World Leader Turnover 2026

Prediction markets price national leadership as a portfolio, and this workspace collects the books that do it. Polymarket runs a dated ladder on Vladimir Putin leaving the Russian presidency; Kalshi runs a thirty-seven-name Multiple on which leaders leave office in 2026. Between them they cover most of the G20 plus a long tail of smaller states.

The most striking thing here is not a probability—it is where the money sits. Polymarket's Putin book turned over $123,583 in the last day. $73,525 of it—sixty percent—is on the August 31, 2026 leg, which prices at 0.9%. Another $46,883 sits on December 31, 2026 at 7.5%. The leg the market rates most likely, June 30, 2027 at 12.5%, carries $2,113.

That is an inverted relationship between probability and volume, and it is the same pattern visible right now in Kalshi's December oil ceiling and Polymarket's Ethereum book: traders fund the tails and leave the base case alone.

The two anchor books, side by side. On the left, Polymarket's dated Putin ladder—read as a cumulative it prices a 0.9% chance by the end of this month, 2.4% by September, 7.5% by year-end and 12.5% by June 2027. On the right, Kalshi's thirty-seven-name leaders-out Multiple, which asks the same question about the whole world at once and settles January 1, 2027.

The two agree on Putin: Polymarket's year-end leg is 7.5%, Kalshi's is 6.7%. Eight-tenths of a point apart on the highest-stakes leadership question in the book.

The dominant outcomes on each anchor, priced directly. Polymarket's December 31 leg at 7.5% is where the second-largest concentration of money on the book sits. Kalshi's Putin leg at 6.7% carries $3,392—the second-deepest position on a thirty-seven-name book where thirty of the names traded nothing at all.

Cross-exchange agreement this tight on a low-probability geopolitical binary is unusual and worth noting. Both books are pricing the same information, not each other.

Where the two exchanges disagree, and by how much. Friedrich Merz is the clean case: Polymarket runs a standalone binary on the German chancellor leaving before 2027 at 17.5% on $5,018; Kalshi's leg on the same person in the same window prices 12% on zero volume.

A 5.5-point spread on an identical question is the single most actionable thing in this workspace, and the direction of the volume tells you which side to trust: Polymarket's number has money behind it and Kalshi's does not.

Kalshi's book also carries three legs stuck at the untraded 50% default—Keir Starmer, Aleksandar Vučić and Gustavo Petro. Those are not forecasts. They are placeholders on a book nobody has tested, and they sit above genuinely-priced names like Netanyahu at 44%.

The regional and structural books. Italy has its own Categorical running to 2028—Giorgia Meloni at 48.5%, Elly Schlein at 19.5%, Giuseppe Conte at 15.5%—and it is the most liquid single-country leadership book outside the anchors at $7,039. The G7 Categorical asks which G7 leader goes next and gives a remarkably concentrated answer: Emmanuel Macron at 83.5%, everyone else in single digits.

Note the tension: Kalshi's leaders-out book prices Macron himself at only 9.5% to leave office in 2026, while French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu prices at 23.5%. The G7 book is asking who goes next, not who goes soon—a distinction that is easy to miss and materially changes what 83.5% means.

The tail risks that would force leadership change rather than reflect it. Polymarket prices a Chinese invasion of Taiwan before 2027 at 3.7%, and that single binary carries $37,036—more than any leg on Kalshi's entire thirty-seven-name book. Alongside it, the African leaders Categorical, a very long-dated book running to 2035 with Bola Tinubu at 36.5% and a flat tail behind him.

These two are the outer edges of the same question the workspace asks throughout: how much political discontinuity does the market expect, and is it paying for the ordinary kind or the catastrophic kind?

• Sixty percent of the Putin book is on a 0.9% leg. $73,525 on August 31, 2026, against $2,113 on the 12.5% June 2027 leg. Probability and volume run in opposite directions across the whole ladder.
• The two exchanges agree on Putin and disagree on Merz. Year-end Putin: 7.5% Polymarket, 6.7% Kalshi. Merz before 2027: 17.5% Polymarket, 12% Kalshi—a 5.5-point spread, and only one side has volume behind it.
• Netanyahu at 44% is the highest genuinely-traded leg on Kalshi's book, on $1,789. Christopher Luxon at 46.5% is nominally higher but carries $431.
• Three Kalshi legs sit at the untraded 50% default. Starmer, Vučić and Petro are placeholders, not forecasts, and they outrank real prices on the sorted book. Always check volume before reading a leg near 50%.
• Taiwan at 3.7% carries more money than any leader leg anywhere. $37,036 on one binary. The market pays more attention to the discontinuity that would reshape the region than to any individual succession.
• Read "next" and "soon" as different questions. The G7 book has Macron at 83.5% to be the next G7 leader out; the 2026 book has him at 9.5% to go this year. Both can be true.
• What to watch: whether the August 31 Putin leg unwinds or rolls into September as it expires, and whether Kalshi's Merz leg converges toward Polymarket's.