Gibraltar Launches First Standalone Prediction Market Regime

The Government of Gibraltar has published a dedicated rulebook for prediction markets, becoming the first jurisdiction in the world to regulate the fast-growing event-trading exchanges as a licensed category in their own right, instead of forcing them into gambling or financial-services rules written for something else. The regulations, carved out of Gibraltar’s new Gambling Act 2025 and entered into the territory’s official gazette on July 13, 2026, hand oversight to a dedicated supervisory authority and set out what any operator running prediction markets from the Rock will have to do.

Until now, Gibraltar had licensed the sector through a workaround. Its first prediction-market operator was authorised under a “betting intermediary” category left over from the old 2005 gambling regime, and a second was cleared in principle while the new law was still being finalised. The framework published this week makes prediction-market activity a distinct statutory category with its own authorisation, operating requirements and supervision, overseen by an independent panel whose role mirrors that of the Gambling Commissioner over the rest of the industry. Nigel Feetham, Gibraltar’s minister for justice, trade and industry, said the rules followed months of engagement with operators and investors, and that his ministry had already fielded interest from several would-be applicants, including some globally recognised businesses.

What the rules require

Gibraltar describes its approach as activity- and risk-based, aimed at the specific hazards prediction markets carry: manipulation, financial crime, weak settlement and reputational damage. In practice, that translates into a set of hard conditions on operators:

• Every event contract must be approved and certified by the gambling authority before it goes live, and must be capable of objective settlement and resistant to manipulation.
• Operators must run their own systems to catch market manipulation, insider dealing and the misuse of confidential information.
• The regime layers in anti-money-laundering and sanctions compliance, participant protection, conflict-of-interest controls, safeguarding of customer funds, financial-resource requirements and wind-down planning, plus rules on using digital assets such as stablecoins to fund and settle trades.

The supervisory authority can also refuse or withdraw any contract it judges contrary to the public interest. Gibraltar has drawn an explicit line around the darkest markets, ruling out contracts tied to criminal conduct, death, serious injury, terrorism or the outbreak of war, the kind of trading that has drawn the sharpest criticism of platforms such as Polymarket.

Why Gibraltar moved first

The push is rooted in economics. Gambling accounts for around a quarter of Gibraltar’s GDP, and most of the territory’s licensees serve UK customers, a base that came under pressure after the UK raised its gambling duties. Facing that squeeze, the government has been openly hunting for new growth, and Feetham has personally championed prediction markets as one candidate, pitching Gibraltar as the sector’s route into Europe.

He first signalled the move in Parliament in April 2026, when Gibraltar granted its first prediction-market licence to ADI Predictstreet under the old rules, because the new Act had not yet come into force. A second operator, California-based WagerWire, trading as Wire Markets, was approved in principle in June 2026 and is aiming to launch around the NFL preseason and the return of international football in August. Both will move onto the new prediction-market licence once the standalone framework is fully in place.

Feetham framed the dedicated regime as a deliberate third path in a debate that has split regulators worldwide. “Internationally, there remains no settled consensus as to how prediction markets should be characterised,” he told iGaming Business, adding that the framework “provides an additional regulatory option by establishing a dedicated regime.” It is a pointed contrast with the US, where operators such as Kalshi and Polymarket have spent months arguing over whether they run financial products or unlicensed betting.

A widening global split

Gibraltar’s welcome runs against a hardening line elsewhere. In June 2026, gambling regulators across eight European countries, including France, Germany and Spain, coordinated against unlicensed prediction platforms, citing the absence of basic safeguards such as betting limits and cooling-off periods. In the US, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission treats the contracts as financial products and has sued a string of states, from Arizona to Illinois, to defend that view, while regulators in Nevada, New York and elsewhere insist the platforms are running unlicensed gambling.

Gibraltar is betting the balance will tip its way, and that other jurisdictions will eventually copy its template rather than keep blocking. Travis Geiger, co-founder of WagerWire, called the regime a “landmark moment for the prediction market industry”, arguing it gives operators the clarity to build for the long term.

That optimism comes with a hard limit. A Gibraltar licence confers credibility, but not market access: it does not let an operator legally reach the UK or the European states that have blocked the platforms outright. For now, the regime’s real value is as a signal. Its test will be whether the countries still treating prediction markets as a problem to be stopped decide, as Gibraltar has, that they would rather regulate them.