Czechia Adds Kalshi to Its Gambling Blocklist, 11 Weeks After Polymarket

The Ministry of Finance has listed kalshi.com as a site offering prohibited gambling, and internet providers must block it by 15 October. The order covers the website only, but it puts the largest US prediction market on the same footing in Czechia as an unlicensed online casino.

• Czechia's Ministry of Finance entered kalshi.com on its List of Prohibited Internet Games on 30 September, on the ground that a prohibited internet game is operated through the site, according to the list it published that day
• Internet service providers must block a listed site from the 15th day after it is entered, which puts the deadline for Kalshi at 15 October; Lupa.cz reported that at least one fixed-line network was already blocking it on 2 October
• The listing covers the domain only: no Kalshi payment account or app appears on the list, although the Gambling Act lets the ministry add both
• Polymarket was entered on the same list on 13 July, making Kalshi the second prediction market Czechia treats as unlicensed gambling
• The move follows blocks on one or both platforms in Spain, Italy and Lithuania, and ESMA's finding that the largest platforms hold no EU authorisation

The Ministry Followed the Gambling Act's Blocking Procedure to the Letter

The Czech Ministry of Finance published an updated extract of the List of Prohibited Internet Games (Seznam nepovolených internetových her) on Wednesday 30 September, under Section 84d(5) of Act No. 186/2016 Coll. on gambling, the Gambling Act. Among the 21 websites entered that day, most of them variants of online casino brands, is kalshi.com, with the reason for entry given as Section 84a(2)(a) of the Act: a website "through which a prohibited internet game is operated". The Act defines a prohibited internet game as one offered in breach of Section 7(2)(a) or (b), which bar gambling of a type the law does not regulate and gambling offered without a permit or proper notification. In other words, the ministry has classified Kalshi's event contracts as gambling offered to Czech residents without a Czech licence.

The listing was not sudden. On 9 September the ministry's Department of Procedural Agenda and Gambling Regulation posted a notice of its intention to enter kalshi.com, listed alongside a batch of casino domains and signed by the department's director, Martin Sabo. The Act gives a site's operator 15 days from the posting of such a notice to object, and lets the ministry enter the site only once that deadline has passed and any objections have been dealt with. The record does not show whether Kalshi objected, and we found no public statement from the company on the listing.

Once a site is on the list, Section 84a(3) requires internet access providers to block it from the 15th day after entry at the latest, which for Kalshi is Thursday 15 October. Some are moving sooner: Lupa.cz, the Czech technology site that first reported the listing, said on 2 October that the domain was already unreachable on Vodafone's fixed-line service.

A Website Block, Not a Payment Block

The Gambling Act gives the ministry three tools. It can list websites, which internet providers must block; payment accounts, which payment service providers must stop processing under Section 84b; and apps, identified by a checksum or store identifier, which app stores and other distribution platforms must stop distributing under Section 84c. The list published on 30 September contains only one Kalshi entry, the kalshi.com domain. It names no Kalshi payment account and no Kalshi app. The same is true of Polymarket, whose polymarket.com domain was entered on 13 July with the same Section 84a(2)(a) ground.

That matters less for apps than it might: a Kalshi spokesperson told Sportico in 2025 that international access was web-only. It matters more for payments. Neither platform's payments are blocked by these orders, so a Czech user who reaches either site by other means faces no second barrier from the ministry. Czechia was not among the restricted jurisdictions in the member agreement update Kalshi published in October 2025, which barred users in Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Italy and Poland, among others.

Czechia Joins a Widening European Front

The listing adds Czechia to a growing list of European states that treat prediction markets as gambling under national law. Spain's Directorate General for the Regulation of Gambling (DGOJ) ordered a precautionary block on both Polymarket and Kalshi in May. Italy's customs and monopolies agency, ADM, ordered Polymarket and 292 other domains blocked in July, its second block on the platform. Lithuania blocked Polymarket in September after its regulator placed sports bets on the site as a test. In June, nine regulators, from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, pledged closer cooperation against unlicensed prediction markets, according to iGaming Business; Czechia was not among them.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) set out the financial-law side on 10 September. Its risk report said event contracts may be financial instruments under MiFID II, crypto-assets under MiCA, or gambling under national law, that marketing and selling them in the EU "generally requires an EU authorisation, which the largest prediction market platforms currently do not hold", and that geographic restrictions do not stop EU users reaching the platforms through VPNs.

Czechia Has Chosen the Gambling Route, and It Is the Fastest One

ESMA's report leaves open whether an event contract is a derivative, a crypto-asset or a bet, and a securities regulator would need to answer that before acting. The Ministry of Finance did not wait. By treating Kalshi as an unlicensed gambling operator, it could use a blocking procedure that already handles thousands of casino domains, with a fixed timetable of a 15-day objection window and a 15-day compliance window, and no need to decide whether Kalshi's contracts are swaps, options or anything else. It is the conclusion Spain, Italy and Lithuania reached, and it shows how little the classification fight in American courts constrains European regulators: in Prague, the question is whether the operator holds a Czech permit.

A Domain Block Is the Start of Enforcement, Not the End

The list now carries more than 3,500 active website entries, and it keeps growing because blocked casinos reappear on new domains, as the numbered variants entered alongside Kalshi on 30 September show. A domain block raises the cost of access for casual users but does nothing about VPNs, which ESMA itself identified as the weak point of the platforms' own geoblocking. The ministry has not, so far, used the payment and app powers the Act gives it against either prediction market. If Czech users keep trading, the obvious next step would be the one Lithuania has already taken, ordering payment providers to stop dealing with the operator, rather than another domain.

The listing settles where Czechia stands on prediction markets: they are gambling, and unlicensed gambling at that. Whether it changes how many Czechs use them depends on enforcement the ministry has not yet attempted.