Can Europeans use Kalshi?

Not everywhere. Kalshi is open in roughly 140 countries, but its Member Agreement names more than fifty restricted jurisdictions by name — including the UK, France, Italy, Belgium and Poland. If your country is on that list, the platform won't onboard you regardless of what Polymarket allows.

Can Europeans use Polymarket?

It depends on your country, and the list has been growing. Polymarket geo-blocks at the IP level where a regulator has specifically moved against it — Portugal and Hungary both blocked it in January 2026, and nine European countries signed a joint declaration against unlicensed prediction market platforms in June 2026.

Is there a legal way for a European to run Polymarket-Kalshi arbitrage?

Only from a country that clears both platforms' restrictions at once, since the strategy requires a funded account on each. That overlap is narrower than either platform's individual list suggests, and it keeps changing — check both immediately before funding an account, not months in advance.

Can Europeans Trade Prediction Markets?

Short answer: it depends entirely on which European country you're in, and Polymarket and Kalshi restrict Europeans in almost opposite ways. Kalshi's Member Agreement explicitly bars traders in the UK, France, Italy, Belgium and Poland, among more than fifty listed jurisdictions, even though the exchange is open in roughly 140 countries overall. Polymarket, by contrast, is open by default almost everywhere except where a regulator has specifically blocked it — and through 2026 that list of blocked European countries has been growing.

For a European trader, the practical question isn't "is this legal" in the abstract — it's "which of these two platforms, if either, will actually let me open an account from where I live." For cross-platform arbitrage specifically, the answer has to be yes on both at once, which is a narrower set of countries than either platform's own restricted list suggests on its own.

Kalshi: regulated, but its restricted list hits Europe hardest

Kalshi is a CFTC-designated contract market — the same regulatory category as CME and CBOE — and it explicitly permits programmatic API trading, which is what makes it attractive for an arbitrage strategy in the first place. But its Member Agreement names more than fifty restricted jurisdictions, and unlike platforms that quietly exclude a handful of sanctioned countries and leave the rest open, Kalshi's list includes several major European economies by name: the UK, France, Italy, Belgium and Poland among them. If you're in one of those countries, the platform simply won't onboard you, regardless of what Polymarket allows.

Polymarket: back in the US, retreating from parts of Europe

Polymarket took the opposite regulatory path. It settled with the CFTC in 2022 over offering unregistered swaps to US persons and geo-blocked US IP addresses for three years — then re-entered the United States in late 2025 after acquiring the CFTC-licensed exchange QCEX. For Europeans, the direction of travel has run the other way: restrictions that used to sit only on the US side of the Atlantic have started appearing on the European side instead.

Why European regulators started blocking prediction markets

The shift happened fast. Portugal's gambling regulator, the SRIJ, ordered ISP-level blocking of Polymarket in January 2026, after roughly €103 million had reportedly traded on its presidential election market. Hungary followed with its own block the same month. By June 2026, regulators from nine European countries had signed a joint declaration specifically targeting unlicensed prediction market platforms — treating the model as a form of gambling that falls outside their existing licensing frameworks, rather than as a financial market they're comfortable leaving unregulated.

The pattern worth noticing: this isn't one country making an isolated call. It's a coordinated regulatory position spreading across the EU, and it moves faster than any single article can track. A country that's open today isn't guaranteed to stay open, and a joint declaration like the one from June 2026 tends to be followed by individual country actions rather than stand as a one-off statement.

So which European countries can actually trade both?

There's no stable published overlap — both lists change, and neither platform maintains a live "blocked in Europe" map you can bookmark. What you can do is check the two things that actually determine access:

Kalshi's Member Agreement — it names its restricted jurisdictions explicitly. If your country is on that list, no workaround changes the fact that you'd be violating the platform's terms.
Polymarket's current geo-blocking — enforced at the IP level in the countries that have moved against it, and expanding as more regulators act.

Check both, for your specific country, immediately before you fund an account — not once, months before you plan to trade. See our full legal breakdown for how each platform is regulated in more depth.

What about alternatives to Polymarket and Kalshi?

There isn't a clean substitute that replicates the same structure — a global, liquid, binary event-contract market with an open trading API — for a European trader blocked from one or both platforms. Regulated European betting exchanges exist locally, but they typically operate under sports-betting or gambling licenses rather than the derivatives framework Kalshi trades under, and they don't share Polymarket's or Kalshi's market catalogue or liquidity. If you're evaluating an alternative, the honest starting point is to check exactly what it's licensed to offer in your own country — a platform that's legal for sports betting doesn't automatically carry the same legal footing for arbitrage-style trading on event outcomes.

What this means for cross-platform arbitrage specifically

Arbitrage between Polymarket and Kalshi only works if you can hold funded accounts on both — the strategy is buying YES on one and NO on the other for the same event, so a single working leg is worthless on its own. That makes the European access question sharper than it is for a directional trader who only needs one platform: you need the overlap of both restricted lists to be empty for your country, and that overlap keeps shrinking as more European regulators act. Before building any strategy around this pair, confirm your own eligibility on both venues — not just one.

Getting started if you're eligible

If your country clears both platforms, the mechanics of the strategy don't change based on where you live — you're still looking for the same event priced differently on each venue, buying both sides, and locking in the spread. Arbitrage Agent scans thousands of markets for exactly that gap and runs in dry-run mode first, so you can see real detected spreads before deploying capital. Check the plans once you've confirmed you're eligible on both platforms.

Key terms: Cross-Market Arbitrage · Spread · Dry Run (Paper Trading)

Can Europeans Trade Prediction Markets? Polymarket, Kalshi & Alternatives (2026)