2026 DHS Shutdown Prediction Market: 76 Days and More Than $24M in Volume

The DHS shutdown lasted 76 days

The 2026 Department of Homeland Security shutdown lasted 76 elapsed days. The DHS-only funding lapse began February 14. Funding action occurred April 30, with DHS funded again by May 1.

This was not a shutdown of the entire federal government. It was a funding lapse affecting DHS, including agencies such as TSA, FEMA, CBP, ICE and CISA.

How the 76-day shutdown unfolded

• February 14: the DHS funding lapse began.
• Early market: Kalshi’s median duration forecast opened near 27 days.
• March: failed funding votes pushed the market’s expected duration toward 60 days.
• April: repeated delays moved the 70- and 75-day thresholds sharply higher.
• April 30-May 1: funding was restored, fixing the elapsed duration at 76 days.

Final Kalshi and Polymarket shutdown results

The settlements place the result cleanly between 75 and 80 days. The archived chart above shows how traders repeatedly extended their forecasts as funding votes failed.

When DHS was funded again

Kalshi’s separate funding-deadline series reached the same conclusion from a calendar-date perspective. The Before April 22 contract settled No, while Before May 1 settled Yes. This second board is Kalshi-only; it is not a cross-platform aggregate.

More than $24M in DHS shutdown duration-market volume

• Kalshi: 22.71 million in final face-value contract volume across the complete 32-contract DHS shutdown-duration series.
• Polymarket: approximately $1.49 million in cumulative trading volume across the complete 18-contract duration event.
• Headline total: more than $24 million in tracked duration-market volume.

Source: DeFi Rate aggregation of first-party Kalshi and Polymarket exchange data. The headline combines Kalshi’s displayed face-value contract volume with Polymarket’s cumulative USD trading volume as a measure of market activity; it should not be read as standardized cash notional. The archived board maps a selected subset of thresholds, so its selected-market total is lower than the complete-series figure used in the headline.

Why DHS shut down again in 2026

The February lapse was the second shutdown episode of 2026, but it was narrower than the first. Congress ended the earlier partial federal shutdown after funding most agencies while separating the Department of Homeland Security bill for additional negotiations. DHS received only a short-term extension, leaving the central dispute unresolved.

The disagreement centered on immigration-enforcement policy and oversight. Democrats sought additional restrictions and accountability measures governing Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection operations. Republicans opposed tying full-year DHS funding to those changes. When the temporary DHS appropriation expired at the end of February 13, the department entered another funding lapse on February 14.

This second shutdown did not close the entire federal government. Many DHS border-security and law-enforcement employees were designated essential and continued working without normal pay, while other department functions slowed or stopped. That distinction is why the prediction markets tracked a DHS-specific duration rather than the length of a government-wide shutdown.

How the 76 days were counted

The duration is measured as elapsed time from the February 14 funding lapse to the May 1 restoration boundary. That produces 76 full elapsed days. Counting both calendar dates inclusively would produce 77 date labels, which is why threshold-contract rules and timestamps matter. The final exchange settlements confirm the operative bracket: 75 days or more was Yes and 80 days or more was No.

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