Are Prediction Markets Legal in New York?

Reviewed August 19, 2026. Platform availability, fee language, and New York eligibility in this guide were re-checked against each operator’s own published pages and the CFTC’s public filings on this date. Anything that changed since the last review is reflected in the copy below.

Yes — if you're an adult New York resident, you can legally trade event contracts on the two major CFTC-registered venues: Kalshi and Polymarket's US iOS app. Both operate under federal commodities regulation, not state gaming law, which is why they're available statewide alongside NY's licensed sportsbooks.

The gray areas are pick'em-style DFS products and certain crypto-native prediction venues — those are governed by state law or offshore terms, and their New York posture is genuinely mixed.

Kalshi is a CFTC-registered Designated Contract Market, the same license class as CME. That federal status is what lets it offer event contracts across most US states, including New York, without needing 50 separate state licenses. Polymarket returned to the US in mid-2025 through a CFTC-regulated affiliate and is currently live for US iPhone users.

The CFTC's event contracts page is the primary source for what's federally sanctioned. If a venue isn't operating under a CFTC registration or a specific no-action posture, its US legality is meaningfully weaker.

Availability changes — sometimes quickly. Confirm on each platform before signing up.

New York has a robust legal sports-betting framework via the NY State Gaming Commission, with the mobile market that launched in January 2022. Prediction markets sit outside that framework because they're not classified as sports betting under federal law — they're event contracts.

That distinction is exactly what the state is now contesting. Pick'em-style products and certain DFS variants continue to face shifting state-level treatment, and NY joined the coalition of states pushing back on prediction markets as an end-run around state gaming law in early 2026.

The April 2026 headlines are actually four overlapping suits, not one. On April 21, 2026, NY Attorney General Letitia James filed civil actions against Coinbase Financial Markets and Gemini, alleging their prediction-market offerings function as illegal gambling under New York law. Three days later, on April 24, the CFTC — joined by the United States — sued the State of New York, Governor Hochul, AG James, and the NY State Gaming Commission in the Southern District of New York, arguing federal commodities law preempts state gaming enforcement over event contracts traded on a CFTC-designated exchange.

Running alongside those two cases: Kalshi has separately sued the NY Gaming Commission over its sports-event-contract crackdown, and consolidated class actions against KalshiEX are moving through SDNY. Polymarket is not directly named in the NY-vs-CFTC fight. Coverage from NY1, Spectrum News, and pmpmedia.io has framed the collective docket as a federalism fight with real market consequences.

The near-term posture: nothing has been pulled from NY as a result of these suits, and both major venues remain operational statewide pending resolution. Our full explainer on the CFTC and Kalshi lawsuits walks through the specific claims and what each possible ruling would mean for NY access.

Read the terms. Confirm current availability for your state on the platform itself, not on a third-party page. Use only venues that clearly disclose their regulatory posture, and treat anything you put down as money you can lose.

For a starting point, our platforms comparison lists each venue's New York status side-by-side, and our prediction markets vs. sports betting explainer walks through where the two products actually differ.