Brazil Bans 27 Prediction Platforms, Blocks Kalshi, Polymarket

Brazil’s National Monetary Council adopted Resolution No. 5,298 in late April 2026, banning 27 event-based prediction platforms and directing telecommunications regulator Anatel to block their domains inside Brazil. The measure prohibits derivative contracts tied to elections, sports and cultural outcomes, which the council said are not economic benchmarks and should not be traded as financial instruments.

The regulation confines permitted derivatives to predefined economic and financial benchmarks such as price indices, including inflation, interest rates and exchange rates. Trading in those instruments must be conducted only by firms authorized by the Central Bank of Brazil, and secondary rules are expected to be issued to implement the resolution.

Finance Minister Dario Durigan said the policy aims to “protect citizen savings and curb rising household debt,” arguing that prediction markets operate outside federal oversight and contravene betting regulations. The Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance said the platforms bypass authorized financial frameworks and could threaten stability and transparency in the national financial system.

Economic Reforms Secretary Regis Dudena warned the services operated in a “gray area” outside Congress-approved consumer protections. Presidential Chief of Staff Miriam Belchior said the measures seek to “protect families from exposure to harmful practices.”

Polymarket was cited for offering unlicensed binary event contracts. Kalshi was included in the categorical ban on non-economic event contracts despite having announced a partnership with Brazilian brokerage XP International in March 2026. The NMC described the targeted platforms as “gambling disguised as financial instruments” and instructed Anatel to render the sites inaccessible to users inside Brazil.

Industry participants and critics said the ban could push some users to offshore services and reduce availability of hedging tools in digital finance. Some analysts cautioned that removing domestic prediction markets could lessen a source of aggregated event information used during elections and other major events.

The action aligns Brazil with Colombia and Argentina in treating event-based prediction platforms as unregulated gambling rather than financial trading. By contrast, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission withdrew a 2024 prohibition on February 4, 2026, and on March 12, 2026 issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking standards to allow certain sports and political event contracts to trade as swaps on authorized platforms, subject to rules against manipulation and for trade protection.

Under Resolution No. 5,298, permitted derivative trading will be limited to officially recognized economic benchmarks and to institutions licensed by the Central Bank of Brazil, with secondary regulations to follow. Officials presented the measures as an effort to keep financial markets tied to economic fundamentals and to limit practices they said could exacerbate household indebtedness.