Spain blocks Polymarket and Kalshi for lacking gambling licences

Spain has temporarily blocked the US-based prediction platforms Polymarket and Kalshi for operating within its borders without a gambling licence, according to a directive published Tuesday in the official state gazette by the Consumer Rights Ministry, which oversees the country’s gambling regulator. The suspension, expected to last three to four months, comes as Madrid’s watchdog opens a formal investigation into both companies for allegedly violating Spanish law requiring online operators that accept money wagers on uncertain outcomes to hold administrative authorisation.

The ministry’s order highlights the absence of technical and consumer safeguards typically required of licensed operators, including identity verification and access controls designed to keep minors off the platforms. This move positions Spain as the latest European jurisdiction to classify prediction markets as a form of unlicensed betting.

France’s national gaming authority blocked Polymarket in late 2024, ruling its operations amounted to illegal gambling. That same year, Belgium, Poland, and Italy issued similar bans. The Dutch gambling regulator, KSA, threatened Polymarket with fines of €420,000 per week if it continued serving Dutch users without a licence, marking the largest single enforcement threat from a European regulator to date. There is no harmonised EU framework for event contracts, so each member state applies its own gambling or financial rules.

The Spanish enforcement aligns with a broader international crackdown. On 21 May, India’s electronics and IT ministry issued a formal blocking order against Polymarket, instructing internet service providers to cut network-level access, with a similar order for Kalshi reportedly prepared within days. India formally reclassified prediction markets as “money games” under online gaming rules effective 1 May. Brazil and Indonesia have also issued bans in recent weeks. The Spanish suspension is the third European-level enforcement action of 2026, following a Netherlands escalation in February and a Belgian referral in March.

Polymarket and Kalshi sit at the centre of an unusually fast-growing category. Together, the two platforms processed several billion dollars in trading volume around the 2024 US presidential election and have since expanded into sports, geopolitics, and corporate-event contracts. Economist Robin Hanson, who developed much of the theoretical case for prediction markets, has argued in recent months that the platforms are functioning largely as intended, even as both companies move to ban insider-style trading on news that betting parties helped produce.

The legal landscape in Europe and the US continues to diverge sharply. Kalshi operates as a CFTC-regulated event-contracts venue in the US and has positioned itself, with some success, as a financial market rather than a gambling product. European regulators, however, have shown little appetite for that distinction. The Spanish ministry’s position, in effect, is that a wager on an uncertain future outcome is gambling regardless of how it is structured behind the scenes, a logic now repeated across Paris, Brussels, Warsaw, Rome, and The Hague.

Neither Polymarket nor Kalshi had issued a public response by the time of publication. The Spanish probe is scheduled to conclude in late summer.