Polymarket - 2027 Presidential Election: $128M Bet, Blocked in France

As of September 6, 2026, the “Next French presidential election” market on Polymarket shows $128,026,232 in traded volume, according to the platform’s public data. It is one of the most active political markets in the world, and it concerns a vote that will not take place until April 2027. At the same time, this market is legally inaccessible from France: the National Gaming Authority ordered its blocking on July 16, 2026. A financial instrument built on the blockchain, a real French audience, and a regulator who qualifies it as illegal gambling: the issue 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. Each market is a yes-or-no question; a share of the correct outcome is worth 1 dollar at resolution, a share of the wrong outcome is worth zero. The price of a share, between 0 and 1 dollar, corresponds to the probability that the market collectively assigns to the event.

Concretely, a “yes” share priced at 0.27 dollars translates an implied probability of 27%. Prices move in real time according to supply and demand in an order book, with no bookmaker setting the odds. Transaction settlement is done by smart contracts, resolution is ensured by a decentralized oracle, UMA, which verifies the event outcome against data sources before automatically paying winners in USDC. This architecture—stablecoin, public blockchain, self-custody wallet, oracle—places Polymarket within crypto and not traditional sports betting.

How much has been bet on the 2027 presidential election?

As of September 6, 2026, the traded volume on the French presidential market reaches $128,026,232, according to the public market page on Polymarket. This figure is cumulative since the market opened; it measures total trades, not the amounts currently staked.

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

The continuously traded presidential market lists several dozen potential candidates. For scale comparison reached by the platform in 2026, the market on the 2028 U.S. presidential candidate surpassed one billion dollars in volume, and the one for the 2026 World Cup over 600 million.

What do the odds say, and why must they be read with caution?

In mid-July 2026, market prices placed a tight trio around 26 to 27%: Marine Le Pen and Édouard Philippe near 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 a one-in-three chance.

These figures are prices, not verified forecasts. They reflect what anonymous traders are willing to pay at a given moment, and they move with news: the Paris Court of Appeal’s July 2026 decision on Marine Le Pen’s ineligibility shifted her market price, as did campaign announcements. A market price quickly incorporates information, but it has no guaranteed predictive value, and it can be distorted by low liquidity or a few large players. It is a sentiment thermometer to handle as such.

Why is Polymarket blocked in France?

On July 16, 2026, the president of the National Gaming Authority ordered French internet service providers to block access to the Polymarket site, on grounds that it promotes an illegal offer of gambling and betting. Under French law, prediction sites have no license and are treated as illegal gambling, a point the ANJ publicly recalled as early as February 2026.

Several factors weighed in. The ANJ considers the real-time display of odds on the homepage as a vector of advertising for an unauthorized activity, which constitutes a criminal offense punishable by a 100,000 euro fine in France. The regulator also points to the lack of KYC, the identity verification mandatory in the regulated gambling universe, which prevents any age control, tax tracing, or probity verification of the players. 

Finally, the integrity of certain markets was questioned: bets on the weather raised suspicion of meteorological sensor hacking, which led to the opening of an investigation on May 4, 2026, by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, entrusted to the Anti-Cybercrime Office.

Is the blocking effective, and does Polymarket contest it?

The blocking targets the website, and its technical reach is limited. Several media reported that the day after the measure, while access to the classic site was cut from France without circumvention tools, the Polymarket mobile app remained accessible. The geoblocking of transactions set up by the platform since November 2024, after an initial formal notice, had itself been practically circumvented.

Polymarket responded on the legal front. On August 22, 2026, the platform announced it had taken legal action in French courts to contest the blocking decided by the ANJ, without specifying the exact form of the appeal at this stage. The case is therefore open, and its outcome will determine if the blocking is confirmed, adjusted, or lifted.

France is not alone: a European trend

The French case fits within a continental restriction movement. Spain blocked Polymarket and its competitor Kalshi in May 2026 under its gambling laws. According to the ANJ’s statement, 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 stems from the hybrid nature of these platforms, halfway between derivative financial markets and gambling. In the United States, Polymarket followed the opposite path: after acquiring a platform licensed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), it returned to American traders in December 2025 under supervision, with access varying by state. The same product is thus treated as a regulated market on one side of the Atlantic and as illegal gambling on the other.

The next verifiable deadline is not electoral but judicial: the response of the French administrative court to Polymarket’s appeal filed on August 22, 2026, will say whether the blocking stands. Until then, the market continues to quote an April 2027 vote in dollars and on the blockchain, while remaining, under French law, an unauthorized offer. No hearing has been made public so far: the next verifiable information will come from the judicial calendar, not the platform.