Most of this site’s Polymarket country pages describe a platform restricting itself ahead of a regulator that hasn’t finished deciding. France isn’t one of those. On July 16, 2026, the Autorité Nationale des Jeux ordered French internet providers to cut Polymarket off outright — the harder version of the story, with a paper trail stretching back twenty months.

The Twenty-Month Trail Behind One Order

The ANJ’s scrutiny of Polymarket didn’t start with the July block. It started in November 2024, not long after a French trader operating under the handle “Theo” won roughly $80 million wagering on the 2024 US presidential election through the platform, spreading the position across multiple anonymous accounts. Polymarket responded with a geoblock. French users circumvented it. Traffic kept climbing anyway — 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique French visitors in June 2026 alone, the month right before the ANJ acted.

How the France file built:

  • Nov 2024 — ANJ scrutiny begins after Theo’s $80M election win
  • Early geoblock — put up by Polymarket, circumvented by French users
  • Feb 2026 — ANJ names Polymarket and Kalshi as unauthorized gambling
  • May 4, 2026 — Paris prosecutors open a cybercrime probe into weather-contract manipulation
  • Jun 2026 — 578,751 French visits recorded in a single month
  • Jul 16, 2026 — ANJ orders French ISPs to block Polymarket, timed ahead of the World Cup final

Is Polymarket Legal in France? What Loi n° 2010-476 Actually Covers

France opened online gambling to licensed competition in 2010, and the ANJ — regulator since 2019, successor to ARJEL — has only ever licensed three online verticals: sports betting, horse-race betting, and poker. Online casino games aren’t authorized for anyone, licensed or not, and event contracts on elections, sports, or economic outcomes were never written into the law as a category at all. That gap is exactly what the ANJ cited when it named Polymarket as unauthorized gambling in February 2026 — not a missing license Polymarket could apply for, but no application to file in the first place.

The Weather Contracts and the Paris Prosecutor

The escalation from “named in a warning” to “blocked at the ISP level” got a harder push on May 4, 2026, when Paris prosecutors’ cybercrime unit opened its own investigation into whether the weather-station data feeding some of Polymarket’s weather contracts had been manipulated. That probe is separate from the ANJ’s gambling-law case — a criminal manipulation question rather than a licensing one — but it landed in the same window as rising French traffic, and it gave the ANJ a second, independent reason to move before the World Cup final rather than after it.

An order, not a self-restriction. Germany and the UK ended up with Polymarket blocking itself ahead of a regulator’s final word. France skipped that step: the ANJ issued a direct order to French ISPs, with a specific investigative record behind it, rather than waiting on Polymarket to close the door voluntarily.

Why Kalshi Walked Away Clean

The ANJ named Polymarket and Kalshi together in its February 2026 warning — same regulator, same statement, same unauthorized- gambling theory. Only one of them got blocked. Kalshi hasn’t drawn an equivalent public investigation in France, and it kept running World Cup stadium and TV branding through a partnership with ADI Predictstreet the same month Polymarket’s block landed. That difference traces to Polymarket’s specific case file — the Theo bet, the circumvented geoblock, the weather probe — not to any daylight in French law between the two platforms’ products.

Is Polymarket Legit, Given the Block?

Worth separating, as every country page on this site tries to do. The ANJ’s order is about licensing and consumer protection — unauthorized gambling, no French oversight, no safeguards a licensed operator has to carry — not a ruling that Polymarket fails to pay out on markets that resolve. It has settled enormous volume globally on elections and sports without a payout scandal attached to its name. The weather-manipulation question is a live Paris investigation, not a finished one, and it answers a different question than whether the exchange itself is legitimate.

Is It Safe to Route Around the Block?

No. The July 2026 order exists partly because an earlier, softer geoblock had already been beaten once by French users routing around it — there’s no reason to expect evading the harder ISP-level version ends any better. A workaround still means trading with no ANJ oversight, no access to France’s self-exclusion protections, and no licensed recourse if a contract or a withdrawal goes wrong. None of this is a way to make money regardless of jurisdiction — a position can lose its full stake the same as it can pay out. 18+, and Joueurs Info Service exists if it stops feeling like a choice.