What changed in 2026
Three dates matter. On 1 April 2026 the Gambling Act 2025 came into force (assent 23 March 2026), replacing the 2005 Act with activity-based licensing: B2C remote, B2B remote, betting intermediary or exchange, marketing services and holding entities, each with its own fee. On 13 July 2026 the Prediction Market Regulations 2026 (LN.2026/176) took effect, creating a "prediction market authorisation" that the regulations say is not a licence under Part 4 of the Act and is not to be treated as betting, gaming or a lottery "solely by reason of its characteristics as prediction market activity". On 13 August 2026 the fee regulations for it (LN.2026/316) followed.
Before the regulations existed, Gibraltar had already licensed Predict Street Ltd on 26 March 2026 as a betting intermediary under the old Act, in what the Minister told Parliament was "record time", about a month. WagerWire's Wire Markets received approval in principle for a prediction market licence on 10 June 2026. So the path is proven twice, once under each regime.
What the authorisation lets you do
Regulation 11 covers the whole stack: creating, listing and settling contracts, operating the trading platform, and running pricing, matching, clearing, settlement and surveillance systems. Regulation 22 says digital-asset payments "including stablecoins" may be used for funding, collateral, settlement and withdrawals without changing the legal character of the contract. Regulation 33(1) says no separate licence is needed under another enactment for the authorised activity. That combination is what a Polymarket-style operator has been asking European regulators for since 2024 and what the ESMA statement of 3 July 2026 (event contracts on MiFID underlyings are derivatives) and France's blocking order against Polymarket on 16 July 2026 refused elsewhere.
Two constraints come with it. Every contract must be approved by the Authority or certified under approved arrangements (regulation 12), and the Authority may restrict contract subjects such as crime, death, terrorism and war (regulation 14). If your model is thousands of user-created markets, the certification arrangement is the negotiation, not the fee.
Fees and duty
| Item | Prediction market authorisation | Betting intermediary licence, for comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Application | £30,000 | £15,000 |
| Annual fee | £100,000 | £100,000 |
| Duty | 0.15% of commission charged, no exemption | 0.15% of gross intermediary profit, no exemption |
| Legal basis | LN.2026/316, in force 13 August 2026 | LN.2026/065, in force 1 April 2026 |
Corporate tax is 15% on a territorial basis, up from 12.5% on 1 July 2024. A B2C betting licence for a conventional sportsbook costs £30,000 to apply and £50,000 a year under £20 million gross yield, rising to £200,000 above £300 million; B2B platform suppliers pay £85,000 a year and no duty.
Presence and conditions
Section 39(1)(b) of the Act makes "a sufficient substantive presence in Gibraltar" a condition of any licence, and section 40 lists the factors: remote gambling equipment located in Gibraltar, jobs created, tax revenue, and others. The Gambling Division says it has "traditionally only considered licensing blue chip companies with a proven track record" but will consider "appropriately funded start-ups". Predict Street was a start-up with a sovereign-backed chain behind it; read that as the bar.
Schedule 2 to the regulations sets the standing conditions: fit and proper persons, adequate financial and non-financial resources (no fixed capital figure is stated), governance, supervisability, client-money safeguarding, market-integrity and anti-manipulation controls, AML, CTF and sanctions compliance, and clear contract rules. Regulation 20 requires a recovery and wind-down plan approved by the Authority. Regulation 34 adds prediction markets to the AML-relevant businesses under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2015.
Timeline
No official processing time is published. The one data point is Predict Street: roughly a month from public announcement to licence. Consultants quote two to six months for a well-prepared application and warn of twelve for a weak one. The regulated-individuals regime in sections 55 to 77 of the Act had not commenced as of April 2026, and the Gambling Commissioner who built the regime since 2018 is leaving, with a successor unannounced at the time of writing. Expect the first authorisations under the new regulations to set the tempo for everyone after.
What we build for it
Our prediction markets platform was designed against regulation 11's list: order book, pricing, matching, clearing and settlement, surveillance, and a contract-certification workflow that logs the approval status of every market. Settlement runs in fiat or stablecoin per regulation 22. For a Gibraltar file we also supply the Schedule 2 documentation pack and the wind-down plan template. If you would rather license a conventional exchange or sportsbook in Gibraltar, the same team handles the B2C and B2B applications under LN.2026/065.
Questions operators ask
Do I need a Gibraltar company?
The Act does not say so in terms; section 30 looks at where the business is established and managed. In practice every licensee to date is a Gibraltar company with staff and equipment on the Rock, and the substantive-presence test makes anything else hard to argue.
Can players from the UK or EU trade?
The authorisation is Gibraltar's view of your activity, not the UK's or France's. The UK treats financial-event contracts as binary options banned for retail and sports or political markets as gambling under the UKGC; ESMA and several EU regulators treat financial-underlying contracts as derivatives. Market access is a separate analysis per country.
Is a betting exchange licence cheaper?
The application fee is half (£15,000) and the annual fee is the same £100,000. The exchange licence does not give you regulation 22's digital-asset settlement language or regulation 33's single-licence position, which is the reason to pay the extra £15,000.
Sources
- Gambling Act 2025 (Act 2026-04), gibraltarlaws.gov.gi; commencement notice LN.2026/064
- Gambling (Fees and Duties) Regulations, LN.2026/065, in force 1 April 2026
- Prediction Market Regulations 2026, LN.2026/176, in force 13 July 2026; fees LN.2026/316, in force 13 August 2026
- Financial Services (DLT Providers) Regulations 2020; Financial Services (Fees) Regulations 2020, consolidated to 3 September 2026
- Gambling Division website; Isolas briefings, 7 April and 14 July 2026; Ramparts, Gambling Act 2025 enactment note
- Focus Gaming News, 3 April 2026; Tradeinformer, 9 April 2026 (Predict Street); GlobeNewswire, 10 June 2026 (WagerWire)
- iGaming Business, ESMA statement, July 2026; PwC Tax Summaries, Gibraltar, reviewed 22 August 2026