The global prediction market sector processed $55.5 billion in notional volume across 383.9 million trades in July 2026, according to data from Cryptopolitan. Kalshi accounted for $38.6 billion of that total, roughly 70 percent of the market, while Polymarket contributed approximately $12.2 billion across its two separate platforms. The combined Kalshi and Polymarket figure alone surpassed $50 billion, an all-time high reported by The Block, and more than double the roughly $25.7 billion the two platforms combined generated just two months prior.

The jump follows a pattern that has accelerated sharply since the 2026 FIFA World Cup began on June 11. Combined volumes rose 75 percent between May and June, climbing from roughly $25.7 billion to $44.8 billion. The World Cup knockout stage, which began in late June and extended through July, sustained that momentum. Kalshi alone processed $22.42 billion in World Cup-specific volume, compared to the $2.8 to $4.3 billion traditional sportsbooks were projected to handle across all 104 matches. On July 15, Kalshi set a single-day record of $217.98 million in crypto contract volume. As recently as mid-2025, the entire prediction market sector was generating under $5 billion per month.

Kalshi's lead reflects its regulatory standing. The platform holds a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) designation as a designated contract market (DCM), a status secured after years of legal effort that most competitors cannot match. That clarity has attracted institutional trading firms, including DRW, which built dedicated prediction market desks and applied derivatives arbitrage techniques to the sector. "The incentive structure in prediction markets is truth," Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour told Forbes in June. "You get paid if you're right." The platform reported around 2 million monthly active users as of May 2026, the most recent figure publicly available, and during the World Cup its male user base grew 54 percent while its female user base grew 106 percent, pushing women to 33.3 percent of its total user base, compared to 22 to 23 percent at traditional sportsbooks.

Polymarket's July figures tell a more complicated story. The platform was barred from US customers in 2022 after failing to register with the CFTC. It re-entered the US market in late 2025 through a phased process in which it self-certified new market rules with the CFTC, launching a separate, centralised, KYC-gated exchange while its original decentralised platform on the Polygon blockchain continued operating internationally. The divergence is now visible in the data: according to figures cited by The Block, the US platform grew 54 percent month-over-month in July, while the international on-chain platform fell 26 percent. The US platform generated $3.5 billion in June alone, nearly double its May total. Six weeks after lifting its US waitlist, Polymarket's annualised revenue crossed $1 billion, CNBC reported in late June.

For users outside the United States, that structural shift carries practical consequences. Polymarket's growth is migrating toward a regulated, identity-verified model, which leaves non-US users increasingly dependent on a declining international platform or smaller alternatives. Limitless recorded $236.4 million in July volume and Predictdotfun recorded $718.2 million, both an order of magnitude below Polymarket's $12.2 billion and offering significantly less market depth. Polymarket now restricts access in more than 40 countries and has progressively expanded its blocked list, recently adding Brazil and Slovakia. The platform has also tightened VPN enforcement. Users in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa are not categorically blocked, but access is inconsistent and the regulatory landscape governing their participation is unsettled.

India presents the starkest case. The country's Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules took effect May 1, 2026, imposing a broad ban on online money games and establishing a new enforcement authority, the Online Gaming Authority of India (OGAI). Local platforms, including Probo, shut down, citing financial liability. Kalshi and Polymarket continued accepting Indian users as of mid-2026, with Kalshi's legal team stating it would comply only upon direct regulatory contact. In effect, that creates a two-tier situation: US-headquartered platforms operate in a grey zone while Indian-founded platforms bear the compliance cost. Developers in India building on Polymarket's API or Kalshi's infrastructure face heightened legal exposure, and users accessing either platform via VPN risk account termination.

South Africa faces a different problem: genuine legal ambiguity rather than an outright ban. Prediction markets sit at the intersection of crypto regulation under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act (FAIS), administered by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, derivatives law under the Financial Markets Act, and the National Gambling Act. A critical unresolved question is whether prediction markets qualify as derivatives, since that classification would exclude them from gambling law under Section 3(2) of the Financial Markets Act. No regulator has confirmed this. Draft Capital Flow Management Regulations from National Treasury would add exchange-control requirements to cross-border crypto transactions, complicating things further. South African entrepreneurs interested in building prediction market products for local sports have no clear legal pathway yet.

Analysts at Bernstein have projected the sector will reach $1 trillion in annual volume by 2030, as prediction markets expand from event wagering into broad-based information markets spanning politics, economics, and finance. Whether that growth remains accessible to users in the Global South will depend less on market demand, which is already demonstrated, and more on how quickly regulators in those markets move to clarify, rather than simply restrict, the rules.