France’s gambling regulator has ordered internet service providers to block access to crypto prediction market platform Polymarket, saying an earlier geo-fencing approach that only restricted trading was still being bypassed in practice.
The Autorité Nationale des Jeux (ANJ) issued the order on July 17. It said that although previous restrictions were meant to stop financial transactions from France, the Polymarket website was still promoting unauthorized gambling services. Citing Similarweb data, the regulator said the site recorded 578,751 visits from France and 205,057 unique French visitors in June 2026.
Those figures help explain why French authorities moved beyond asking the operator to restrict trades and instead told domestic access providers to block the main website.
The shift also exposes a limit in the claim that onchain markets can sit outside national jurisdiction. Settlement may take place on a blockchain, but mainstream users still depend on websites and operator-controlled systems to find markets and submit orders.
From trade limits to a website block
This was not France’s first intervention. In November 2024, ANJ said it had contacted Adventure One QSS Inc., the Panama-registered company the regulator identified as Polymarket’s operator. At that stage, ANJ had determined that the service may amount to unauthorized gambling under French law. Adventure One then put geo-blocking in place, and the regulator initially said the measure prevented betting activity from France.
ANJ’s July 2026 notice cast the new order as the next step in the same case. According to the notice, the previous controls blocked financial transactions originating in France, but in practice led to circumvention, while the Polymarket homepage continued to show live odds to a large French audience.
Controls that reject new trades may reduce direct participation. The site’s role in attracting users and distributing betting prices, though, remained intact. ANJ said the homepage’s constantly updated odds made it a primary channel for promoting what it considers illegal activity.
How ANJ framed the case
French law gives the regulator a route to act against that interface. After formal notice and a response period, Article 61 allows ANJ to order access providers to block specific illegal online interfaces and require search engines or directories to stop referencing them. The regulator said it used that process to block 1,290 URLs linked to illegal gambling in 2025.
The result is a broader distribution sanction. France is no longer relying on the platform to decide which trades to reject. It can also pressure the domestic networks and discovery services that connect a mainstream audience to the platform.
ANJ based its case on gambling law rather than on crypto use. Its 2024 notice said the intervention concerned the broader gambling character of the service.
That reasoning was expanded in a February 2026 policy statement. The regulator classified prediction markets as unauthorized gambling in France, saying they combine persistent accessibility and viral distribution while offering fewer safeguards than licensed operators. ANJ cited addiction and integrity risks, along with the absence of identity and age checks, as reasons to restrict access.
Under that view, a homepage displaying odds is not neutral. Live pricing has a product-marketing function, and the identity controls, age checks and integrity systems around the market help determine whether authorities see the service as acceptable for local users.
The order hits the service layer, not Polygon contracts
Polymarket’s own documentation draws a clear line between distribution and settlement. Its current geo-restrictions page lists France as closed-only on the frontend and API. Users in that category can close existing positions but cannot open new ones. The platform hosts its IP eligibility checks on polymarket.com, showing that geographic access is enforced through infrastructure controlled by the operator.
At the same time, Polymarket describes its central limit order book as a hybrid system. Orders are matched offchain, and completed trades are then atomically settled through trading contracts on Polygon. According to the platform, the trading flow is non-custodial.
France’s order targets access to the website and service interface, not Polymarket’s separate settlement layer on Polygon. Nothing in the order indicates that France disabled the contracts themselves. Its practical leverage sits at the layer that makes the product available and discoverable for ordinary users.
Reaching a broad audience still depends on a recognizable frontend, reliable order submission, offchain matching, geographic eligibility checks and a compliance posture that allows users and distribution partners to interact with the product.
ISP blocking disrupts that commercial path. Onchain settlement does not make distribution permissionless. The front door remains a place where national regulators can exert influence.
Europe remains a patchwork of national actions
Europe’s response still looks like a collection of country-level measures rather than a single EU-wide ban. ANJ identified 12 European jurisdictions that it said had restricted or blocked prediction markets: Germany, Belgium, Romania, Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine and the Czech Republic.
Those actions are not identical. Spain offers a recent example. On May 26, 2026, Spain’s gambling regulator ordered blocks on the Polymarket and Kalshi websites as an interim measure while litigation proceeds over possible unlicensed gambling operations. Spanish authorities highlighted licensing, identity verification, controls on minor access and self-exclusion protections.
That patchwork leaves prediction markets with difficult operating choices. Stronger geo-restrictions may lower immediate regulatory risk, but the French case suggests that trade-only limits may not satisfy authorities that treat visible odds and audience reach as part of the gambling service itself.
Broader identity checks and consumer protections could address some of those concerns. Licensing, however, would require platforms to fit legal categories that may differ from one country to another.
The near-term test is whether Polymarket changes its frontend controls, regulatory posture or distribution model as more European jurisdictions classify prediction markets as gambling while the platform tries to preserve mainstream access.
France has already shown where its leverage sits. If regulators can make the website harder to reach and raise the compliance cost of serving domestic users through operator-controlled access and distribution layers, they do not need to alter the settlement logic of the onchain market.