THE OUTLOOK / DATA REPORT · Oct 4, 2026
Three events.
Nearly half the volume.
Where does prediction-market trading concentrate? We measured cumulative volume across 922 verified open Polymarket events. Three questions about the 2028 U.S. presidency dominate this snapshot.
CONCENTRATION AT A GLANCE
of included cumulative volume
comes from just 3 events
At least $100,000 each
Trading turnover over each event’s life
1.1% of included events
01 / THE FINDING
A broad set of questions.
A narrow center of gravity.
Volume and breadth tell different stories.
Politics accounts for 20.7% of included events but 59.7% of their cumulative volume. World has more events—291 versus 191—but a smaller 18.1% volume share. A topic count and a turnover ranking give different pictures of this market set.
The biggest cluster is one connected story.
The top three events total $2.71B and all concern the 2028 U.S. presidency. Adding their event volumes is useful for measuring turnover concentration, but cannot tell us how many different people care about that election. The same trader can participate in all three.
The long tail still has substantial activity.
The 912 events outside the top ten together account for $2.23B, or 37.0% of included volume. That supports browsing beyond the leaders. It does not establish which topic is accelerating today.
02 / CATEGORY BREAKDOWN
Where the volume sits
Each event belongs to one editorial category.
Bars show share of included cumulative volume.
03 / THE LEADERS
The ten largest open events
Ranked by cumulative event volume.
All 922 rows are in the CSV.
| Rank | Event | Category | Cumulative volume | Share | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Democratic Presidential Nominee 2028 | Politics | $1,287,676,777 | 21.3% | Polymarket ↗ |
| 02 | Presidential Election Winner 2028 | Politics | $712,556,716 | 11.8% | Polymarket ↗ |
| 03 | Republican Presidential Nominee 2028 | Politics | $709,447,604 | 11.7% | Polymarket ↗ |
| 04 | Next Prime Minister of Ethiopia? | Politics | $286,063,880 | 4.7% | Polymarket ↗ |
| 05 | F1 Drivers' Champion | Sports | $203,748,110 | 3.4% | Polymarket ↗ |
| 06 | Brazil Presidential Election | Politics | $165,214,540 | 2.7% | Polymarket ↗ |
| 07 | Next French Presidential Election | Politics | $143,424,012 | 2.4% | Polymarket ↗ |
| 08 | Netanyahu out by...? | World | $124,491,228 | 2.1% | Polymarket ↗ |
| 09 | Venezuela leader end of 2026? | World | $98,039,304 | 1.6% | Polymarket ↗ |
| 10 | Kharg Island no longer under Iranian control by...? | World | $75,370,532 | 1.2% | Polymarket ↗ |
Event names reflect the provider’s labels, which can retain earlier deadlines. “Open” is a verified market status at retrieval, not a claim that every real-world event or observation window is still in the future. Article links give the relevant context.
04 / TRANSPARENT BY DESIGN
How to read—and reproduce—this report
This is a saved, citable edition. The site’s live market prices can change independently of these figures.
Our wider editorial method →Selection and status
We use the verified event registry retrieved at Oct 4, 2026, 10:42 UTC. An included event has at least $100,000 in cumulative event volume and at least one active, open contract that accepts orders, has valid outcome prices, and has positive recorded trading volume or liquidity. Placeholder contracts with neither trading volume nor liquidity do not qualify an event.
All 922 records in this edition were verified open and have a published article. We exclude 4 previously tracked events confirmed closed and 0 unavailable records. Historically closed events are not imported into the archive. An elapsed end-date alone does not establish that a contract is closed.
Aggregation
Each event is counted once. We sum the provider’s cumulative event-volume field, not its child contracts a second time. An event’s cumulative total may include activity in child contracts that have already closed, as long as another eligible contract keeps the event open. Category share is category volume divided by the total for all included events. Top-three and top-ten shares use the same denominator.
Limits
This is the selected $100,000-and-above open-event universe, not all Polymarket activity. It excludes smaller and closed events. Older events have had more time to accumulate volume; related events can involve overlapping traders and economic exposure. Seven categories are The Outlook’s editorial classification, not a claim about the provider’s taxonomy. We do not infer a daily trend, a search-demand estimate or an investment recommendation from this snapshot.
Source and reproducibility
The underlying fields come from Polymarket’s public Gamma API. See its event-field documentation and pagination documentation. The CSV contains every included event, its raw cumulative volume, category, share, source dates, canonical article URL and provider link.
CSV fields and snapshot fingerprint
- cumulative_volume_usd
- Provider-reported cumulative event trading turnover in USD; not open interest.
- share_of_included_volume
- A ratio between 0 and 1. Multiply by 100 for a percentage.
- report_snapshot_at_utc / source_checked_at_utc
- The saved registry edition time and the event’s verification time.
- source_updated_at_utc
- The provider’s last-update timestamp, which may be earlier than retrieval.
- editorial_category
- One of seven mutually exclusive publication categories.
- Source registry SHA-256
- 703010b66957110eb46a7b6847d025b706453596b4d25daff980f8d9ee64f5b6
The CSV contains public event data only. We do not assign a new license to Polymarket’s underlying data.
USE THE NUMBERS. KEEP THE CONTEXT.
Cite this report
The Outlook editorial desk. “Polymarket attention report: where trading volume concentrates.” Snapshot checked Oct 4, 2026, 10:42 UTC.
https://www.homeincomelab.com/reports/market-attention