Kalshi Italy: Blocked in the Same July 2026 Sweep

Kalshi Italy does not need a chapter of nuance the way some of this site’s other prediction-market country pages do. In July 2026, Italy’s gambling authority put Kalshi on the same blacklist as Polymarket, in the same 293-domain sweep, with the same deadline. Whatever separated the two platforms in other countries, Italy treated them as the same problem.

The Agency That Blocks Gambling Sites Also Collects Customs Duties

The Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli — ADM — is an unusual regulator by design: the same national agency that runs Italy’s customs service also holds the state gambling monopoly and the power to blacklist sites. That blacklist power comes from Article 102 of Decree-Law No. 104/2020, written originally for unlicensed sportsbooks and offshore casinos, letting the ADM order Italian internet providers to cut off a site’s access without a court ruling first. In July 2026 the ADM used it on 293 new domains at once. Kalshi and Polymarket were both on that list, with ISPs required to complete the blocks by July 27, 2026.

Polymarket Already Ran This Loop Once

Polymarket’s road to the July 2026 blacklist had a detour Kalshi’s did not. The ADM first blocked Polymarket in October 2025, then reversed the block two months later after Polymarket challenged it before the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, known as the TAR. The case closed without a ruling on the merits — Polymarket told the court it no longer had an interest in pursuing it, having agreed to switch off real-money trading for Italian users. That arrangement held for a while. It did not hold permanently: the ADM put Polymarket back on the blacklist in July 2026, judging that the underlying violations had continued. Kalshi skipped the detour entirely and landed on the same list without a first-round reversal of its own.

Is Kalshi Legal in Italy? What Italian Law Actually Says

Italy regulates essentially all gambling — physical and online — through ADM concessions, and reset that licensing framework in November 2025: a unified nine-year remote-gambling concession regime, roughly €7 million in entry costs per license, and a rule limiting each concessionaire to a single official website. None of that framework has a lane for an event-contract exchange. The ADM’s position, consistent with how it treats unlicensed sportsbooks, is that a platform where users stake money on an uncertain future outcome is gambling under Italian law regardless of what the operator calls the product.

Kalshi’s Own Rules Already Say No, Too

Even setting the ADM blacklist aside, Kalshi’s own member agreement independently lists Italy among the roughly 54 jurisdictions its terms restrict — the same list that names Belgium, France, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, and Spain. That restriction sits on Kalshi’s side of the ledger, not Italy’s, and it means an Italian resident faces two independent walls rather than one: an active ISP block on one side, and a company that already says it will not open an account from Italy on the other.

Not Italy Acting Alone

The July sweep followed a coordinated European move. On June 17, 2026, timed to the opening of the World Cup, Italy joined Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland in a joint declaration targeting prediction-market platforms operating without a local license. Spain had already ordered its own ISP block of Kalshi in May; France named Kalshi in a warning but held off on an ISP order. Italy’s July blacklisting reads as that declaration being enforced, not a one-off decision made independently of what the rest of the continent was doing.

Is Kalshi Legit, and Is It Safe to Try Anyway?

Legit as a company: yes. Kalshi is a real, CFTC-designated US exchange with standard identity verification, not a fly-by-night operation — the ADM’s objection is about Italian licensing, not about whether Kalshi pays out. Safe to reach with a VPN: no. That would work around an active ADM block and Kalshi’s own restriction at the same time, on a platform with no ADM oversight, no self-exclusion registry checks, and no dispute process an Italian resident could actually use if a trade or withdrawal went wrong.

None of this is a way to make money regardless of jurisdiction. Event contracts can cost a trader the full price paid for them, and for a reader in Italy the more immediate fact is simpler: there is no working, licensed way to open a Kalshi account today, and two independent barriers — Italy’s and Kalshi’s own — say so.