A Polymarket security incident at a third-party provider forced the prediction market to pause trading on its international platform for about an hour on 29 October 2026, the company said. Trading resumed the same afternoon, and Polymarket said it will fully reimburse all affected traders.
The Polymarket security incident
Polymarket said it stopped trading “out of an abundance of caution” once it had identified the issue on its international platform and fixed it.
After trading restarted, Polymarket wrote on X: “We’ll make this right and are fully reimbursing all affected traders.” Anyone affected “will be made whole”, the company said. It has referred the incident to a law enforcement agency in the United Kingdom.
We’ve identified & fixed an issue impacting our international platform, Polymarket.com. One of our 3rd party providers was compromised, and we have referred this to relevant law enforcement.
Anyone who has been impacted will be made whole.
Out of an abundance of caution, we have temporarily halted trading & are working to bring the platform back online.
— Polymarket Traders (@PolymarketTrade) October 29, 2026
The third-party provider
The incident has been linked to DebugBear, a UK-based company that sells website performance-monitoring tools, according to the Associated Press report on 29 October. Polymarket has not named the provider.
DebugBear said on X that it was “impacted by an ongoing security incident” and told clients using one of its products to remove its embed code from their websites. Its own website was offline on the afternoon of 29 October.
Polymarket in Europe
The halt hit the international platform, the version of Polymarket open to users outside the US. European regulators have split on it this year: in May, Spain blocked Kalshi and Polymarket in a licensing crackdown, while Gibraltar is pushing for prediction markets to be licensed.
Security has also reached regulators. In March, the Malta Gaming Authority confirmed a breach of one of its systems after a German researcher claimed a hack.
Next steps
Polymarket has not set a timetable for the reimbursements, and the case now sits with UK law enforcement.
Source: Polymarket
