation, but instead directly characterized it as a non-compliant product harming consumer rights.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsSource: Blockhead
Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News
The French National Gambling Regulatory Authority (ANJ) has now ordered all domestic internet service providers to block Polymarket. This is a prediction trading platform that allows users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events using cryptocurrency.
This official ban was formally issued by the French National Gambling Regulatory Authority on July 16, escalating a four-year regulatory tug-of-war with unprecedentedly tough regulatory measures. The core starting point of this control focuses on the harm caused to ordinary users by the platform, rather than financial market order risks.
This classification is crucial: the regulatory body did not classify Polymarket as an unlicensed crypto exchange, but directly determined it belongs to illegal gambling operations, categorizing it under the same regulatory category as unlicensed online casinos and sports betting platforms. The legal binding force and enforcement methods corresponding to the two classifications are completely different, and will also profoundly affect the approaches to handling such cases by regulatory agencies in other European countries.
Data Basis Behind the Regulatory Escalation
France previously issued regulations in November 2024 prohibiting domestic users from conducting financial transactions with Polymarket, but this measure had little effect. Data cited by the French National Gambling Regulatory Authority from traffic analysis platform Similarweb shows that in June 2026 alone, the platform reached 205,057 unique visitors in the French region, with total visits as high as 578,751. Users can easily bypass financial transfer restrictions by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). The regulatory bureau thus concluded: only by directly blocking the website domain can effective control be achieved.
The regulatory body also listed two leads on violation investigations: the French Meteorological Agency Météo-France submitted a complaint that someone tampered with temperature sensor data to manipulate weather-related prediction contracts on Polymarket; the Cybercrime Department of the Paris Prosecutor's Office filed a case for investigation on this on May 4. In addition, the regulatory department focused on a French trader with the account name "Fredi9999", who artificially changed the odds related to the 2024 US Presidential Election bets through large positions, and has now been subject to French regulatory verification.
As early as February 2026, the French National Gambling Regulatory Authority had already reclassified such prediction markets as illegal gambling. The reason is that such platforms lack the risk protection mechanisms mandatorily equipped by French legal gambling institutions: betting limit restrictions, user self-exclusion channels, and cannot guarantee consumer safety.
What This Event Means for the Entire Industry
It is not only France that is restricting Polymarket; currently, more than 30 countries and regions around the world have implemented controls on the platform: Switzerland banned the website first in November 2024; Poland, Singapore, and Belgium followed with restrictions in early 2025; Portugal introduced control measures in January 2026; in May of the same year, Spain issued a temporary blocking order and launched an investigation simultaneously. Brazil, Argentina, India, Indonesia, as well as Italy, Germany, Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine have all launched relevant restriction policies.
But France is the largest economy in the EU and also the first member state to require national operators to uniformly block the website. Official documents repeatedly mention expressions such as the platform's addictive attributes and harm to consumers, which are completely consistent with the terminology used when regulating game loot boxes and other types of gray gambling products.
The deeper impact of this matter lies in: whether this regulatory standard will be implemented across the EU. France classifies prediction markets into the gambling category, rather than financial instruments or information services, which creates an obvious conflict with the regulatory framework of the EU's current "Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation" (MiCA). If other EU member states emulate France's determination logic, crypto prediction markets may be uniformly banned across the EU under gambling laws, rather than being compliantly regulated according to financial market regulations. This runs counter to the compliant development route long planned by the US compliant prediction platform Kalshi.
Kalshi is a compliant prediction market regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and is currently continuing to expand US institutional business, having previously had plans to expand into the European market. Once the EU uniformly classifies such platforms as gambling projects, its European expansion plans will encounter huge obstacles — not that European users cannot access them at all, but the platform's regulatory positioning and brand image will be fundamentally split from its US domestic business.
At this stage, France is equivalent to a test case for EU regulation. If operator blocking measures can significantly reduce local access traffic, and the meteorological bureau data tampering case is finally prosecuted, the rest of the EU regulatory agencies will closely refer to this case to formulate their own control plans.
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