Czech Republic to Block Kalshi From 15 October

Key Points

• The Czech Ministry of Finance added kalshi.com to its list of banned sites on September 30th and now all ISPs in the country have to block it by October 15th 2026.
• All they are blocking is kalshi.com with no payment accounts or apps to speak of.
• Kalshi alone raked in $59.2 billion last September, so this is one of the biggest blocks of a prediction market in Europe to date.

Czech Republic tells ISPs to Block Kalshi Before October 15th

Czech internet users have got just eight days to go to figure out how to still access Kalshi. Back on September 30th the Ministry of Finance added kalshi.com to its List of Unauthorised Internet Games which as confirmed by iGaming Times is a list that includes a bunch of other sites as well. And as of this week all ISPs in the country are now required to block access to kalshi.com by the 15th of October 2026.

In theory this is probably no big deal. However one tiny little detail shows just how far reaching this order really is. The Ministry only listed kalshi.com, not its payment accounts or any of its apps even though Czech law actually does allow those to be blocked as well.

How a Normal Casino Rule Got Used to Take Down a Prediction Market?

The Ministry slapped kalshi.com on the list under Section 84a(2)(a) of the Czech Gambling Act of 2016 a law that is actually designed with a view to preventing casinos from running on the internet. What they did was interpret Kalshi’s event contracts as online gambling with Czech residents who didn’t have a permit from the Czech government to do so a pretty standard interpretation of the law.

About twenty other websites got added to the list along with Kalshi, and most of them just happened to be copies of online casino websites. As a result a US exchange which is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is now sitting in the same company as those casinos which is probably a bit of an odd combination.

Some providers including Vodafone who have a fixed line network in the country got ahead of the curve and started blocking the domain as long ago as 2nd October. The rest have got until October 15th.

Three Weeks of Warning Almost No One Noticed

But this isn’t some sudden decision that came out of nowhere. On September 9th the Ministry’s department in charge of regulating gambling issued a formal notice saying that kalshi.com was on the list. And under Czech law the operator then gets 15 days to challenge the decision which would have meant that the entry would have been finalised as of today at the very latest.

There’s no public record of whether Kalshi actually objected, mind you nor did they say anything publicly about the Czech listing which is a bit surprising in itself because just a few days before, their chief risk officer Udesh Jha gave a talk at the SBC Summit in Lisbon where he said Kalshi would love to start trading in Europe.

Eleven Weeks Since Polymarket

Kalshi is the second significant prediction market to be blacklisted by Prague in 2023. The first to fall into the ban list was Polymarket on 13 July, for the very same legal reason. On that occasion, the Institute for Gambling Regulation (IPRH) stated that Polymarket will not be the last.

In the institute’s statement released on 1 October, the leading gambling industry association in the Czech Republic positively greeted the decision. In this statement, the IPRH noted that Kalshi was the platform that was mentioned by the association right after the listing of Polymarket. The statement of the association’s director, Jan Řehola, confirms this.

“If a person puts his or her money at risk based on the outcome of an event in the real world, it should not be possible to avoid the law just because a contract or financial instrument is labelled in such a manner,” Řehola said.

This statement also highlights the amounts of money in question. In September, Kalshi traded for $59.2 billion of contracts, which is 48% higher than in August. For the period from January to September, the number was about $238.8 billion.

The Gap Inside the Order

Almost all articles finish with the phrase “Czechia bans Kalshi”. However, there are three different ways for the ministry to act in accordance with the Gambling Act.

Polymarket steps into it with just a domain listed, and nothing else. But if a Czech user stumbles on one of these sites through a different route all is well with the Ministry’s regulators as of now.

These other ways to get in have already got the attention of European regulators. Check out that September 2026 risk assessment by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) it notes that users from the EU can still get to these platforms using VPNs. And pretty much all the time, selling products like those in the EU requires an authorisation that the biggest platforms don’t have.

Kalshi also adds an extra twist it’s member agreement update from October 2025 lists Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy and Poland as countries its users can’t be from. But interestingly Czechia wasn’t on that list either.

Europe Divided on the Regulation of Prediction Markets

The Prague move is actually in line with a tougher line being taken in a few other European capitals. In May, Spain’s regulator blocked Kalshi and Polymarket for a short time. Then over the summer, Italy and Lithuania also took action against Polymarket.

At the start of June, nine regulators made a joint promise to take action against prediction markets, including from Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. But Czechia wasn’t one of them. And yet, despite that, they’re now listing two major platforms in the space within three months.

Gibraltar has picked the opposite path; they’ve set up a dedicated regime for prediction markets that came in in July, and they even licence the businesses rather than shutting them down. Their Gambling Commissioner, Andrew Lyman, reckons that countries that just block are “swimming against the tide of consumers who actually really want this product”.

Kalshi’s growth has made it more than a little tempting for them to set up shop here in Europe. They were talking to investors about a new fundraise recently and it could value Kalshi at around $40 billion.

Where Do Things Go From Here?

After the deadline of 15th October most Czech users will find that they’ve lost access to these platforms via local networks. And there are still plenty of questions that aren’t yet being answered by the Ministry

• Will Kalshi actually go to court and try to challenge this listing?
• Will the Ministry try to add payment accounts or apps to their list too?
• Will Kalshi just decide to block Czech users on the Kalshi side?

Lithuania has given us a clue to what a stronger approach could look like, when they ordered payment providers to stop working with Polymarket. Yet, Prague has the same power but has chosen not to use it yet.

Analysis: A Legitimate Rule with a Lack of Credibility

We believe that Řehola’s argument is legitimate. Any wagering on uncertain events is essentially gambling no matter what name the service bears. If a Czech bookmaker requires a licence, a US exchange operating similar services must undergo the same licensing procedure.

Our problem is related to the entity which initiated the process. According to SBC News, the initiative came from the IPRH which reported Kalshi’s illegal Czech operation to the authorities. The report by SBC News also notes that the institute represents over 90% of the regulated gambling industry.

Nevertheless, this does not make the listing itself illegal since the process was conducted entirely legally. However, we would like to ask our readers one single question. Could consumer protection be the only valid reason for such action when the licensed entities initiate it?

We have a different problem with enforcement measures which in our opinion lack effectiveness. If Kalshi poses a threat to Czech gamblers, blocking a website only is one of the most lenient possible actions. ESMA’s report claims that it could be bypassed using a VPN service.

In our opinion, Prague did everything right in terms of principle, but it failed in enforcement. We will be questioning the true reasons for this measure until the Ministry issues a list of payment systems and applications to use or provides a reason for not doing so.