PREDICTWIRE · LIVEGavin Newsom win the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination: 28% ▲ 0.4Atletico Madrid win the 2025–26 Champions League: 12% ▼ 0.2the San Antonio Spurs win the 2026 NBA Finals: 15% ▲ 0.1Iran x Israel/US conflict ends by April 7: 87% ▲ 0.8Gavin Newsom win the 2028 US Presidential Election: 17%Netherlands win the 2026 FIFA World Cup: 3% ▼ 0.1the Colorado Avalanche win the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup: 23% ▲ 1.1J.D. Vance win the 2028 Republican presidential nomination: 39% ▲ 0.8the U.S. invade Iran before 2027: 30% ▼ 2.0PREDICTWIRE · LIVEGavin Newsom win the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination: 28% ▲ 0.4Atletico Madrid win the 2025–26 Champions League: 12% ▼ 0.2the San Antonio Spurs win the 2026 NBA Finals: 15% ▲ 0.1Iran x Israel/US conflict ends by April 7: 87% ▲ 0.8Gavin Newsom win the 2028 US Presidential Election: 17%Netherlands win the 2026 FIFA World Cup: 3% ▼ 0.1the Colorado Avalanche win the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup: 23% ▲ 1.1J.D. Vance win the 2028 Republican presidential nomination: 39% ▲ 0.8the U.S. invade Iran before 2027: 30% ▼ 2.0

Author: pw_admin

  • The 2026 Legal Landscape for US Prediction Markets

    By The PredictWire Research Team · Last reviewed April 20, 2026

    The legal landscape for prediction markets in the United States entered 2026 in a clearer state than at any point in the previous decade. A 2024 federal court ruling forced the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to allow Kalshi to list event contracts to retail traders. A 2025 interpretive ruling from the same regulator opened the door to certain sports event contracts. The headline question retail users keep asking is now answerable: yes, prediction markets are legal in the United States, with caveats.

    What is legal today

    Kalshi operates as the only CFTC-regulated retail prediction market in the country. US residents can fund accounts with a US bank, trade event contracts on politics, economics, sports, and climate, and report income on standard tax forms. The platform sits inside the same regulatory perimeter as commodity futures.

    PredictIt continues to operate under a CFTC no-action letter as a research project of Victoria University. Position caps of $850 per contract limit how seriously professional traders can use it, but the platform is legal and remains popular with academic researchers and political enthusiasts.

    Manifold Markets is play-money only and operates legally as a forecasting tournament platform with no real-money trading.

    What is not legal for US residents

    Polymarket remains geo-blocked for US residents under the terms of its 2022 CFTC settlement. Using a VPN to access the platform violates Polymarket’s terms of service and offers no regulatory recourse if something goes wrong with an account. We cover the full picture in Is Polymarket legal in the US?

    Most decentralized prediction markets that operate without US licensing fall in a similar gray zone for US residents. The CFTC has signaled an active interest in enforcement against platforms that solicit US users without registration.

    What changed in the last 12 months

    Three developments stand out. First, the CFTC’s October 2025 interpretive ruling clarified that certain sports outcomes can qualify as listable event contracts, opening the door to Kalshi’s sports product. Second, the IRS issued updated guidance treating prediction market gains and losses similarly to other commodity-style derivatives. Third, several state attorneys general dropped pending challenges to Kalshi’s election contracts after the federal court ruling.

    Looking forward, the open questions concern the rest of the category. Polymarket’s path to a regulated US relaunch, the legal status of decentralized event contracts more broadly, and the boundary between event contracts and licensed sports betting under state law all remain unresolved.

    Practical guidance

    For US residents who want to participate, the answer is straightforward: use Kalshi for the broad category, use PredictIt if you want niche state-level political markets and can live with the position cap, and use Manifold if you want to practice without risking real capital. Our full 2026 platform rankings break out every major option.

    About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.

  • Inside Kalshi 2026: How the First CFTC-Regulated Prediction Market Reached Scale

    By The PredictWire Research Team · Last reviewed April 20, 2026

    Three years after a federal court forced the CFTC to let it list regulated event contracts, Kalshi has quietly become what its founders always claimed it would be: the dominant US-legal prediction market exchange. 2026 has been the year that claim finally matched the data.

    Daily notional volume on Kalshi’s flagship markets (FOMC rate decisions, Senate control, Super Bowl) now regularly exceeds $10 million. A year ago those same markets saw a fraction of that. The platform has added more than 400 new active contracts in the last twelve months, launched full sports coverage after a protracted regulatory review, and started reporting to tax authorities with the same rigor as a traditional commodities broker.

    For a review of the current platform (fees, markets, bonus codes, and how it compares to Polymarket), see our full Kalshi review. This piece is about how it got here and where it is headed.

    From regulatory experiment to scale

    Kalshi’s 2023 court win against the CFTC was narrow but decisive. The commission had argued that Kalshi’s political event contracts were effectively gambling and outside the scope of the Commodity Exchange Act. The court disagreed, ruling that binary event contracts tied to defined outcomes fit comfortably within the CFTC’s existing framework for Designated Contract Markets.

    The ruling did not just permit Kalshi to list election contracts. It clarified that the CFTC had authority to oversee prediction markets as a category, which accelerated everything that followed: sports-outcome contracts in 2024, economic-indicator contracts throughout 2025, and the current expansion into weather and climate derivatives.

    For users, the practical consequence is simple: every contract on Kalshi has now passed regulatory review, user funds sit in segregated accounts at insured banks, and the platform files 1099s like any other US financial institution. The friction that used to define prediction markets in the US (legal ambiguity, offshore operators, crypto-only settlement) has been largely removed.

    What is driving the volume surge

    Three categories have accounted for most of Kalshi’s 2026 growth.

    Fed markets. FOMC rate-decision contracts have become Kalshi’s single most-traded category. The platform routinely shows tighter bid-ask spreads than Fed funds futures for the next two meetings, and research desks at several banks now cite Kalshi probabilities alongside CME FedWatch.

    The 2026 midterms. Senate and House control contracts, plus individual race markets for the most competitive Senate seats, have drawn both retail and institutional flow. Kalshi has cleared settlement on dozens of primary races already this cycle and is on track to do the same for the general election in November.

    Sports. After years of regulatory resistance, Kalshi launched comprehensive sports contracts in late 2024. The 2025 NFL season drove daily volumes that rival major sportsbooks on marquee matchups, and the platform has since expanded into NBA, MLB, UFC, and international soccer.

    The competitive landscape

    Kalshi’s main competitor remains Polymarket, which still leads on market breadth and total cumulative volume. The key differentiation is geographic: Polymarket is not legally available to US residents, leaving Kalshi with a de facto monopoly on the US market for regulated prediction markets. Our Kalshi vs Polymarket comparison covers the full trade-off, but the short version in 2026 is that US traders use Kalshi and international traders use Polymarket.

    PredictIt, once the default US political prediction market, has been effectively lapped. Its $850 position cap and 10% profit fee are hard to defend in an environment where Kalshi offers uncapped positions at under 2% effective fees with full CFTC protection. PredictIt remains useful for researchers because of its long historical dataset, but its role as a retail trading venue is shrinking.

    Platform milestones in the past year

    • April 2025: Full NFL, NBA, and MLB contracts go live after CFTC clearance.
    • July 2025: Kalshi launches a public API for programmatic trading, attracting quant and institutional flow.
    • September 2025: Average daily volume crosses $5 million for the first time.
    • January 2026: Expansion into weather and climate event contracts, including hurricane landfall and monthly temperature markets.
    • March 2026: Introduction of multi-leg contracts for policy outcomes, allowing traders to bet on combined rate-decision-plus-statement scenarios.

    Where Kalshi goes next

    The most-watched frontier is cross-asset hedging. A growing number of traders are using Kalshi to offset specific real-world risks: farmers hedging weather outcomes, small businesses hedging Fed rate paths, forecasters monetizing long-term views. The CFTC has indicated in public comments that it views this use case favorably, which suggests more bespoke contract categories in 2027.

    The second frontier is institutional adoption. Kalshi has confirmed it is working with at least two hedge funds on prime-broker-style access, with trade reporting that integrates with existing futures infrastructure. If that comes online, Kalshi will start to look less like a retail novelty and more like a legitimate derivatives exchange alongside CME and ICE.

    The main risk remains political. A change in CFTC leadership or a Congressional move to restrict event contracts would hit Kalshi hardest, given its fully regulated status. So far, bipartisan interest in consumer protection has kept prediction markets out of the crosshairs. That is unlikely to change in an election year, but traders should continue to watch the policy environment.

    For a current platform overview with fees, bonus codes, and side-by-side comparisons against every other major prediction market, read our full Kalshi review, or browse the complete prediction market rankings.

    About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.

  • Kalshi vs Polymarket: 2026 Volume Race Reshapes the Industry

    By The PredictWire Research Team · Last reviewed April 20, 2026

    The 2026 prediction market industry has consolidated into a clear two-platform race. Kalshi and Polymarket account for the overwhelming majority of global event-contract volume, and the gap between them and the next tier of competitors is widening.

    Two platforms, two strategies

    Kalshi has bet everything on regulation. Holding the only CFTC Designated Contract Market license that lists event contracts to US retail, Kalshi grew through 2025 and into 2026 by being the platform that US residents can use without legal ambiguity. Bank funding, brokerage-grade UX, and an aggressive product expansion into sports and macro derivatives have pushed it past competitors that had multi-year head starts.

    Polymarket bet on global liquidity. As a decentralized exchange settled in USDC on Polygon, Polymarket cannot serve US residents under its 2022 CFTC settlement. That has not slowed it. The platform now runs the deepest order books in the world for non-US elections, global news events, sports world cups, and crypto event contracts. Monthly active wallets have grown every quarter for two years.

    Where they actually compete

    The platforms collide on three fronts: US national-relevance contracts (presidential approval, Federal Reserve decisions, Supreme Court rulings), major sports finals, and high-profile crypto events. On those, traders arbitrage between the two and prices typically converge.

    Where they do not compete, each owns its category. Kalshi has US politics, US sports, and US economic data. Polymarket has global elections, world cups, and the broadest crypto menu.

    What it means for traders

    Most serious prediction market traders run accounts on both. Each platform’s edge is real and not easily substitutable. For a US resident who wants only one venue, Kalshi is the answer. For an international trader who wants only one venue, Polymarket usually wins.

    The full feature, fee, and access comparison is broken out in our side-by-side Kalshi vs Polymarket guide. For the regulated US picture specifically, see Is Polymarket legal in the US?

    What about everyone else

    The next tier remains relevant in specific niches. PredictIt retains a community of US political junkies despite $850 position caps. Manifold Markets has become the standard play-money training ground for new traders. Smarkets dominates European football and tennis exchange volume. Zeitgeist serves crypto-savvy users wanting long-tail event coverage.

    For our up-to-date rankings of every major platform, see the 2026 PredictWire prediction market rankings.

    About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.

  • Prediction Markets Hit Mainstream: Inside the 2026 Boom in Event Contracts

    By The PredictWire Research Team · Last reviewed April 20, 2026

    Prediction markets crossed into the mainstream in 2026. Three years of regulatory wins, a record election cycle, and a wave of new product launches turned what had been a niche corner of derivatives into a category that mainstream financial media now covers daily.

    The numbers behind the boom

    Kalshi crossed $20 billion in cumulative notional volume in March 2026, up from roughly $5 billion at the end of 2024. Polymarket’s all-time volume passed $5 billion in early April, with monthly active wallets hitting record highs every quarter for the past 18 months. Smarkets reported record sports event volume during the 2026 Six Nations tournament. Even smaller venues like Manifold and Zeitgeist have multiplied their active user counts.

    Three forces are driving the surge. First, regulatory clarity in the United States after the 2024 federal court ruling that opened CFTC-regulated event contracts to retail traders. Second, a global appetite for forecasting tools that markets cover better than any single poll or pundit. Third, a new generation of traders comfortable taking positions on outcomes rather than prices.

    What changed in 2026

    The category broadened. Kalshi added sports event contracts after a CFTC interpretive ruling in late 2025. Polymarket pushed deeper into pop culture, sports world cups, and crypto event contracts. Smarkets opened more US-state-relevant football derivatives. Several new platforms launched specialized markets for science forecasting and climate outcomes.

    The user base broadened too. Mainstream brokerage apps quietly added prediction market integrations or are reportedly building them. Major financial news outlets now cite Polymarket and Kalshi prices alongside polling averages. The weekly editorial conversation in political and sports media routinely references contract prices as a real signal.

    Where to start

    For US residents, Kalshi remains the cleanest entry point, with bank funding, regulated account protections, and a brokerage-grade interface. For international users, Polymarket offers the deepest contract menu in the industry. New traders who want a structured introduction can read our complete beginner’s guide or jump straight to our beginner platform picks.

    Where the category goes next

    Expect more product breadth, more regulatory questions, and more competition. Kalshi has signaled aggressive expansion into sports and macro derivatives. Polymarket continues to explore a regulated US relaunch. Smaller players are carving out specialized niches in climate, science, and crypto. The next 12 months will be the most active in the category’s history.

    For our updated rankings of every major platform, see the 2026 PredictWire prediction market rankings.

    About this article: Written and reviewed by The PredictWire Research Team under our Editorial Standards. Platform rankings follow our public Methodology. Prediction market contracts carry risk of total loss. Nothing here is financial advice. Corrections: corrections@predictwire.io.