Prediction Market Forecast 2026: Experts on What to Expect Next

Prediction Markets Key Milestones

Prediction Markets in 2026: Growth in Numbers

According to the Blask Index highlights from the latest NEXT.io’s research, the prediction markets category entered a hypergrowth phase: 

• Steady climb (January – September 2025): The market maintained a consistent upward trend, growing from 1.7 million to 2.3 million monthly active users.
• Hypergrowth phase (October 2025): Engagement doubled in a single month, surging to 4.65 million as prediction markets hit the mainstream.
• New market peak (January 2026): The category reached a record high of 8.58 million, representing a 400% increase in just one year.

In 2026, Prediction markets have leveled up into a massive financial powerhouse, rivaling traditional sports betting and established stock exchanges.

Prediction Markets Market Size Forecast 2026–2030

How big will prediction markets get? Industry analysts are painting a bullish prediction market growth forecast for 2026 and beyond. According to a joint report from Keyrock and Dune, the trading volume on prediction markets is expected to increase fivefold in 2026 compared to 2025.

• Weekly action: The market is forecast to process $25 billion in trades each week.
• Annual milestone: This brings the yearly total to $1.3 trillion.

This trillion-dollar forecast isn’t an outlier. It aligns closely with the prediction market research from Eilers & Krejcik Gaming (EKG), which previously identified a $1 trillion potential for the sector. 

Meredith McPherron, CEO and Managing Partner of Drive by DraftKings, said: 

Prediction markets have reached an inflection point. Seeing $1.3B+ traded on Super Bowl Sunday alone made it clear this is no longer niche, it’s becoming a real, investable category. What’s driving it isn’t hype, but the convergence of adoption, liquidity, and an emerging framework under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Meredith McPherron

A longer prediction market forecast for 2030 from Citizens Bank analysts suggests that the market could reach the annual revenue of $10 billion, growing from the estimated annual revenue of around $3 billion in 2025.  

Prediction Market Future Outlook: Experts’ Views 

1. Prediction Market Manipulation vs. Truth Discovery

Beyond the numbers, we asked industry experts about the sector’s biggest structural risks and vulnerabilities. 

In 2026, prediction markets are hailed as ‘truth machines,’ yet vulnerable to price distortion by deep-pocketed actors. How big of a risk is deliberate market manipulation to the credibility of these forecasts?

Spencer Yang, Managing Partner of BlockSpaceForce, a crypto-native investment and advisory firm, told Gambling Insider:

I think the idea that prediction markets can function as ‘universal truth machines’ has been significantly overblown. It makes for an intoxicating venture capital pitch, but it ignores the fact that prediction markets are a compliance nightmare that will struggle to scale.

These aren’t just social platforms; they are financial instruments. Every time an operator lists a market, they are essentially launching a mini-derivative, which triggers a significant regulatory burden. To keep their lawyers happy and costs down, operators will inevitably ‘scrub’ their platforms of legal risk. They will gravitate toward safe, easily settled data points like the Super Bowl or crypto prices – the same events you can already bet on with existing gambling products.

Spencer Yang

Yang noted that users prefer to bet on high-profile events that are traditionally associated with gambling, so those markets “tend to be the deepest and most resilient.” When it comes to fringe events (the betting opportunities that prediction markets offer and sportsbooks don’t), those are usually very thinly traded markets with difficult-to-manage compliance and little regulatory oversight. 

“They are both the least popular markets and the most susceptible to manipulation; over time, prediction market platforms will prune them,” Yang said.

Once that pruning is complete, these platforms are essentially recreations of traditional sportsbooks with sleeker interfaces. Companies promising a ‘decentralized oracle that solves the 21st-century epistemic crisis’ will slam into the same obstacles that have governed the gambling industry for decades.

Spencer Yang

Roman Baranovskyi, Head of Gambling Department at SBSB Fintech Lawyers, believes that prediction markets now sit in a “regulatory vacuum,” which makes them vulnerable to manipulation. 

He told Gambling Insider:

This lack of a clear legal definition creates a ‘safe harbor for those looking to exploit the system outside the reach of traditional oversight. The real threat to the ‘truth machine’ isn’t necessarily the institutional player with deep pockets. The genuine danger is what I would call insider gambling.

 Given the current geopolitical volatility, the opportunity for actors with private information to treat these markets as a tool for rapid, guaranteed gain is more real than ever. We frequently see patterns where a random, anonymous wallet appears, places a massive bet that dwarfs typical market volume on a specific outcome, wins, and immediately vanishes. This isn’t just a large trade; it is a clear signature of an insider leveraging asymmetric information to manipulate the odds. For my clients who are considering launching such platforms, this is the primary concern. 

Roman Baranovskyi

To preserve the integrity of these forecasts, Baranovskyi believes the focus of future regulation should be on the transparency of the participant rather than on the size of the capital.

He specifically mentioned three necessary pillars: 

• A total ban on account proliferation
• The implementation of rigorous KYC (Know Your Customer) protocols to eliminate multi-accounting 
• Ensuring that the traded events are not susceptible to artificial speculation 

Ultimately, the goal for regulators should be to move these platforms away from being ‘shadow betting’ hubs and toward becoming transparent environments where outcomes are determined by collective intelligence, not by whoever holds the most secret information.

Roman Baranovskyi

2. Institutional Use vs. Retail Speculation 

The growing prediction market trend towards institutionalization leads us to another question. With the entry of giants like CME Group, ICE, and Robinhood into event contracts, are prediction markets becoming legitimate hedging tools, or will they remain retail-driven, speculative playgrounds?

Spencer Yang told Gambling Insider:

Prediction markets are both legitimate hedging tools and retail-driven speculative playgrounds at the moment. Obviously, many people watch a football game and speculate on a contract for that market as second-screen engagement. There are also many sophisticated trading firms, financial institutions, and companies using prediction markets to hedge against business risk. All use cases and motivations with different durations must integrate into a cohesive market for it to function well.

Spencer Yang

Meanwhile, SBSB Fintech Lawyers’ Baranovskyi believes this question is linked to prediction markets’ eventual regulatory classification.

In my professional view, we must be extremely cautious about labeling prediction markets as ‘investment vehicles’ in the traditional sense. Investment is typically a long-term strategy, whereas the speculative nature of event contracts aligns more closely with high-velocity derivative instruments. As it stands today, the market remains primarily driven by entertainment and short-term speculation rather than strategic hedging.

While the entry of giants like CME Group and Robinhood adds a layer of institutional credibility, these platforms are currently more of a ‘fast-play’ environment. That said, as the sector matures and regulatory definitions stabilize, I expect to see the emergence of more sophisticated, transparent instruments. Only then will prediction markets move beyond retail hype to become a rational tool for asset diversification and genuine risk management.

Roman Baranovskyi

3. Prediction Markets Compliance vs. Decentralization

With regulators tightening control over the prediction markets’ future in 2026, will prediction markets consolidate under a few licensed platforms or shift toward decentralized, on-chain alternatives that accept higher legal risk?

Roman Baranovskyi believes prediction markets aren’t currently under a massive wave of global regulatory scrutiny. He also warned that we shouldn’t “throw around the word decentralization as if it’s a synonym for a lawless, easy-to-use Wild West.”

In a professional legal context, he explained, decentralization doesn’t mean the absence of compliance. It simply means the absence of a centralized authority.

Any rational business owner understands that without adequate internal controls and user compliance, the platform itself is the first to lose. An environment of total permissiveness eventually leads to sophisticated actors draining the liquidity of these platforms, leaving the business unable to meet its obligations to the rest of the user base.

Prediction markets are increasingly becoming a space for serious players who, even in the absence of rigid state regulation, are deeply incentivized to maintain fairness and integrity on their own platforms. This business model isn’t built for a ‘quick hit-and-run’ strategy. If a platform ignores compliance in favor of pure decentralization, it risks walking into a dead end where it can no longer guarantee payouts or operational stability. Therefore, I expect the market to lean toward sophisticated, self-regulating environments rather than just high-risk, unmonitored on-chain alternatives.

Roman Baranovskyi

According to Yurii Berest, CEO of DATA.BET, prediction market participants – from legacy bookmakers to emerging tech players – will aggressively seek ways to “monetize the current hype,” regardless of the regulatory actions. 

Berest told Gambling Insider:

We are likely to see a hybrid evolution, where giants like Robinhood will consolidate mass-market users within licensed platforms, while more agile actors shift toward decentralized, on-chain alternatives to bypass legal constraints. Ultimately, the industry itself will dictate the most efficient model for capturing audience interest, adapting its tools to whatever reality it faces.

Yurii Berest

4. AI Agents Taking Over Markets 

As we see the rise of agentic AI in prediction markets, what happens to the ‘human’ element of these markets? If the majority of liquidity in 2026 comes from AI agents, does the market still reflect human wisdom, or just the efficiency of competing algorithms?

Roman Baranovskyi said that while we often “romanticize” prediction markets as the ultimate expression of human wisdom, the reality is that the human element is rapidly being augmented. 

And in many cases, replaced by autonomous algorithms. 

However, I don’t believe this signals the end of human insight. Rather, it changes the nature of how that insight is delivered to the market.

From a legal and operational standpoint, we have to recognize that AI agents don’t operate in a vacuum – they are tools deployed by human principals to execute strategies based on specific data sets and risk tolerances. When AI accounts for the majority of market liquidity, the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ effectively evolves into the ‘wisdom of the models.’ The market stops being a simple poll of human sentiment and becomes a high-speed stress test of competing information processing systems.

Roman Baranovskyi

The concern that we are losing humanity in these forecasts is “somewhat misplaced,” said  Baranovskyi. Even if the execution is algorithmic, the underlying incentives and the final outcomes being predicted remain deeply human. 

The risk, he noted, isn’t the loss of human wisdom, but rather the emergence of algorithmic feedback loops, where AI agents might react to one another’s movements rather than to real-world events. This could create a facade of market efficiency that is detached from physical reality.

For the integrity of the market, the challenge for platforms will be ensuring that these AI agents are anchored to high-quality, verifiable data sources. If the liquidity is purely algorithmic, the market’s role as a truth machine depends entirely on the transparency of the oracles providing the data. 

Ultimately, we are moving toward a hybrid era: humans will still define the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of a bet, but AI agents will determine the ‘how’ and the ‘when’ with a level of precision that human traders simply cannot match.

Roman Baranovskyi

Spencer Yang told Gambling Insider that agentic AI could eventually find some productive use cases: 

Today, we’ve seen AI agents mostly act under human instruction and curation. However, gradually, as OpenClaw and other solutions gain popularity, we could see more autonomous agentic decisions being made. Agents could potentially spin up markets that differ significantly from markets that traditionally interest humans, such as sports and politics. They could create markets that are more random and agent-focused – perhaps, whether Claude can solve a mathematical problem in 1 second. These could then be turned into productive use cases. 

Spencer Yang

5. Prediction Markets Inside Companies

Going beyond public elections and sports, we’re seeing more enterprises use internal prediction markets to forecast product launch dates or revenue targets. What’s holding back broader adoption – the gambling stigma or the fear of what happens when the market says a project will fail?

Mark de Wolf, iGaming and Web3 Analyst, reminded that corporate experiments with prediction markets have been going on for nearly two decades, dating back to the late 90s when Hewlett-Packard tried using them to predict printer sales. “The truth is, they work but usually get quietly shuttered – often for working too well,” he told Gambling Insider.

Research shows that as long as participation is high, they can outperform traditional forecasting tools. Employees hold fragmented pieces of information about project timelines, product readiness, or customer demand. A corporate PM platform can aggregate those infobits into a single probability signal, which can be surprisingly accurate.

The problem is, they can also surface uncomfortable truths. For example, if the prediction market algo starts pricing a product launch at a 30% chance of shipping on time, it’s effectively contradicting the official plan. That creates a leadership conundrum: do we ignore the signal and undermine the tool, or acknowledge it and admit the organization’s forecast may be wrong?

Mark de Wolf

In HR and legal departments, de Wolf added, there’s also a stigma around anything with gambling associations. Even if the markets use ‘play money’ or points, the idea of employees betting on outcomes can trigger concerns about optics and incentives. 

But that’s usually a secondary issue. The deeper barrier is about power. Prediction markets flatten information hierarchies and let the collective judgment of employees compete with whatever’s coming from management. For organizations that genuinely want early warning signals about risk, that’s powerful. For those who prefer optimistic plans to remain unchallenged, it can feel threatening.

Mark de Wolf

Baranovskyi believes the expansion of internal prediction markets into the corporate world is a logical evolution, but its widespread adoption is hitting a very specific wall. According to the expert, the primary hurdle isn’t just the gambling stigma, but rather a fundamental conflict between market transparency and traditional corporate hierarchy.

When a company implements an internal prediction market, they are essentially creating an unfiltered truth machine that can contradict the official narrative of leadership. This creates a significant fear of the truth among management: most corporate structures are not yet ready to handle the reputational risk of a market-validated failure before it even happens.

Roman Baranovskyi

Furthermore, from a legal perspective, using these markets for internal KPIs can be a minefield, Baranovskyi added. There is a fine line between ‘incentivized forecasting’ and ‘internal betting,’ which can lead to concerns about workplace ethics and even labor law violations, depending on the jurisdiction, the expert warned.

However, the real value of these tools lies in their ability to strip away the ‘yes-man’ culture that often leads to catastrophic project failures, Baranovskyi told Gambling Insider.

The companies that will succeed with these markets are those willing to trade the comfort of a corporate illusion for the cold, hard data of a cynical, but accurate internal crowd. Right now, it’s not the fear of gambling that’s holding us back. It’s the fear that the market might be right when it says a project is doomed to fail.

Roman Baranovskyi

Conclusion

Prediction markets have come a long way from niche crypto experiments to a new trillion-dollar financial category, which attracts retail traders and big institutional players. 

According to the experts’ prediction markets forecasts, their future will depend on how the industry resolves key tensions around regulatory classification, risks of insider trading and manipulation, AI-driven liquidity, and whether these platforms can move beyond speculative betting toward credible forecasting tools for businesses and policymakers.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Kalshi Wins CFTC Approval for Exchange to Trade Event Contracts (Business Wire)
2. Liquid Prediction Markets are (finally) here… (Kalshi News)
3. Kalshi’s Court Victory: A Turning Point for Prediction Markets? (The Stanford Review)
4. NEXT.io uncovers the impact of prediction markets on sports betting (NEXT.io)
5. 12 Charts to Watch in 2026 (Keyrock)
6. Prediction markets could hit a trillion dollars in trading volume by the end of this decade, new report says (CNBC)
7. Prediction Markets Will See 5-Fold Growth by 2030, Citizens Says (Bloomberg)