Can Europeans use Polymarket?
Whether you can use Polymarket in Europe depends on your country and it keeps changing. Here is how access works, why some states block it, and what the alternatives are.
Outcomer Team · Jul 7, 2026
If you have read about prediction markets, you have almost certainly seen Polymarket. It is the largest crypto-based prediction market in the world, and during big elections its headline odds get quoted everywhere. The natural question for anyone on this side of the Atlantic is simple: can Europeans actually use it?
The honest answer is "it depends, and it keeps changing." Access is decided country by country, and the map has shifted a lot over the past two years. Here is the current picture in plain terms.
How Polymarket actually works
Polymarket is not a normal betting site you sign up for with an email and a card. It runs on crypto. You connect a self-custody wallet, fund it with USDC (a dollar-pegged stablecoin) on the Polygon network, and trade shares that settle on-chain. There is no Polymarket account holding your money in the traditional sense — the funds sit in your own wallet.
That design is exactly why regulators treat it the way they do. To a European gambling authority, a platform letting residents stake money on real-world outcomes looks like betting, whether the settlement happens through a bookmaker or a blockchain. If Polymarket does not hold a local licence, several regulators have decided residents should not be able to reach it.
Where Europe stands right now
The clearest case is France. In late 2024 the French gaming authority, the ANJ, ordered Polymarket to block French residents, treating it as unlicensed gambling. That block is still in place, and France is not alone — other European regulators, including Belgium's, have taken similar action, and several more have opened reviews.
At the same time, Polymarket remains reachable in a number of European countries as of mid-2026. The trend, though, is toward more restrictions rather than fewer, so a country that is open today may not stay that way. Anywhere you see a "block", it is worth stressing one thing: trying to slip past a geo-block with a VPN breaks Polymarket's own terms of service and can get an account frozen with funds locked. It is not a reliable workaround.
If you want the deeper mechanics of how these markets price probability in the first place, our primer on what a prediction market is is a good starting point.
What about Kalshi?
The other name people ask about is Kalshi. For years Kalshi was strictly US-only — it is a fully CFTC-regulated exchange, and you needed to be a US resident with US identity documents to trade. In late 2025 it opened up internationally and now accepts users from many countries, with identity and residence verification at sign-up. Even so, coverage is uneven: some markets are excluded, and access can be pulled at short notice, as happened in Spain in 2026.
Interestingly, the regulatory story runs in both directions. Polymarket itself spent four years shut out of the United States after a 2022 settlement, then bought a CFTC-licensed exchange in 2025 and won approval to re-enter the US through a regulated route. The lesson is that "available" is a moving target on both continents. If you are weighing the two, our side-by-side on Polymarket versus Kalshi breaks down how they differ.
The takeaway for a European reader
Two things are true at once. Prediction markets are one of the most interesting ideas in forecasting, and the big global platforms are a legal and technical maze depending on exactly where you sit. You might be able to reach Polymarket today, or you might open it to a geo-block, and either way the situation could look different next month.
None of this changes what makes the markets worth understanding: reading a price as a probability, thinking in expected value, sizing a position sensibly. Those skills are the same everywhere, and you do not need to put real money at risk to build them.
That is the whole point of practising first. On Outcomer you can trade the same kinds of markets — elections, sport, macro, culture — with virtual money, no wallet setup and no regional guessing game. It is a European-built place to learn how the odds move before any real stake is involved. Read how trading with virtual money works and try a few markets for yourself.