Lithuania has blocked access to Polymarket after the country’s Gambling Supervisory Authority concluded that the prediction market was offering unlicensed betting. The regulator announced the action on Sept. 8 after securing approval from the Regional Administrative Court, making Polymarket the first prediction market platform added to Lithuania’s list of illegal gambling operators.
The authority investigated Polymarket.com and found that Lithuanian users could create accounts, deposit money, and trade on the outcomes of real-world events. Although Polymarket presents the product as a market where users buy and sell contracts tied to event outcomes, the regulator said those mechanics contained the characteristics of gambling because customers could stake money on an event and either receive a payout or lose their stake depending on the result.
Lithuanian internet providers have now been ordered to block access to Polymarket, while payment service providers must stop transactions involving Adventure One QSS, Inc., the company identified by the regulator as operating the service. Lithuania’s gambling law allows the authority to seek both website and payment blocking against companies offering remote gambling without a local licence and the required activity permit.
Polymarket was not among the countries listed as unavailable on the company’s own geographic restrictions page dated Aug. 14. That list already covered 39 countries, including Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia, with restrictions imposed for local regulatory or sanctions reasons. Lithuania was absent, leaving the country to impose access restrictions through its own enforcement system.
The Lithuanian regulator has blocked 2,204 illegal remote gambling websites in total and described Polymarket as the first site of its type to be added to the register. Its enforcement system does not rely only on domain blocking: payment restrictions can also be applied to companies on the illegal gambling list, while Lithuania introduced a whitelist-based card payment system in May 2025 that limits gambling deposits and withdrawals to authorized operators.
Lithuania requires companies offering remote gambling to hold both a local gambling licence and authorization for the specific activity they provide. The authority treats companies without those permissions as illegal operators even if they hold licences elsewhere, and foreign websites can be blocked once an investigation establishes that they are targeting customers in Lithuania.
Polymarket has faced similar restrictions across Europe as national regulators decide whether its event contracts fall under gambling law. Its own blocked-country list already includes several major European markets, while the company has also restricted access in Ireland following intervention from the country’s new gambling regulator. The Lithuanian decision takes the same basic position as those jurisdictions: describing a product as a prediction market does not exempt it from gambling licensing when users are putting money on the outcome of uncertain events.
Adventure One QSS and the wider Polymarket group have not announced a Lithuanian licence application, and the regulator’s order remains in force unless the company changes its status or successfully challenges the action. Lithuanian users attempting to reach a blocked gambling site are instead redirected to an authority-operated page explaining that access has been restricted because of illegal remote gambling.