Netanyahu Out Odds 2026: Three Markets, Three Prices

Published 28 September 2026 · Prices frozen 28 September 2026, 16:30 UTC

Every page currently ranking for Netanyahu out odds quotes one number, rounds it, and does not say which contract it came from — 41%, 46%, one of them a “54% chance to No” that is simply the other side of a stale mid. That matters more than usual here, because there are three live contracts on this man and this date and they are 6.5 points apart: 39.5¢, 41.0¢ and 34.5¢. We read both exchanges in the same pass, pulled the full lifetime daily history on every contract in the incumbent-exit cluster, swept 40 pages of Kalshi’s open events to find every leader it lists, and put the three resolution texts side by side. The spread is not a trading opportunity and it is not a disagreement about Israel. It is three rulebooks answering three different questions, and the one that decides all three is a clause about caretaker prime ministers.

Where the leader-exit odds stand today

Five Polymarket contracts price a sitting leader or ruling system ceasing to hold power by 31 December 2026. Four are about a named person; the fifth is about the Islamic Republic itself. Netanyahu is not merely the highest of the five — he is nine times the next one.

Read the last two columns together and the board stops looking like a ranking of political risk. The contract that moved 11 points has the smallest book on the table. The one that moved 0.7 has a book twelve times larger. We come back to that in the liquidity section, because it changes how much weight the headline number deserves.

Netanyahu out odds fell 11 points in seven days

This is the live story on the board, and both exchanges show it. The contract sat at 53.50¢ on 14 September and closed at 39.50¢ on the afternoon of the 28th. Two Israeli polls land inside the drop, and both say the same thing: neither bloc is reaching 61 seats.

The intraday path is unusually clean. Polymarket held 44.50¢ from 19:00 UTC on the 27th, stepped to 40.50¢ at 02:00, took a second leg to 36.50¢ at 08:00, and settled back at 39.50¢ by early afternoon: an overnight repricing against a Sunday-evening poll, with three points of it bought straight back. Kalshi’s daily close has not moved since the 26th.

One man, one date, three different prices

Here is the part nobody else is publishing. Three separate contracts on two exchanges ask whether Benjamin Netanyahu stops being prime minister before 1 January 2027. They are quoted 6.5 points apart, and every point of that is traceable to a sentence in the rules.

Polymarket’s standalone contract resolves Yes if Netanyahu “ceases to be Prime Minister of Israel for any period of time”, and adds that an announcement of his resignation or removal resolves the market immediately, whenever it takes effect. No permanence requirement, and a press conference is enough.

Kalshi’s rung is looser still, and this is the 1.5 points. It resolves Yes if he “has either officially announced their intention to leave as Prime Minister of Israel or has actually left”. An intention to leave is a wider net than a resignation: a leader who says he will not seek to form the next government, or will hand over after a transition, has announced an intention without announcing a resignation. That branch pays on Kalshi and does not obviously pay on Polymarket.

Polymarket’s own basket is the strict one, and it is five points below its own standalone market on the same man. It requires permanent removal, says an announced resignation “will not alone qualify”, says a scheduled departure due to an election outcome will not alone qualify, and — the decisive clause — says that anyone who “continues in a caretaker or interim role” has not ceased to occupy the office. Same man, same deadline, minus 5 points for one sentence.

The caretaker clause that decides all three

Israel votes on 27 October. Every one of these contracts settles 65 days later. The gap between those two dates is the entire trade, because losing an Israeli election does not remove you from office — being replaced does. The outgoing government continues to carry out its functions until a new government is constituted, so a defeated Netanyahu remains prime minister until someone else is sworn in.

And the Basic Law gives that process a great deal of room. Official results are confirmed on 4 November. The President then assigns a member of the Knesset the task of forming a government, who gets 28 days and may request a 14-day extension. If that fails, a second MK gets 28 days with no extension. If that fails, 61 members can nominate a third, who gets 14 days. Run the arithmetic against 31 December.

A first-attempt success that uses the full extension lands on 23 December at the latest, and a new government still has to be sworn in after a Knesset confidence vote. Anything that reaches a second mandate is into January with certainty. So the honest reading of 39.5¢ is not “a 39.5% chance Netanyahu loses”. It is closer to the chance that someone else is sworn in, or that he announces he is going, within nine weeks of a tied election. Our Israel election odds piece works the seat maths and the 61-seat arithmetic behind that tie; this one is about what the exit contracts do with it.

Polymarket is cheaper than Kalshi on four of five

Five leaders have a directly comparable contract on both venues: a named person, the same office, the same 31 December deadline. Kalshi lists 35 names, Polymarket lists these as separate standalone events, and where they overlap the pattern is consistent enough to be worth naming and inconsistent enough to rule out the obvious explanation.

Four in one direction would be a structural story — fees, funding costs, a systematically different trader base. The Xi line kills that, because it runs the other way by 1.45 points on the same day, in the same sweep, under wording that is for once identical (both venues say General Secretary of the Communist Party, not President of China, which is the distinction most coverage gets wrong). What is left is the unglamorous answer: these are thin books and the gaps are mostly inside the spreads. Kalshi’s Xi rung printed 9¢ on 17 September and 2.1¢ eleven days later on a total of about 273 contracts. Polymarket moved 0.7 of a point over the same week.

Our Venezuela leader comparison found the same shape from the other end: agreement on the favourite, wild disagreement on the tail, for reasons about who is quoting rather than what anyone believes.

The biggest move happened on the smallest book

The Netanyahu event carries $124.43m of lifetime volume, the largest of any geopolitics market on Polymarket. That number is also the most misleading thing on the page, because 83.7% of it sits in one settled rung.

The live contract has taken $2.57m in its whole life and $28,354 in the week it moved 11 points, of which $7,254 arrived in the 24 hours it moved six. Set that against the rest of the board: Xi’s contract traded $350,266 over the same week and moved 0.7 of a point; Putin’s traded $331,122 and moved 0.1. The market that moved most is the one with the least money behind it, by an order of magnitude in both directions.

Why the two “leaders out” baskets do not compare

Both exchanges run a single page listing world leaders with a probability next to each. They screenshot identically and they are different instruments, which is how the 34.5¢ and the 41.0¢ in the third table end up on the same man.

Polymarket’s board is a horse race. Exactly one rung pays, the “None before 2027” line at 33.50¢ is a real outcome, and the 101.50¢ sum is the 1.5% overround you would expect on a well-made mutually exclusive book. Kalshi’s board is 35 unrelated coin flips printed on one screen; several can pay, and the 388.70¢ sum is not an arbitrage, not an error, and not the probability of anything.

So Netanyahu at 34.5¢ on Polymarket’s basket is not a third opinion about Netanyahu. It is the probability he is the first of those 21 to be permanently out — which he cannot be if Sébastien Lecornu goes first at 13.10¢, and which he cannot be at all if he stays on as caretaker. Two haircuts, five points.

Putin, Xi and the shape of the curve

The other four contracts on the board have barely moved this week, but they have all moved a long way this year, and in one direction. Putin opened at 24.50¢ in July 2025 and trades at 3.75¢ — its lifetime low, set today. Xi peaked at 32.50¢ in July 2025 and trades at 3.55¢. Trump opened at 12.50¢ in November 2025, peaked at 20.50¢ nine days later and trades at 4.50¢. The Iranian regime contract peaked at 52.50¢ on 14 January and trades at 6.50¢.

Two things are worth pulling out of that. The first is that the Putin contract is not flat — it is a ladder, and the ladder has shape. The 30 September rung is 0.05¢, the 31 December rung is 3.75¢ and the 30 June 2027 rung is 11.50¢. Traders are pricing roughly 7.75 points of additional risk in the six months after this one, which is a lot more than the flat 3.75¢ headline suggests and is the number worth watching if you care about Russian succession rather than about this calendar year.

The second is the wording on Xi, which almost every write-up gets wrong. Both venues contract on General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, not President of the People’s Republic. Those are different offices with different removal mechanics, and the Party post is the one that carries the power. A presidency handover would not resolve either contract.

The Iran line is not about a person at all but about the Islamic Republic as a governing system, and its rules exclude leadership succession, internal coups and partial loss of territory by name. We took it apart in the Iran regime change piece.

What to watch before 31 December

Four dated things, in the order they arrive.

Two near-dated extras, the only other Netanyahu contracts with real volume on either venue: Kalshi prices him being arrested before 1 January 2027 at 6.00¢ and pardoned before 1 November at 6.90¢. Neither resolves the exit contracts by itself; both would move them hard.

What we would actually watch is the book, not the price. A $297,127 contract that has just moved 11 points on $28,354 is one well-funded opinion away from moving another ten either way. If the December rung starts taking six-figure days, the number in front of you begins to mean what it says.

Related analysis

• Netanyahu out by…? — the live date ladder, chart, volume and the full resolution criteria
• Putin out as President of Russia by 31 December — live odds and the detention clause
• Xi Jinping out before 2027 — why this contract is about the Party post, not the presidency
• Trump out as President before 2027 — the only one of the five that requires permanent removal
• Israel election odds 2026 — the seat maths behind the tie, and why 61 beats first place
• Polymarket vs Kalshi: Venezuela leader odds — two venues, one favourite, opposite tails
• Israel odds hub — every active Israel market with 24-hour moves

Sources: the Polymarket Gamma and CLOB public APIs (events 34051, 31195, 30828, 73969, 72347, 34052, 73223 and 653446) and the Kalshi public events, single-market and candlestick APIs (KXLEADERSOUT-27JAN01, KXARRESTNETANYAHU-28JAN01 and KXNETANYAHUPARDON-26), both read at 28 September 2026, 16:30 UTC; resolution-criteria quotations are from the market rules as published on Gamma and Kalshi. The 27 September Kan 11 poll is reported by Haaretz, 27 September 2026, and the 23 September Channel 13 poll by Haaretz, 24 September 2026. The coalition-formation allowances are from the Israel Democracy Institute’s guide to how a government is formed after an Israeli election, and the election calendar — dissolution on 17 July 2026, polling on 27 October, results confirmed 4 November — from the 2026 Israeli legislative election record. Prices captured 28 September 2026, 16:30 UTC and not updated since. Nothing here is investment advice — see our disclaimer.