⚖️ Is Polymarket Legal in the UK? UK status, and why
The short version, the country-by-country table, and how to check the answer yourself instead of taking ours.
No. As of 2026-09-12, Polymarket holds no licence from the Gambling Commission, which regulates betting in Great Britain, so it cannot lawfully take bets from UK customers. Polymarket's own geoblock documentation lists GB (United Kingdom) as close-only: a UK user can sell or settle a position they already hold, but cannot open a new one. The offence for unlicensed operating sits with the operator under section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005, not with the person placing the bet — but there is no licensed route onto Polymarket from the UK today.
📋 Status by place
Polymarket applies three states, not two. This table reads its published geoblock list against the regulator action actually on record. Checked 2026-09-12.
| Place | What Polymarket allows | Regulator action on record |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom (GB) | Close-only, site and API | No Gambling Commission licence. On 4 February 2026 the Commission's director of strategy wrote that prediction markets resemble betting exchanges and would need a betting intermediary licence. No site-blocking order. |
| France (FR) | Close-only, site and API | Strongest action so far. The ANJ ordered internet providers to block the website on 16 July 2026; Polymarket said it would challenge the order in court. |
| Canada — Ontario (CA-ON) | Close-only, site and API | Settlement with the Ontario Securities Commission approved April 2025 over the binary options ban: $225,000 plus US$22,966.75 paid, a two-year trading prohibition, and terms of use that must state Ontario residents may not trade. |
| Canada — BC, Alberta, Quebec | Close-only, site and API | On Polymarket's list as provinces, not as a national ban. No separate provincial enforcement action found — Not confirmed. |
| Netherlands (NL) | Close-only on the site; API not restricted | The Kansspelautoriteit issued a penalty order on 20 January 2026, threatening €420,000 per week up to a €840,000 ceiling. |
| Ireland, Japan, Malta (IE, JP, MT) | Close-only on the site; API not restricted | Not confirmed which authority prompted each listing. |
| Belgium (BE) | Close-only, site and API | Carried on the Gaming Commission blacklist for operating without authorisation. |
| Also close-only | Close-only, site and API | Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Poland, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Russia, Belarus, Venezuela and others — more than thirty places in total. Most were added after a gambling or securities regulator called event contracts wagers. |
| United States (US) | Close-only on polymarket.com — but a separate licensed venue exists | Polymarket bought the CFTC-licensed exchange QCEX for $112m in July 2025, and QCX LLC trades as Polymarket US under CFTC designation. A filing of 28 April 2026 asks the CFTC to let US users onto the main offshore exchange too. |
| Portugal (PT) | Not on the published geoblock list as of 2026-09-12 | SRIJ was reported to have ordered the platform out within 48 hours in January 2026, after more than €103m traded on the presidential election. The gap between that report and the list is Not confirmed. |
| Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk | Blocked outright — no new orders and existing positions cannot be closed | OFAC sanctions, not gambling law. This is the only state where money can be stranded. |
🧱 Why the UK lands in close-only
Two UK regulators could claim this product, and Polymarket satisfies neither. The Gambling Commission's position is that betting on a real-world outcome is betting, whatever the wrapper: mechanically, a market where users take opposite sides of an outcome with each other looks like a betting exchange, and a betting exchange needs a betting intermediary licence. In a written answer on 16 February 2026, Baroness Twycross confirmed that a prediction market operating in Great Britain would need a Gambling Commission licence and would be classed as a betting intermediary.
The second door is financial. A Polymarket share settles at exactly $1.00 or $0.00, which is the shape of a binary option. The FCA has banned the sale of binary options to retail investors since 2019. So contracts on financial or certain weather events hit the FCA's ban, and contracts on politics and sport hit the Gambling Commission's licensing requirement. An operator wanting the full Polymarket catalogue in the UK needs clearance from both.
This is why the UK restriction looks milder than France's and is not milder in effect. France ordered the site itself blocked at the internet-provider level in July 2026. The UK has no such order — the site loads fine from London — but the trading screen will not take a new order. Close-only is applied by Polymarket to comply, not by a UK court.
One boundary worth knowing: the Gambling Commission's remit is Great Britain — England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland was left out of the Gambling Act 2005 and still runs on the Betting, Gaming, Lotteries and Amusements (Northern Ireland) Order 1985, with district councils licensing premises. Polymarket's block does not follow that line; it is applied to the country code GB, which covers the whole United Kingdom.
🔍 How to check for yourself
- 📄 Read Polymarket's own restriction list at docs.polymarket.com/api-reference/geoblock. It is published as country codes, so look for GB, FR and CA-ON. This is the list that actually decides what your screen does, and it changes.
- 🏛️ Search the Gambling Commission's public register at gamblingcommission.gov.uk for the operator name. No entry means no licence — and the register is the only place that settles it.
- ⚖️ For a country's action, go to the regulator, not a news summary. France's ANJ publishes its blocking decisions; Ontario's settlement is on the Capital Markets Tribunal and OSC sites with the figures in it.
❓ FAQ
- Is it illegal for me to use Polymarket from the UK?
- Section 33 of the Gambling Act 2005 puts the offence on the operator that provides unlicensed gambling to customers in Great Britain, not on the customer. It is still a dead end in practice, because Polymarket blocks new orders from UK users.
- Can I use a VPN to get around the UK block?
- Polymarket's Terms of Use prohibit it, and the stated consequence is close-only mode or account closure. Reported cases include funds locked for weeks during a compliance review.
- Is Polymarket banned across all of Canada?
- No. Polymarket's own geoblock list names four provinces — Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec — and only Ontario has a regulatory action on record, an April 2025 settlement with the Ontario Securities Commission.
- Why is France treated differently from the UK?
- France went a step further: on 16 July 2026 its gambling regulator ANJ ordered French internet providers to block the Polymarket website itself, not only trading. No equivalent site-blocking order against Polymarket is on record in the UK.
- Could Polymarket become legal in the UK later?
- It would need a Gambling Commission licence, most likely as a betting intermediary, plus FCA clearance for any financial event contracts. The FCA was reported in September 2026 to be weighing whether to ease its 2019 retail ban on binary options, but that ban still stands.
🔗 Related
Checked 2026-09-12 against Polymarket's published geoblock list and the regulators named above. Rules here change by the month, so re-check the two sources before acting. This is information, not legal advice — and nothing here is a recommendation to trade.