France’s gambling regulator has ordered internet service providers to cut off access to Polymarket, ruling that the prediction market has operated in the country without a licence and treating it as an illegal gambling site rather than a financial trading venue.
The Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) issued the blocking order on July 16, 2026, after a full review of Polymarket’s service in France. The president of the ANJ signed the decision, which requires ISPs to restrict access from French territory to the platform. Polymarket denies that it breaks French gambling law.
Why the ANJ escalated to an ISP block
The block is the second time France has moved against Polymarket. In November 2024, after scrutiny of a French trader who placed large bets on the outcome of the US presidential election, the ANJ banned financial transactions between French accounts and the platform. Polymarket then restricted access for French IP addresses.
Those measures did not hold. The ANJ said traffic from French internet addresses kept climbing despite the transaction ban, reaching 578,751 visits in June 2026. The regulator said prediction platforms and their users relied on virtual private networks (VPNs) to get around the earlier restrictions, while Polymarket kept its homepage reachable so visitors could still view its odds and markets.
From the ANJ’s perspective, keeping that content visible amounted to promotion of an unauthorised gambling site. The regulator classified the violations as advertising for illegal gambling, a criminal offence under French law.
A criminal-offence framing, not just a licensing gap
The ANJ set out its position in a statement:
Advertising, by any means whatsoever, in favour of an unauthorised betting or gambling site is a criminal offence.
The authority added that breaching French gambling law can carry a fine of up to €100,000 (roughly $114,000). By defining Polymarket’s activity as gambling rather than trading, the ANJ places the platform under the same enforcement regime it applies to unlicensed sportsbooks and casinos, and exposes anyone who promotes it to criminal liability.
That distinction sits at the centre of the wider dispute over prediction markets. Operators including Polymarket and its rival Kalshi describe their event contracts as financial products and their users as traders. A growing number of European regulators reject that framing and treat the products as bets that fall under national gambling rules.
France joins a widening European crackdown
The order places France alongside several other European jurisdictions that have moved against Polymarket in recent months. Germany, Italy and Spain have all responded to the platform’s spread, and Spain blocked both Kalshi and Polymarket in a licensing crackdown earlier in 2026.
The response across the continent has not been uniform. Gibraltar has pushed to accommodate prediction markets while EU rivals hold back, and Malta is weighing a first EU framework for the vertical. The split leaves operators facing a patchwork of legal treatment, licensed or tolerated in some markets and blocked as illegal gambling in others.
Part of a broader enforcement drive
The Polymarket order is one piece of a larger French campaign against unlicensed gambling. The ANJ said it issued blocking orders covering 1,290 URLs in 2025, a figure it cited to show the scale of its enforcement activity against sites operating without authorisation.
The block’s practical effect is still untested. VPN use already helped French players reach the platform under the earlier transaction ban, and the same tools can route around ISP-level restrictions. Whether the order meaningfully cuts French traffic, or simply pushes it further underground, will show up in the ANJ’s next read of the numbers.
Source: Autorité Nationale des Jeux
