On 3 October 2026, The Guardian revealed that the offshore prediction market Polymarket was taking thousands of dollars in bets on whether large banks will fail before the end of the year, including banks operating in France and on the Paris market. The reported volume, around 77,507 dollars in positions, is modest. The legal questions it raises in France are not. Readers should be clear from the outset about what this article does and does not say: no bank failure has been established by any official source at the time of writing, these wagers are bets and not findings about the solvency of any institution, and the French regulator’s action described below targets an allegedly illegal gambling offer, not the financial health of any bank. The question for a reader in France is narrower and more practical: you live in France, you have seen these markets, perhaps you have already placed money through a VPN, and you want to know whether betting is lawful, what the Autorité nationale des jeux (ANJ, the French gambling regulator) has actually decided, and what criminal, financial and tax risks you face. This guide answers in English, with the official French texts quoted verbatim and translated.

French gambling law starts from a total prohibition. The Code de la sécurité intérieure (CSI, the Internal Security Code) provides: «Sous réserve des dispositions de l’article L. 320-6 , les jeux d’argent et de hasard sont prohibés. Sont réputés jeux d’argent et de hasard et interdits comme tels toutes opérations offertes au public, sous quelque dénomination que ce soit, pour faire naître l’espérance d’un gain qui serait dû, même partiellement, au hasard et pour lesquelles un sacrifice financier est exigé de la part des participants.» (Subject to the provisions of Article L. 320-6, games of chance involving money are prohibited. All operations offered to the public, under any name whatsoever, that create the expectation of winnings due, even partially, to chance and for which a financial sacrifice is required from participants are deemed games of chance involving money and prohibited as such.) Only the derogations listed in Article L. 320-6 (casinos, lotteries under exclusive rights, licensed online operators and similar authorised activities) escape that ban. Everything in this article follows from that single starting point: a prediction market that takes paid stakes on uncertain events, from France, without a French licence, falls on the prohibited side unless it holds an authorisation, and the ANJ has now said so expressly about Polymarket.

I. Can you bet on Polymarket from France, even through a VPN?

A. Why are prediction markets classed as illegal gambling in France, and what did the ANJ decide in July 2026?

The ANJ’s position on prediction markets is public, written and recent. On 24 February 2026, the regulator warned that in France these sites are not authorised and are regarded as illegal gambling sites (ANJ warning of 24 February 2026 on prediction-market platforms) The same warning records that the main operators had, at the ANJ’s request, put in place geo-blocking preventing any gaming from France, with the stated exception of VPN use. The regulator therefore knew, in February 2026, that French users were circumventing the block with virtual private networks, and it still classed the offer as illegal. A VPN changes your apparent location; it does not change the legal classification of the offer, and it does not give the operator the licence it lacks.

The warning was followed by an enforcement decision. On 17 July 2026, the ANJ announced that on 16 July 2026 its President had ordered French internet service providers to block access to the Polymarket site, described as a high-audience site promoting an illegal gambling offer (ANJ blocking decision of 17 July 2026). The decision reconstructs the full history: since November 2024, the ANJ’s attention had been drawn to the services of the company ADVENTURE ONE QSS INC. via its websites, which were liable to be regarded as an unauthorised gambling offer; after a first formal notice from the ANJ, the company set up geo-blocking preventing any financial transaction on its gaming offers from French territory, but routinely circumvented in practice, as the same ANJ decision records. The figures explain the escalation: in June 2026 alone, the platform recorded 578,751 visits and 205,057 unique visitors from France. This is the official record that allows this article to name the operator: a decision of the French regulator concerning that company directly.

Two further facts from the same ANJ decision matter for users. First, some markets on the platform appeared rigged: bets on the weather suggested that meteorological sensors could have been hacked, and an investigation opened on 4 May 2026 by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office and entrusted to the anti-cybercrime office (OFAC), as the same ANJ decision records. The Paris prosecutor, not a foreign authority, is therefore already seized of suspected manipulation on these markets. Second, the decision notes the absence, on the platform’s interfaces available to French and European users, of any user-identification system capable of verifying bettors’ integrity (so-called KYC, Know Your Customer). A bettor on an illegal platform is consequently wagering in an environment with no verified identity of counterparties, no French integrity monitoring of the kind the ANJ imposes on licensed operators for sports betting manipulation, and no access to the licensed market’s protection tools.

France is not an isolated case. The ANJ decision lists the European countries that have already restricted or blocked predictive markets: Germany, Belgium, Romania, Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. For a reader travelling between London and Paris, or living in the United Kingdom and betting while staying in France, the practical consequence is direct: the same click that is tolerated in one country can fall under a blocking order and a criminal-law prohibition in another, and French law applies as soon as the offer is accessible and used from French territory.

B. How does the ANJ administrative blocking work, and who receives the orders?

The blocking of Polymarket was not a request or a recommendation. It used the administrative blocking power set out in Article 61 of the Law of 12 May 2010 on the opening to competition and regulation of online gambling, a power whose current version in force since 5 August 2026 follows the procedure step by step. First, the President of the ANJ sends the person whose online gambling offer is accessible from France, and who cannot rely on one of the derogations of Article L. 320-6, a formal notice to stop: «Le président de l’Autorité nationale des jeux adresse à la personne dont l’offre de jeux d’argent et de hasard en ligne est accessible sur le territoire français et qui ne peut se prévaloir de l’une des dérogations mentionnées à l’ article L. 320-6 du code de la sécurité intérieure une mise en demeure de cesser cette activité.» (The President of the National Gambling Authority addresses to the person whose online gambling offer is accessible on French territory, and who cannot rely on one of the derogations mentioned in Article L. 320-6 of the Internal Security Code, a formal notice to cease that activity.) The notice recalls the criminal provision punishing unauthorised offers and invites observations within five days. Polymarket received that first notice after November 2024 and answered with geo-blocking, which the ANJ later judged circumvented in practice.

The same article reaches beyond the operator. The ANJ President also sends a formal notice to anyone advertising an unauthorised gambling site or disseminating its odds to the public, and sends a copy to hosting providers, ordering them to take every measure to prevent access to the illegal content. When all the five-day periods expire without compliance, the order phase begins: «le président de l’Autorité nationale des jeux notifie aux personnes mentionnées au 1 du I de l’ article 6 de la loi n° 2004-575 du 21 juin 2004 précitée ainsi qu’à toute personne exploitant un moteur de recherche ou un annuaire et à tout fournisseur d’un service numérique intermédiaire de contournement les adresses électroniques des interfaces en ligne dont les contenus sont illicites et leur ordonne de prendre toute mesure utile destinée à en empêcher l’accès ou à faire cesser leur référencement, dans un délai qu’il détermine et qui ne peut être inférieur à cinq jours.» (the President of the National Gambling Authority notifies the persons mentioned in Article 6-I-1 of the Law of 21 June 2004, as well as any person operating a search engine or directory and any provider of a digital circumvention intermediary service, of the electronic addresses of the online interfaces whose content is illegal, and orders them to take all useful measures to prevent access to them or to stop their indexing, within a period it determines which may not be less than five days.) Three points deserve attention. Access providers, search engines and directories can all be ordered to block or de-index. The law expressly names providers of circumvention intermediary services, which is the category closest to VPN-type tools when they are used to bypass the block. And an online interface is defined broadly as any software, including a website, part of a website or an application, operated by or on behalf of a professional. The ANJ adds that it has used this power routinely, with 1,290 URLs blocked in 2025 alone: The ANJ states that it used its administrative blocking power against the site, as it does for other illegal sites, reporting 1,290 blocked URLs in 2025. A blocked site can therefore disappear from French search results and French networks within days, while remaining reachable abroad, which is exactly the trap for a user who keeps betting through circumvention: the offer does not become lawful because it remains technically reachable.

II. What do bettors, advertisers and winners risk under French criminal and tax law?

A. Offering, advertising and relaying odds on illegal markets: prison terms and fines up to 100,000 euros

French law punishes the supply side severely, and the supply side is wider than the operator alone. Anyone who offers online betting or gambling to the public without the licence of Article 21 of the 2010 Law or an exclusive right faces the core offence: «Quiconque aura offert ou proposé au public une offre en ligne de paris ou de jeux d’argent et de hasard sans être titulaire de l’agrément mentionné à l’article 21 ou d’un droit exclusif est puni de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 90 000 € d’amende. Ces peines sont portées à sept ans d’emprisonnement et à 200 000 € d’amende lorsque l’infraction est commise en bande organisée.» (Anyone who offers or proposes to the public an online betting or gambling offer without holding the licence mentioned in Article 21 or an exclusive right is punished by three years’ imprisonment and a 90,000 euro fine. These penalties rise to seven years’ imprisonment and a 200,000 euro fine when the offence is committed by an organised gang.) The Internal Security Code mirrors this for all prohibited gambling operations: «Sans préjudice des opérations autorisées en application de l’article L. 320-6 , le fait d’accomplir ou de faire accomplir des opérations de jeux d’argent et de hasard en violation de l’article L. 320-1 est puni de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 90 000 euros d’amende.» (Without prejudice to operations authorised under Article L. 320-6, carrying out or causing to be carried out gambling operations in violation of Article L. 320-1 is punished by three years’ imprisonment and a 90,000 euro fine.) Affiliates, tipsters, forum owners and anyone who white-labels or relays the offer from France should read these two provisions twice: French criminal law looks at the act performed from France, not at the location of the server.

Advertising is a separate offence with its own heavy fine. Article 57 of the 2010 Law provides: «Quiconque fait de la publicité, par quelque moyen que ce soit, en faveur d’un site de paris ou de jeux d’argent et de hasard non autorisé en vertu d’un droit exclusif ou de l’agrément prévu à l’article 21 est puni d’une amende de 100 000 €. Le tribunal peut porter le montant de l’amende au quadruple du montant des dépenses publicitaires consacrées à l’activité illégale.» (Anyone who advertises, by any means whatsoever, in favour of a betting or gambling site not authorised under an exclusive right or the licence of Article 21 is punished by a fine of 100,000 euros. The court may raise the fine to four times the advertising expenditure devoted to the illegal activity.) The next paragraph catches a behaviour that social media has made commonplace: «Ces peines sont également encourues par quiconque a, par quelque moyen que ce soit, diffusé au public, aux fins de promouvoir des sites de jeux en ligne ne disposant pas de l’agrément prévu à l’article 21, les cotes et rapports proposés par ces sites non autorisés.» (The same penalties apply to anyone who has, by any means whatsoever, disseminated to the public, for the purpose of promoting online gaming sites without the Article 21 licence, the odds and payouts offered by those unauthorised sites.) Posting screenshots of odds, sharing referral links with promotional messages, or running a channel that republishes the prices of an unauthorised market can therefore expose the author to the same 100,000 euro fine as a full advertising campaign. Issuing or distributing physical or digital supports for prohibited gambling carries a parallel 100,000 euro fine under Article L. 324-3 of the Internal Security Code, which states: «Le fait d’émettre ou de distribuer des supports de jeux d’argent et de hasard prohibés ou de concourir à cette émission ou à cette distribution est puni de 100 000 euros d’amende.» (Issuing or distributing supports for prohibited gambling, or contributing to such issuance or distribution, is punished by a 100,000 euro fine.)

The international context confirms that regulators treat these markets as a market-integrity problem, not as harmless entertainment. According to The Guardian’s reporting of 3 October 2026, the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority said it had been speaking to international regulators about prediction markets as part of efforts to protect market integrity, and the European Securities and Markets Authority used its twice-yearly risk report of September 2026 to warn that prediction markets are rife with insider trading, with manipulation and insider-trading risks reaching new levels on blockchain-based platforms operating with limited identity verification (see the the ESMA Trends, Risks and Vulnerabilities Report No 2 of September 2026). Where the wager concerns a bank failure, European financial law draws its own boundary: Article 12 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 on market abuse defines market manipulation as entering into transactions, placing orders or engaging in other behaviour that gives or may give false or misleading signals about the supply, demand or price of a financial instrument, that secures or may secure prices at abnormal or artificial levels, or that uses fictitious devices, deception or contrivance. Whether betting on a bank’s failure, spreading rumours about it, or trading around it amounts to manipulation under French and EU law depends on the precise facts, the instruments concerned and the evidence of intent, a question examined in detail in our analysis of bank-failure wagers under market-abuse law. For the user, the lesson is simpler: the same bet can simultaneously sit under the ANJ’s illegal-gambling regime and, if it touches listed securities or spreads false signals, under the market-abuse regime policed by the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF, the French financial markets regulator) and the criminal courts.

B. Winnings, tax and protecting your money when the operator has no French licence

Winning on an illegal market does not make the winnings lawful income, and losing does not create a deductible loss. French tax law treats occasional pure-chance winnings with restraint: the official tax doctrine states that playing pure games of chance, where the player has no control over the randomness affecting winning prospects, is not a lucrative occupation giving rise to income tax for participants (BOFiP, BNC scope, para. 400). The exception matters for regular prediction-market users: habitual play against opponents, where skill and know-how significantly tame the randomness and produce significant revenue, is taxable. The doctrine continues: By contrast, habitual play against opponents that lets the player significantly tame randomness through developed skill and generates significant income is taxable as non-commercial profits under Article 92 of the General Tax Code, a solution confirmed by the Conseil d’État (the supreme administrative court) on 21 June 2018, No 412124. A reader who bets daily on political or financial outcomes, keeps spreadsheets, follows models and lives partly from the profits cannot rely on the occasional-player shelter, and should keep full records of stakes, dates and payouts. Winnings paid in crypto-assets add a second layer: conversions of digital assets into legal tender fall under their own reporting and taxation rules, and the illegality of the underlying offer does not shield the income from the tax office.

The protection of the money itself is the weakest point. Funds deposited with an operator that holds no French licence and no exclusive right sit outside every French player-protection mechanism: no ANJ-approved game rules, no mandatory deposit limits and self-exclusion tools of the licensed market, no recourse to the gambling ombudsman (médiateur des jeux) that handles disputes with licensed operators, and no deposit guarantee of any kind, since the Fonds de garantie des dépôts et de résolution covers deposits with licensed banks, not balances on an offshore betting platform. The ANJ’s February 2026 warning says these prediction sites show addictive characteristics similar to online gambling, amplified by the absence of the protection mechanisms of the legal market, and it calls on users to be cautious. Anyone who feels play slipping out of control can use the voluntary gambling ban (interdiction volontaire de jeux) run through the ANJ player section (interdiction volontaire de jeux), which blocks access to licensed gambling across France; it does not technically block an offshore site reached by VPN, but registration creates a dated, official record of the decision to stop, which can matter later. The only operators a French user can verify in one click are on the ANJ’s public list of licensed operators: if the platform is absent from that list, every euro sent there travels without a French safety net.

Practical conduct follows from the texts, not from impressions. Stop placing new stakes from France, including through a VPN, since circumvention is documented by the regulator and changes nothing about the offer’s classification. Preserve everything: account statements, wallet addresses, transaction hashes, dates, odds screenshots and correspondence, because any later dispute, tax audit or criminal enquiry will turn on documents, not memories. Do not promote the platform, do not republish its odds to attract other players, and do not lend your account or wallet to third parties, since each of those acts can move you from the position of a user into the offences of Articles 56 and 57 described above. If sums are stuck on the platform, avoid side arrangements with intermediaries who promise to recover them for a fee, and seek advice with the full file: the chronology of deposits, the means of payment used, and whether any winnings were converted into euros or left in crypto-assets.

Conclusion

The Guardian’s revelation of bets on bank failures made headlines in the United Kingdom, but in France the decisive documents were already online: the ANJ’s February 2026 warning classifying prediction markets as illegal gambling, and the 16 July 2026 order blocking Polymarket on French networks after documented VPN circumvention of geo-blocking. The legal picture for a user in France is therefore settled on the essentials: the offer has no French authorisation, the prohibition of Article L. 320-1 applies, the operator faces three years’ imprisonment and 90,000 euros in fines, advertisers and odds-relayers face 100,000 euros, and the ANJ can have access providers, search engines and circumvention services cut off access within days. What remains uncertain is individual, and that is where advice matters: whether habitual winnings are taxable as non-commercial profits, whether conduct around the bets could interest the Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit or the financial markets authorities, and how to exit cleanly with records intact. This article closes with the same reserves it opened with: at the date of writing, no official source has established any bank failure, any intrusion or any loss connected with these wagers, no liability of any bank or platform has been judicially determined, signed contracts and the official licence list prevail over any general analysis, and only a court decides individual liability. General information never replaces an examination of your own documents, your own chronology and the version of each text applicable to your facts.