Polymarket – Presidential election 2027: $128 million staked, blocked in France

As of September 6, 2026, the market “ Next French presidential election » from Polymarket displays $128,026,232 in volume traded, according to the platform’s public data. It is one of the most active political markets in the world, and it concerns a vote which will not take place until April 2027. At the same time, this market is inaccessible from France by legal means: the National Gaming Authority ordered its blocking on July 16, 2026. A financial object built on the blockchain, a real French audience, and a regulator who qualifies it as illegal gambling: the subject is not the race, it is the mechanics.

What is Polymarket, and why is it a crypto object?

Polymarket is a decentralized prediction market where users trade binary contracts on real events, settled in USDC on the Polygon blockchain. Every market is a yes or no question; part of the good result is worth 1 dollar at resolution, part of the bad result is worth zero. The price of a share, between $0 and $1, is the probability that the market collectively assigns to the event.

Concretely, a “yes” share quoted at $0.27 reflects an implicit probability of 27%. Prices move in real time according to supply and demand in an order book, without a bookmaker setting the odds. The settlement of transactions is done by smart contracts, the resolution is ensured by a decentralized oracle, UMAwhich verifies the outcome of the event against data sources before automatically paying winners in USDC. It is this architecture, stablecoin, public blockchain, self-custodial wallet, oracle, which places Polymarket in crypto and not in traditional sports betting.

How much was bet on the 2027 presidential election?

As of September 6, 2026, the volume traded on the French presidential market reached $128,026,232, according to the public market page on Polymarket. This figure has been accumulated since the opening of the market; it measures total exchanges, not amounts currently committed.

The progression is rapid: the same market exceeded 111 million dollars in mid-July 2026, and a count from May 2026 placed all the markets on French politics around 80 million dollars aggregated.

The continuously listed presidential market lists several dozen potential candidates. As a comparison of the scale reached by the platform in 2026, the market on the 2028 US presidential candidate exceeded $1 billion in volume, and that of the 2026 World Cup more than 600 million.

What the odds say, and why you should read them with caution

In mid-July 2026, market prices placed a tight trio at the top at around 26 to 27%: Marine Le Pen and Édouard Philippe close to 27%, Jordan Bardella around 26%, according to the odds recorded on Polymarket at that date. The gap is small, and the market then estimated that no scenario exceeded one chance in three.

These figures are prices, not verified forecasts. They reflect what anonymous traders agree to pay at a given moment, and they move with the news: the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal in July 2026 on the ineligibility of Marine Le Pen caused its market price to move, just like the campaign announcements. A market price quickly integrates information, but it does not have a guaranteed predictive value, and it can be distorted by low liquidity or by a few large players. It is a feeling thermometer, to be handled as such.

Why is Polymarket blocked in France?

On July 16, 2026, the president of theNational Gaming Authority ordered French Internet service providers to block access to the Polymarket site, on the grounds that it promotes an illegal gambling offering. Under French law, prediction sites do not have any approval and are considered illegal gambling, which the ANJ publicly recalled in February 2026.

Several factors weighed in. The ANJ considers the real-time display of odds on the home page as a vector of advertising for an unauthorized activity, which in France constitutes a criminal offense punishable by a fine of 100,000 euros. The regulator also points to the absence of a KYC system, the mandatory identity verification in the regulated world of gambling, which prevents any age control, any tax tracing and any verification of the probity of those involved.

Finally, the integrity of certain markets was called into question: bets on the weather raised suspicions of hacking of weather probes, which led to the opening of an investigation on May 4, 2026 by the anti-cybercrime section of the Paris prosecutor’s office, entrusted to the Anti-Cybercrime Office.

Is the blocking effective, and is Polymarket contesting it?

The blocking targets the website, and its technical scope is limited. Several media outlets noted that the day after the measure, if access to the classic site was cut from France without a circumvention tool, the Polymarket mobile application remained accessible there. The geoblocking system for transactions put in place by the platform in November 2024, after an initial formal notice, had itself been circumvented in practice.

Polymarket reacted on the legal ground. On August 22, 2026, the platform announced that it had taken legal action in France to challenge the blocking decided by the ANJ, without specifying at this stage the exact form of the appeal. The case is therefore open, and its outcome will determine whether the blockage is confirmed, adjusted or lifted.

France is not alone: ​​a European trend

The French case is part of a continent-wide movement of restrictions. Spain blocked Polymarket and its competitor Kalshi in May 2026 in the name of its gambling legislation. According to the ANJ press release, Germany, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Switzerland, Greece, Ukraine and the Czech Republic have also restricted or blocked prediction markets on their territory.

This diversity of approaches is due to the hybrid nature of these platforms, halfway between the financial derivative market and gambling. In the United States, Polymarket followed the opposite path: after purchasing a platform approved by the futures market regulator, the CFTC, it returned to American traders in December 2025 under supervision, with access that varies depending on the state. The same product is therefore treated as a regulated market on one side of the Atlantic and as an illegal game on the other.

The next verifiable deadline is not electoral but judicial: the response from French administrative justice to the appeal filed by Polymarket on August 22, 2026 will say whether the blockage holds. Until then, the market continues to quote an April 2027 election in dollars and on the blockchain, while it remains, under French law, an unauthorized offer. No hearing has been made public at this stage: the next verifiable information will come from the judicial calendar, not from the platform.