The honest answer, before anything else: it depends on the country and, in the United States, on the specific contract and the specific court. That is not a dodge. It is where the law actually sits, and the rest of this piece explains why the question refuses to collapse into a one-line yes or no.
Election betting is one of those topics where the legal position shifts depending on which door you walk through. A US-regulated event contract on who controls Congress is a different legal animal from a sterling bet placed with a British bookmaker, which is a different animal again from a crypto-settled contract offered by an offshore venue to a British user. Each one sits inside its own regulatory frame. Reading the headlines as if they were interchangeable is how people get the law wrong.
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The question that keeps producing different answers
Ask whether election betting is legal and you get a different answer depending on whether the person answering is thinking about a sportsbook, a federally regulated derivatives exchange, an offshore prediction market, or a licensed British betting intermediary. Each of those sits under a different statute, a different regulator and, in the US case, a different line of litigation. The underlying activity is similar. The legal treatment is not.
That is why a story about one venue winning in court tells you very little about what another venue in another jurisdiction can do. The reader who wants a clean answer has to accept that the clean answer is: it depends.
How US law looks at election contracts
The US framework runs through the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. KalshiEX LLC was designated as a contract market by the CFTC in November 2020, which is the federal licence that lets it list event contracts to US users. That designation sets the stage. It does not, on its own, settle what Kalshi or anyone else is allowed to list.
The constraint sits in the Commodity Exchange Act. The statute lets the CFTC find that an event contract is contrary to the public interest if it involves activity that is unlawful under state or federal law, terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or other similar activity. The agency's own rule, CFTC Rule 40.11, says a registered exchange shall not list a contract that involves, relates to or references gaming. Whether an election contract is "gaming" is the central question, and for years the CFTC's position was that it is.
That position ran into a court. In KalshiEX LLC v. CFTC, the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on 12 September 2024 that Kalshi's contracts on control of Congress did not involve unlawful activity or gaming, and so were not subject to the public-interest prohibition the agency had tried to invoke. The court record shows the CFTC's appeal was closed in May 2025 after the agency moved to dismiss it. The practical effect was that the contracts stayed listed.
That is not the end of the story. On 10 June 2026 the CFTC proposed a rule titled "Prediction Markets; Public Interest Determinations" that would amend Rule 40.11 and define what counts as gaming, and as of 15 October 2026 it remained a proposal. On 9 October 2026 the agency proposed to define "swap" so that it expressly covers event contracts including political contracts. Both are proposals, which means they are the direction of travel rather than the current rule.
For more detail on how CFTC designation shapes who can access these contracts and in which states, our guide on why CFTC regulation matters for state-level access to Kalshi walks through the mechanics.
The state-level complication
Federal designation does not make state regulators stand down. Some states, Nevada among them, have argued that event contracts, election contracts included, fall under their gambling laws, and have tried to block access. The litigation around that question is live.
One of the more significant decisions came out of the Ninth Circuit. On 28 August 2026, in Kalshi's case against Nevada, the court sent the question of Kalshi's election contracts back to the lower court. That is procedurally meaningful. It is not a ruling that the contracts are lawful or unlawful under Nevada law; it is a signal that the question has not been definitively answered at the appellate level yet.
The practical upshot for a US reader is this. The federally regulated contract exists. Its treatment in any given state is a separate question, and in some states it is still being worked out in court.
How UK law looks at the same activity
UK law starts in a different place. Section 9 of the Gambling Act 2005 defines betting as making or accepting a bet on the outcome of an event, on the likelihood of anything occurring or not occurring, or on whether anything is true. That is a wide definition and it is designed to be wide. A political contract that pays out based on an election result fits inside it comfortably.
What the UK regulator thinks of prediction markets specifically is now on the record. In a blog post on 4 February 2026 the Gambling Commission said that current prediction-market products would appear to fall within the definition of a betting intermediary, that their core is akin to a betting exchange, that unlicensed operators should not target Great Britain, and that operating without a licence can be a criminal offence. The language is unusually blunt for a regulator.
So what does that mean in practice. A UK user who places a political bet with a licensed British operator is doing something the law has treated as legal for decades. The Commission's public register lists Smarkets (Malta) Ltd and TSE Malta LP, trading as Betfair, as holding remote betting intermediary licences; on 15 October 2026 neither Polymarket nor Kalshi appeared on it. That is a meaningful distinction between venues that look superficially similar.
The Commission's reasoning is covered in more depth in our walkthrough of the Gambling Commission's view on prediction markets.
Where that leaves the main offshore venues for UK users
The offshore venues have taken different stances toward the UK. Polymarket's documentation lists the United Kingdom as a regulatory-restricted jurisdiction where users can close existing positions but cannot open new ones. That is a geoblock in the technical sense and a legal-risk management decision in the business sense; it reflects the venue's reading of the Gambling Commission's view and the licensing position.
A British user looking at a Polymarket political contract therefore sees a product that the Commission has said would appear to fall within the betting intermediary definition, offered by an operator that does not hold the licence the Commission says such an operator should hold, on a platform whose own documentation describes the UK as restricted. Those are three independent facts and they point in the same direction.
The direction of travel on both sides of the Atlantic
There is one through-line worth sitting with. In both jurisdictions the regulator is actively re-examining the treatment of political and event contracts, rather than treating the question as settled. The CFTC has two proposed rules on the table that would touch election contracts directly. The Gambling Commission has set out an unusually direct view of where prediction markets sit under existing UK law.
That means the law as it reads today is not the law as it may read in a year. Confident predictions about what any specific court or agency will do next are not what this piece offers. What it offers is the current position, with the primary sources attached, so a reader can see the ground they are standing on. For related reading on how one of the main offshore political products is structured, our piece on how Polymarket's political markets work covers the mechanics.
iPredicta is a UK-based prediction markets discovery platform. We cover how election and event contracts work across major venues, including the regulatory frames they operate under in different jurisdictions. The /learn/ library is where we unpack the mechanics; the regulatory pieces, like this one, are where we sit with the law as it stands and point to the primary sources.
This article explains the law as it stood on 15 October 2026. It is for information only and is not legal advice.
Frequently asked questions
Is election betting legal in the United States?
It depends on the specific contract and the specific court, but federally regulated event contracts on election outcomes have, in at least one significant ruling, been found not to involve unlawful activity or gaming. In KalshiEX LLC v. CFTC, the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled on 12 September 2024 that Kalshi's contracts on control of Congress did not fall foul of the public-interest prohibition under the Commodity Exchange Act. The CFTC's appeal was closed in May 2025 after the agency moved to dismiss. State-level treatment is a separate question, and in Kalshi's case against Nevada the Ninth Circuit sent that question back to the lower court on 28 August 2026.
Is election betting legal in the United Kingdom?
Betting on election outcomes with a UK-licensed operator is legal; the activity falls squarely inside the definition of betting under section 9 of the Gambling Act 2005. The Gambling Commission's public register lists operators such as Smarkets (Malta) Ltd and TSE Malta LP, trading as Betfair, as holding remote betting intermediary licences. In a blog post on 4 February 2026 the Commission said that prediction-market products would appear to fall within the betting intermediary definition and that unlicensed operators should not target Great Britain. On 15 October 2026 neither Polymarket nor Kalshi appeared on the Commission's public register of licensees.
Can UK users access Polymarket's political markets?
Polymarket's own documentation lists the United Kingdom as a regulatory-restricted jurisdiction where users can close existing positions but cannot open new ones. That is a technical geoblock set by the platform itself, reflecting its reading of the UK licensing position. The Gambling Commission said in its blog post on 4 February 2026 that current prediction-market products would appear to fall within the betting intermediary definition, that unlicensed operators should not target Great Britain, and that operating without a licence can be a criminal offence. A UK user considering any workaround should weigh those three facts together with their own legal position.
What is the CFTC and how does it regulate political markets?
The CFTC is the US federal regulator for derivatives, including event contracts, and it designated KalshiEX LLC as a contract market in November 2020. Under the Commodity Exchange Act, the CFTC can find an event contract contrary to the public interest if it involves unlawful activity, terrorism, assassination, war, gaming or similar activity, and under Rule 40.11 a registered exchange shall not list a contract that involves, relates to or references gaming. On 10 June 2026 the agency proposed a rule that would amend Rule 40.11 and define gaming; on 9 October 2026 it proposed to define "swap" to expressly cover event contracts including political ones. Both were still proposals on 15 October 2026.
Why do different US states take different views on election contracts?
States regulate gambling under their own laws, and some, Nevada among them, have argued that event contracts, election contracts included, fall under their gambling laws rather than being pre-empted by federal designation. That is the question the Ninth Circuit sent back to the lower court on 28 August 2026 in Kalshi's case against Nevada. The practical result is that a contract listed on a CFTC-designated exchange may still face a state-level legal challenge, and whether and how a given state can restrict access is a separate question from whether the contract itself is lawful at federal level. The litigation across states is live and has not fully resolved.