Prediction markets have gone from niche experiment to one of the fastest-growing corners of finance, and the numbers now move quickly. This page collects the headline statistics in one place — sourced from Pew Research Center, The Block, platform disclosures and independent trackers — so you can see the scale of the market at a glance. Figures are as of mid-2026 and we refresh this page as new data lands.
Headline numbers (mid-2026)
- ~$24 billion — combined monthly global volume on Kalshi and Polymarket in April 2026, up from under $5 billion in September 2025 (Pew Research Center / The Block).
- $150 billion+ — the two platforms’ combined lifetime trading volume, crossed in April 2026.
- $22 billion — Kalshi’s valuation after its March 2026 round; ~$15 billion — the valuation Polymarket has been linked to in 2026 reporting.
- 2 platforms ≈ the whole market — Kalshi and Polymarket account for the overwhelming majority of all prediction-market volume.
Trading volume
The growth curve is the story. By a Pew Research Center analysis of The Block’s data, combined monthly global volume on the two major platforms rose from under $5 billion in September 2025 to roughly $24 billion by April 2026 — for comparison, legal US sportsbooks handled around $14 billion per month on average in 2025, so the exchanges now clear more notional volume than the entire American sportsbook industry. Independent trackers recorded Kalshi’s ninth consecutive monthly record in May 2026 at roughly $17.9 billion, while Polymarket’s international platform did about $7.1 billion the same month after peaking near $10.6 billion in March. Polymarket’s newer CFTC-regulated US arm is smaller — around $1.3 billion in April 2026 against $9 billion on the international venue. Kalshi has also said its annualised volume reached $178 billion in spring 2026, with annualised revenue topping $1.5 billion and institutional volume up roughly 800% in six months.
Valuations and funding
Capital has chased that growth at extraordinary speed. Kalshi went from a $2 billion valuation in June 2025 (a $185 million Series C led by Paradigm) to $5 billion in October (Andreessen Horowitz), $11 billion in December, and $22 billion in March 2026 after a roughly $1 billion round led by Coatue — an elevenfold repricing in nine months. Polymarket’s last priced deal was Intercontinental Exchange’s investment of up to $2 billion in October 2025 at about a $9 billion valuation, with 2026 reporting linking it to a new round at around $15 billion. The New York Stock Exchange’s owner backing a prediction market tells you how mainstream the category has become.
What people actually trade
Three categories dominate. Since July 2024, sports, politics and crypto have made up roughly 90% of volume on both platforms — but the mix differs sharply. Sports is about 80% of Kalshi’s volume against roughly 39% of Polymarket’s, with Polymarket far heavier in politics. The mix also swings with the news: around the November 2024 election, politics was 90% of Kalshi’s volume and 65% of Polymarket’s. Everything else we cover in our market guides — economics, weather, entertainment, tech — is real but small by comparison.
Accuracy data
Industry research in 2025 put average Brier scores — the standard forecast-error measure, where lower is better and 0.25 equals random guessing — near 0.09 across major platforms, which is genuinely strong calibration. The fuller picture, including where markets beat polls and where they miss, is in our dedicated guide to prediction-market accuracy.
Reading the numbers
Two caveats keep the statistics honest. First, methodologies differ: Kalshi counts volume at $1 face value per contract while Polymarket counts taker notional (contracts × price paid), so head-to-head comparisons are approximate. Second, wash trading inflated some historical crypto-venue figures — academic work estimated a meaningful share of Polymarket’s pre-fee-era volume was wash trades before declining sharply in 2025. Directionally, though, every source agrees: this market is growing extremely fast. For how it got here, read the history of prediction markets; to trade it, start with our 2026 platform rankings.
More on how we got here
This page is part of our series on the story and scale of prediction markets:
Frequently asked questions
How big are prediction markets in 2026?
Very large and growing fast: combined monthly volume on Kalshi and Polymarket reached roughly $24 billion by April 2026 — more than the average monthly handle of all legal US sportsbooks — and their combined lifetime volume crossed $150 billion.
What are Kalshi and Polymarket worth?
Kalshi was valued at $22 billion in its March 2026 funding round, up from $2 billion in June 2025. Polymarket's last priced deal (ICE, October 2025) valued it around $9 billion, with 2026 reporting linking it to a round at about $15 billion.
What do people trade most on prediction markets?
Sports, politics and crypto account for roughly 90% of volume on both major platforms — sports is about 80% of Kalshi's volume but only around 39% of Polymarket's, which leans much more political.