France has ordered internet providers to block Polymarket, moving beyond the partial geoblocking that had failed to keep French users away from the fast-growing prediction platform. The decision turns regulatory scrutiny that began in late 2024 into a direct test of whether national gambling laws can contain borderless, cryptocurrency-based markets.
The Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ) said its president issued the blocking order on 16 July, with the announcement published the following day. “This website, which has a particularly large audience, promotes illegal gambling services,” it said.
The regulator said Polymarket’s operator, Adventure One QSS Inc, had introduced geoblocking after an initial warning, preventing financial transactions from France. In practice, the ANJ said, users found ways around it.
From warning to enforcement
French scrutiny of Polymarket began as the platform drew wider attention during the 2024 US presidential election. That year, the ANJ began examining whether its activities complied with French law, after reports that a French trader had made about $50m from wagers linked to Donald Trump’s victory.
By February this year, the regulator’s position had hardened. “Prediction sites are not authorised in France and are considered illegal gambling sites,” the ANJ said. It argued that the trading-style language used by such platforms could give users an “illusion of competence”, while continuous access, few effective limits and weak identity checks heightened the risk of addiction and manipulation.
The July order also targets promotion. The ANJ said Polymarket’s homepage, with live prices attached to elections, sport, weather and other events, amounted to a major advertising channel for an unauthorised gambling service. Under French law, promoting an illegal gambling site, or publicly distributing its odds to promote it, can carry a fine of €100,000.
Traffic figures help explain the tougher approach. Citing Similarweb, the regulator said Polymarket recorded 578,751 visits from France in June, including 205,057 unique visitors. Those numbers suggest the earlier transaction block had done little to curb the platform’s reach.
Weather bets come under scrutiny
Concerns about Polymarket have also extended beyond its legal status. French prosecutors are investigating whether weather data used to settle bets on the platform may have been manipulated.
In April, unusual temperature spikes at Charles de Gaulle airport coincided with high-value Polymarket wagers. Météo-France said there were “physical findings on one of our instruments” and filed a complaint. The Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime section opened an investigation on 4 May, assigning it to France’s anti-cybercrime office.
The ANJ did not say who was responsible for the anomalies, or whether they were intended to affect the outcome of the bets. But the case highlighted a potential vulnerability in markets that rely on a single source of real-world data: if that source is compromised, the result, and the payout, can be affected.
The ANJ also criticised the absence of adequate know-your-customer checks for users accessing Polymarket in France and Europe. That concern also raises broader questions about user identification, age verification and accountability.
Speaking more broadly about the ANJ’s regulatory approach, its director general, Pauline Hot, told SiGMA News last October: “We have to take into account public health, with player protection at the heart of our mission.” She also said gambling should not be treated as an ordinary consumer product. The remarks reflect France’s relatively restrictive model, under which only a limited range of licensed online betting and gaming is permitted, while online casinos remain illegal.
A European line is taking shape
France is joining a widening European campaign rather than acting alone. Belgium blacklisted Polymarket in January 2025. Hungary and Portugal took action in January 2026, the Netherlands threatened penalties in February, and Spain ordered precautionary blocking in May. The ANJ’s July statement also listed Germany, Romania, Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Italy, Ukraine and the Czech Republic among countries that have restricted prediction markets.
Yet enforcement remains uneven. VPNs, mirror domains and crypto payments can blunt national blocking orders. Polymarket’s scale makes the contest harder. Its market on the winner of the 2026 World Cup had approached $2bn in trading volume by 9 June.
Other European jurisdictions, however, are pursuing a different approach. Malta is considering how prediction markets could be brought within a clear legal framework, while Gibraltar has introduced dedicated rules covering consumer information, market manipulation and financial crime. The argument for regulation is that licensing can impose safeguards on operators and protect players more effectively than leaving the market to offshore companies that are not authorised locally but may still be accessed by determined users who find ways around national blocking measures.
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