Denmark has blocked Polymarket months after officials expressed frustration over the platform while the gambling regulator said it lacked grounds to intervene. The prediction-market platform was among 98 gambling websites blocked by Spillemyndigheden.

Danish reporting says the underlying Frederiksberg Court ruling was issued on 8 July and has been appealed by Polymarket.
 

Court backs Danish regulator

The government said the sites had offered gambling aimed at Danish users without permission from Spillemyndigheden, the gambling regulator, and that the Frederiksberg Court had agreed they could be blocked.

The measure is being enforced through DNS blocking by Danish internet providers. Users attempting to reach the affected domains are redirected to a notice explaining that the site is considered illegal in Denmark.

Tax and Growth Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt singled out Polymarket over markets tied to war and other serious events.

“A human life is not a betting slip. And war should not be something you can sit at home on the sofa and speculate on to make money,” he said in the ministry statement.

Under Danish rules, gambling operators need a licence if they offer gambling in Denmark or direct their services at the Danish market. The regulator lists indicators including Danish-language services, Danish currency, Danish-only payment cards, Danish customer support and betting products designed to appeal specifically to local users.

Local industry media BetXpert, citing information provided by Teleindustrien to Danish broadcaster TV 2, reported that Polymarket has appealed the Frederiksberg Court order.
 

From monitoring to enforcement

The block follows months of regulatory monitoring and political debate over prediction markets.

In February, Spillemyndigheden said it was monitoring Polymarket and Kalshi but lacked grounds to block either platform, as simply being accessible to Danish users was not enough to show they were targeting the Danish market. Director Anders Dorph declared at the time that action depended on evidence that an operator was targeting Denmark, adding that the authority would “definitely block them if they target the Danish market”.

The latest case indicates that the regulator was able to persuade the court that the legal threshold had been met in relation to Polymarket. The ministry did not set out the court’s detailed reasoning in its announcement.

Denmark has increasingly relied on court-backed website blocking as part of its action against unlicensed gambling: the regulator secured orders against a record 334 illegal websites in 2025.
 

Polymarket faces pressure across Europe

The Danish case adds to a series of enforcement actions against Polymarket in Europe.

France’s gambling regulator ordered internet providers to block the platform in July after Polymarket’s earlier geoblocking of financial transactions from France was found to be circumventable. Polymarket has said it intends to challenge the blocking decision through the French legal process.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch Gambling Authority (Kansspelautoriteit, KSA) has also maintained an order requiring Polymarket’s operator to stop offering unlicensed gambling.

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