Polymarket, Kalshi Restricted Countries List 2026

By Dana Kovac · Published 2026-10-07 · Independent review — not affiliated with any exchange

If you’re trying to figure out the Polymarket and Kalshi restricted countries list, what close-only actually means, or which blocked US states still can’t trade, the short version is that both platforms publish their own rules, and those rules keep moving. Neither site is a free-for-all: Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated US exchange with identity checks, and Polymarket is a crypto-based platform that leans on geoblocking rather than onboarding checks, at least on its international side. This piece pulls together what each platform currently says about who can trade, who’s locked into close-only, and who’s shut out entirely.

Event contracts on both platforms work the same basic way: they’re binary, they settle to $1.00 for Yes or $0.00 for No, and they trade anywhere between 1 cent and 99 cents, with the price acting as the market’s implied probability of the outcome. That structure is neutral in itself. What varies by country and state is whether local regulators treat that structure as a form of gambling, a regulated derivative, or something in between, and that’s the root of every restriction on this list.

What Does Close-Only Mode Mean on Polymarket?

Close-only is Polymarket’s term for a jurisdiction where existing positions can still be closed out, but no new trades can be opened. Per Polymarket’s official geographic-restrictions documentation, this status applies on both the web frontend and the API for a long list of countries, so it isn’t a frontend-only cosmetic block in those cases. A smaller set of countries is close-only on the frontend alone, which per the same documentation includes Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands and South Korea, plus Malta for sports markets specifically.

Which Countries Are Close-Only or Blocked on Polymarket in 2026?

Per Polymarket’s official documentation, the following table separates the two tiers of restriction. Readers should treat this as a snapshot rather than a permanent list, since prediction-market rules shift with regulatory developments in each country.

Separately, per third-party summaries, OFAC-sanctioned territories such as Iran, Cuba, Syria and the Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions are blocked outright rather than placed in close-only status. For the United States specifically, the international Polymarket exchange has been close-only since Polymarket’s 2022 CFTC settlement, according to third-party guides, while a separate Polymarket US exchange launched on iOS, Android and web with its waitlist removed in May 2026 (per a third-party guide). That US exchange requires full verification for every account and accepts USD deposits by bank transfer or stablecoins, which is a meaningfully different onboarding flow from the no-KYC-style signup that third-party guides describe for the international platform.

Is Kalshi Available in Your Country?

Kalshi takes a simpler country-by-country stance rather than Polymarket’s close-only tiering. Per Kalshi’s country page, the exchange is available in 143 countries and restricted in 52. Restricted jurisdictions listed include Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Poland, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and North Korea, among others. Some third-party lists also include Ireland on the restricted side, so if your country sits near the edge of this list, check kalshi.com directly rather than relying on a secondary source.

Which US States Are Restricted From Trading on Kalshi?

Kalshi’s domestic footprint is unusual because, even though it’s a CFTC-registered national exchange, several states have separately pushed back on whether its event contracts can be offered to their residents. A third-party guide checked around the same period as this article listed Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey and Ohio as unavailable. These disputes tend to move through state gaming regulators and courts, so the list of excluded states is genuinely a moving target in 2026 rather than a fixed rulebook, and anyone in one of these states should check Kalshi’s own app or help center before assuming either way.

How Do KYC Requirements Compare Between Kalshi and Polymarket?

This is where the two platforms diverge most clearly. Kalshi is not a no-KYC platform: per its help center, as a CFTC-regulated exchange it must confirm the identity of every trader through document verification, typically a valid driver’s license or passport, before they can trade, and it also confirms the trader’s country of residence at signup. Polymarket’s international exchange, per third-party guides, lets a user sign up with a wallet or email, deposit USDC and start trading without that identity check, with compliance handled through geoblocking instead. That gap narrows for US users specifically, since Polymarket’s separate US exchange requires full verification on every account, much closer to Kalshi’s approach. For context on how KYC-first exchanges generally operate, platforms like Binance run similar document-verification flows before unlocking full trading access, which is a useful comparison if you’re trying to picture what regulated onboarding looks like.

Deposit mechanics also differ. Per third-party guides, Kalshi supports ACH transfer (1-3 business days, no Kalshi fee), wire transfer (same day, no Kalshi fee), and instant debit card deposits carrying a 2% payment fee, with some guides also mentioning crypto deposit options inside the app. Kalshi’s trading fee, per a third-party fee explainer, follows the formula 0.07 times price times (1 minus price) per contract, which peaks near 50 cents and shrinks toward the 1-cent and 99-cent extremes. If you want to model how fee curves like that affect a position, the general framework in our fee calculator applies the same underlying logic, even though it isn’t built specifically for event contracts.

Why You Shouldn’t Try to Bypass These Restrictions

Restricted and close-only status exists because of how each jurisdiction classifies event contracts, whether as a form of gambling, a regulated derivative, or something local law hasn’t fully settled yet. Trying to route around a geoblock with a VPN, a different document, or any other workaround violates the platform’s terms regardless of whether it technically works in the moment, and it puts the user outside the protections either platform’s compliance structure is supposed to provide. Readers researching Polymarket geofence questions or a Kalshi workaround should treat the restriction itself as the answer: if your country or state is on the list, the product isn’t available to you there right now, full stop.

Prediction markets sit in a genuinely unsettled corner of financial regulation, closer in spirit to the KYC questions that come up across the broader no-KYC crypto exchanges conversation than most traders expect. If you’re new to how derivatives, leverage and settlement generally work before layering prediction-market specifics on top, our beginner learning path is a reasonable starting point, and the exchange rankings table is useful context for how KYC and regulatory posture vary across the wider crypto trading landscape. None of this is investment advice, and none of it is a reason to try to outsmart a geoblock. Confirm your status on the official page, and trade only where you’re actually permitted to.

Dana Kovac — Covers trading tools, bots and market structure. Spent four years on a prop trading desk before going independent.