Polymarket plans a legal challenge to France’s nationwide block of its website, arguing the regulator wrongly treated an information source as illegal gambling.
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Posted July 23, 2026 at 6:27 am EST.
Polymarket said Wednesday it intends to challenge France’s decision to block its website, calling the country’s gaming regulator’s move sudden and vowing to fight it through the French legal system. The Autorité Nationale des Jeux, or ANJ, had ordered French internet providers on July 16 to cut off access to the prediction market, which it treats as an unlicensed gambling operator rather than a financial trading venue.
The company said it was “surprised” by the decision. Polymarket said it had already stopped French users from trading in November 2024 and had kept the site available only as an information source. Barring the entire website, it argued, targets people who visit simply to see the probabilities of real-world events, not to place trades.
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The ANJ in its order cited 578,751 visits from French users in June alone, despite the 2024 trading ban, along with a complaint from the national weather service over a tampered temperature sensor tied to weather-based bets, which prompted a Paris prosecutor’s investigation.
The ANJ reclassified prediction markets as illegal gambling in February, citing the absence of stake limits and self-exclusion tools.
Polymarket said in its Wednesday statement that it is neither a bookmaker nor a house, since its prices are set by peer-to-peer trading rather than by an operator taking the opposite side of bets, and it holds no position in any market.
Polymarket is restricted in more than 30 jurisdictions, and European regulators have been tightening the screws: Spain temporarily blocked both Polymarket and rival Kalshi in May, and the EU’s securities watchdog recently warned that prediction contracts could fall under the bloc’s ban on retail binary options. The picture is different in the United States, where Polymarket returned late last year under a CFTC-regulated structure.
Related Listen: DEX in the City: How Kalshi’s Rough Week Became a Federal Fight for Prediction Markets
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
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