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 multi-name board on which leaders leave office in 2026. Between them they cover most of the G20 plus a long tail of smaller states.

The pattern on the Putin book has not changed since the summer: the money trades the nearest date, not the likeliest one. The book turned $316,188 in the last day, and $312,482 of it, 99%, was on December 31, 2026, which prices at 3.15%. June 30, 2027, the likelier leg at 10%, took $3,706. In early September most of the book's volume sat on an August gate priced under 1%.

With under three months left in the year, the 2026 legs are running down across this page: Putin is 5.7% on Kalshi, Merz 7.5% on Polymarket, and a Chinese invasion of Taiwan 2.4%.

The two anchor books, side by side. On the left, Polymarket's dated Putin ladder: 3.15% by the end of this year and 10% by June 2027, down from 7.5% and 12.5% in early September. On the right, Kalshi's leaders-out board, which asks the same question about the whole world at once and settles January 1, 2027; its top names are Christopher Luxon at 47%, Benjamin Netanyahu at 42.5% and Pedro Sánchez at 33.5%.

On Putin the two no longer agree as closely: Polymarket's year-end leg is 3.15% and Kalshi's is 5.7%.

The same outcome on each anchor, priced directly. Polymarket's December 31 leg at 3.15% took $312,482 today. Kalshi's Putin leg at 5.7% traded $2, on 358,292 of open interest, a larger position than any of the board's five leading names holds.

A two-and-a-half-point gap on a contract this cheap is large in relative terms, and only one side of it is trading: Polymarket's price is the live one.

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, now 7.5% on $18,748; Kalshi's leg on the same person in the same window prices 14% on $419.

In September the spread ran the other way, 17.5% on Polymarket against 12% on Kalshi. Polymarket's price has fallen ten points as the year runs out; Kalshi's has drifted up two on almost no trade. The volume says which side to trust, and it is again Polymarket's.

Elsewhere on Kalshi's board, the busiest name today was Pedro Sánchez at 33.5%, $5,126 of the board's $7,723, and the largest position among its leaders is on Benjamin Netanyahu at 42.5%.

The regional and structural books. Italy has its own board running to 2028, and it has tightened: Giorgia Meloni at 32.5%, down from 48.5%, with Elly Schlein and Giuseppe Conte at 22.5% each and Roberto Vannacci at 14%. It did not trade today. The G7 board asks which G7 leader goes next: Emmanuel Macron at 67.5%, down from 83.5%, with Friedrich Merz at 24%.

Note what the G7 question is. It asks who goes next, not who goes soon: Macron can lead it comfortably while Kalshi's 2026 board prices French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu, not Macron, at 22% to leave this year.

The tail risks that would force leadership change rather than reflect it. Polymarket prices a Chinese invasion of Taiwan by the end of 2026 at 2.4%, down from 3.7%, and that single binary took $44,688 today, more than five times Kalshi's whole leaders-out board. Alongside it, the African leaders board, a very long-dated book running to 2035 that did not trade: Bola Tinubu leads at 8.5%, with William Ruto at 6.2% and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at 5.6%.

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

• 99% of the Putin book on the year-end leg. $312,482 on December 31, 2026 at 3.15%, against $3,706 on the 10% June 2027 leg.
• Putin, 3.15% against 5.7%. Polymarket trades; Kalshi's leg did $2. Watch whether Kalshi's price comes down to meet it.
• Merz, 7.5% against 14%. The spread has flipped since September, and again only Polymarket has volume behind its number.
• Netanyahu at 42.5% and Sánchez at 33.5% are the live legs on Kalshi's board; Luxon at 47% is nominally higher on $6 of trading.
• Taiwan at 2.4% took several times the money of Kalshi's whole leaders-out board.
• Read "next" and "soon" as different questions. Macron is 67.5% to be the next G7 leader out; that is not a price on him leaving this year.
• January 1, 2027. Kalshi's 2026 board and every year-end leg here settle together.