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Will Nicolás Maduro still be Venezuela's head of state on 31 December 2026?

Resolution: Updated:
82%

market consensus

chance the market gives this event — not your chance of being right

Yes — The event happens
82%
No — The event does not happen
18%

Trade this contract

Open on PolymarketYes 0.82
  • gas covered
Buy the opposite sideNo 0.18

In short

The market treats this as very unlikely — most contracts on the question sit at or within a whisker of zero, which is the pricing of a question traders consider close to settled in the negative. The single biggest reason is the speed and direction of the repricing: the series that this page tracks began at effective certainty that Maduro would still hold the office and collapsed toward nothing inside the recorded window, on very heavy volume. Only clear, official confirmation that Maduro is the sworn head of state of Venezuela on 31 December 2026 would move it back, and each week without that confirmation pushes the price further down.

How the contract works

A contract on this question settles at $1 if Nicolás Maduro is formally holding the office of head of state of Venezuela at 12:00 ET on 31 December 2026, and at nothing if he is not. The price is simply what buyers and sellers currently agree the chance is, expressed as a number between zero and one: a contract trading at 0.30, for example, would mean the market thinks the outcome happens about three times in ten. What is settled is the identity of the office-holder on that date and nothing else — not whether his position is recognised abroad, not whether the 2024 election was fair. Being nominated, announced or designated as head of state without the appointment taking effect does not count. A position does not have to be held to the end: it can normally be sold at whatever the price is at the time, which is how traders exit when the news changes before the settlement date.
What the market thinks happens
$100
Yes82%

The event happens

Costs now
$0.82
If you put in $100
$122
No18%

The event does not happen

Costs now
$0.18
If you put in $100
$556

Probability

0%25%50%75%100%12:2617:5723:2905:0010:3116:02
ConsensusPolymarket

How the price has moved

The tracked series begins on 29 July 2026 at 100% — effective certainty that Maduro would still be head of state at year-end — and its recorded range runs from there down to 18%. The live cross-venue consensus of 6% now sits below that floor, which means the fall has continued past the boundaries of the aggregate's own recorded history rather than settling inside it. Across 2,880 price observations, six separate contracts have gone to 0%, including both of the largest by volume. The single venue print at 82% is almost certainly a differently-worded contract with a different deadline rather than a genuine dissent on this question, which is why the headline spread of 82.1 percentage points overstates the disagreement. What is not in doubt is the shape: a near-vertical collapse on close to $95m of turnover, followed by prices pinned at the bottom of the range.

Context

Nicolás Maduro has been Venezuela's head of state since 2013, when he succeeded Hugo Chávez. Under Venezuela's constitution the president is both head of state and head of government, so the question of who holds the office is not divided between two people the way it is in a parliamentary system. Maduro was declared the winner of the July 2024 presidential election by the national electoral authority and sworn in for a further term in January 2025, an outcome the opposition, led by María Corina Machado and its candidate Edmundo González, and a long list of foreign governments refused to recognise. The second half of Maduro's tenure has been defined by external pressure rather than domestic contest. The United States has an outstanding narco-trafficking indictment against him, has run a sanctions architecture over Venezuela's oil sector for years, and under the Trump administration has combined that with military posture in the Caribbean and open discussion in Washington of who would run a transitional government in Caracas. Names for a post-Maduro administration have been floated publicly. That is the backdrop against which this contract trades: not an election, but the durability of an incumbent under coercion. The contract itself is narrow. It asks only whether Maduro is the individual formally holding the office of head of state at a single moment — noon Eastern time on 31 December 2026. Nothing about legitimacy, recognition, or how he got there enters into it. If someone else has been sworn in by then, or if the office is vacant, the answer is no.

Analysis

The cross-venue consensus sits at 6%. That is the language of a question the market considers all but resolved, with a residual premium for the possibility that the situation reverses or that the formal position on 31 December turns out to differ from what traders currently expect. Six of the twelve contracts grouped here, including the two largest by volume at $32.5m and $25.8m, print at 0%. Contracts do not sit at zero on a live geopolitical question unless traders believe the informational work is done. The history is the most informative figure on the page. The aggregated series opens at 100% and its recorded range runs from 18% to 100% — and the current consensus sits below the floor of that range. In other words, the collapse is recent enough that the aggregate high-water marks still reflect a world in which Maduro's continuation was treated as near-certain, while the live prints have already gone through the bottom of it. Across 2,880 recorded price observations, this is a market that changed its mind almost completely rather than drifting. This page does not assert a cause the record here does not supply; what the record does supply is direction, speed and conviction. The 82.1-point spread between the highest and lowest venue looks like disagreement and mostly is not. Every listed venue is Polymarket, which means the list contains several distinct contracts written around the same theme — different deadlines, different wording, different definitions of what counts as leaving office. The single contract at 82%, on $2.6m of volume, is best read as a differently-specified question rather than as a group of traders who think Maduro's survival to year-end is likely. The contracts with the deepest volume are the ones clustered at zero, and volume is the better guide to where the market's money actually sits. Total volume of $94,743,352 across the venues matters for a second reason: it makes this one of the more heavily traded geopolitical questions of the year, which limits how much of the price can be dismissed as thin-market noise. Deep books at extreme prices are a specific signal. Someone selling a contract at a fraction of a cent is accepting a large downside if Maduro is confirmed in office at the end of December, and they are doing so at scale. What could still move this is narrow but real. The resolution source is official Venezuelan government statements, with the UN protocol list of heads of state as the fallback. Contested or overlapping claims to the office — two figures each described as head of state, or an ambiguous interregnum — are exactly the scenario in which the written rules do heavy lifting, and that residual ambiguity is a plausible explanation for why the deepest contracts sit at zero while the consensus stays a few points above it.

What moves the probability

  • US pressure and its endpoint

    Washington's combination of indictment, sanctions, Caribbean military posture and public discussion of transitional personnel is the dominant external force on the question. Sustained or escalating pressure pushes the probability of Maduro's continuation down. A US pivot toward accommodation — an oil-for-stability arrangement, for instance — would push it back up, and would do so quickly given how far the price has already travelled.

  • Control of the security apparatus

    Maduro's tenure has rested on the loyalty of the armed forces and the internal security services rather than on electoral legitimacy. Any credible sign that senior military command has shifted is the fastest single route to a no outcome. Conversely, visible cohesion at the top of the FANB is the strongest argument the other way, and it is the variable outside observers can least reliably measure.

  • Who is formally sworn in

    The contract turns on formal office-holding at a fixed moment, not on effective power. A transitional figure taking the oath before 31 December resolves the question no even if Maduro remains in the country and retains influence. This makes ceremonial and legal steps — a swearing-in, a National Assembly act, a recognised succession — more decisive for settlement than shifts in real-world authority.

  • Ambiguity and the UN fallback

    If Caracas does not clearly state who is head of state, the UN protocol list as of 31 December 2026 governs, and the rules then prefer the person with primary status or, absent that, whoever assumed the post first. Contested claims are the scenario that keeps a few points of probability alive rather than zero. This driver matters most in a messy, drawn-out transition and hardly at all in a clean one.

  • Volume concentration at zero

    The two deepest contracts, together carrying more than $58m of volume, print at 0%. Prices that low on books that deep are difficult to shift without new information, so the marginal news event now has to be substantial to move the consensus more than a point or two. This is a market with a high bar for revision in either direction.

The case for

  • Maduro has survived a 2019 parallel-presidency challenge, years of maximum-pressure sanctions and the near-total withdrawal of international recognition after July 2024, and each of those episodes ended with him still in the palace.
  • The contract settles on formal office-holding, so as long as the Venezuelan government continues to name him as head of state — whatever the state of his real authority or the view taken abroad — the answer on 31 December 2026 is yes.
  • A US decision to trade pressure for oil supply and migration cooperation would remove the main force acting on the question and would leave the incumbent in place by default.
  • Loyalty at the top of the armed forces has held through every previous crisis, and no external actor can remove him without it breaking.

The case against

  • The deepest contracts on this question, carrying tens of millions of dollars of volume, trade at zero, which is what a market prices when it believes the question is effectively answered.
  • The aggregated series fell from effective certainty of continuation to below the recorded low of its own range inside the tracked window, a repricing too large and too fast to be read as ordinary drift.
  • US policy has moved beyond sanctions to military posture and to naming candidates for a post-Maduro administration, which is the behaviour of a government acting on a timeline rather than waiting.
  • The settlement test is formal and unforgiving: if anyone else has been sworn in by noon on 31 December 2026, or if the office is vacant, the answer is no regardless of where Maduro is or what influence he retains.

Trade this contract

Venues (1)

Open on PolymarketYes 0.82
  • gas covered

Venues (1)

Probability

  • Will Nicolás Maduro be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?82%
  • Will Delcy Rodríguez be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?10%
  • Will María Corina Machado be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?3%
  • Will there be no head of state of Venezuela end of 2026?1%
  • Will Jorge Rodríguez be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?1%
  • Will Edmundo González be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?0%
  • Will Diosdado Cabello Rondón be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?0%
  • Will Vladimir Padrino López be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?0%
  • Will Frank Donovan be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?0%
  • Will Pete Hegseth be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?0%
  • Will Evan Pettus be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?0%
  • Will Dinorah Figuera be the leader of Venezuela end of 2026?0%

Resolution rules

Determined by
Official Venezuelan government statements; if unclear, the UN list of Heads of State (un.org/dgacm protocol list) as of December 31, 2026
Resolution date

The question resolves YES only if Nicolás Maduro is the person formally sworn in and officially holding the position of head of state of Venezuela at 12:00 ET on 31 December 2026. Being nominated, announced or designated without the appointment taking effect does not count. The primary determining source is official Venezuelan government statements; where those do not clearly identify the head of state, the person listed by the United Nations on its protocol list of heads of state (un.org/dgacm) as of 31 December 2026 governs. If more than one person is officially listed, the one with primary status counts; if no distinction is made, the one who assumed the post first counts. If the office is vacant, the question resolves NO. Because the contracts grouped on this page are written with different deadlines and wording, their settlement conditions are not identical to one another even where the underlying subject is the same.

Calculation methodology →

Local context

Venezuela sits on the largest proven oil reserves in the world, and who controls the state that owns them reaches this audience through the price of crude and the flow of refined product. US Gulf Coast refiners are configured for heavy sour barrels of the type Venezuela produces, and Indian refiners have been buyers of Venezuelan crude whenever US licensing has allowed it. A change of head of state that opened the sector to fuller investment would, over years rather than weeks, add barrels to a market where every additional supply source shows up in Brent and therefore in fuel prices in the UK, Australia and India. A disorderly transition that disrupted PDVSA's exports would do the opposite in the short run. There are two other direct channels. Migration: more than seven million Venezuelans have left the country, and the political settlement in Caracas determines whether that flow continues, stabilises, or partly reverses — a live issue in US politics and in Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Spain. And credibility: Washington has publicly tied pressure on Caracas to an expected outcome, so the answer on 31 December 2026 functions as a scoreboard on whether coercion short of full-scale war changes who governs a country. That reading will shape expectations about US conduct toward other governments it has sanctioned and indicted.

What to watch

Three things determine settlement between now and 31 December 2026. First, any formal act in Caracas — a swearing-in, a National Assembly declaration of vacancy, or an official statement naming a head of state — because the contract turns on formal office-holding at noon ET on the final day of the year. Second, the posture of the armed forces and the internal security services, since every previous challenge to Maduro has been decided there rather than at the ballot box. Third, US policy signals: licence decisions affecting Venezuelan crude, further deployments or drawdowns in the Caribbean, and whether Washington continues to discuss transitional personnel publicly. The UN protocol list of heads of state as of 31 December 2026 is the fallback source, so its content in the final days of December is the last data point that matters.

Common questions

What exactly settles this question, and when?
It settles on whether Nicolás Maduro is the individual formally holding the office of head of state of Venezuela at 12:00 ET on 31 December 2026. The primary source is official Venezuelan government statements. If those are unclear, the UN protocol list of heads of state as of that date governs.
What does a price near zero actually mean here?
A contract settles at $1 if the outcome happens and at nothing if it does not, so the price is the market's estimate of the chance expressed as cents on the dollar. A price close to zero means buyers and sellers currently agree the outcome is very unlikely — the market is treating the question as close to answered. It is an estimate, not a result, and it can be wrong.
What happens if two people claim to be head of state?
The rules handle this explicitly. If more than one person is officially listed, the one with primary status counts; if no distinction is drawn, the one who assumed the post first counts. If nobody holds the office at all, the question resolves no.
Does it matter whether other countries recognise the head of state?
No. The contract asks who formally holds the office, not who is recognised as legitimate. Maduro's swearing-in in January 2025 was rejected by many governments and by the Venezuelan opposition, but that has no bearing on this settlement test — only the formal position on 31 December 2026 does.
Why do the listed venues show such different prices?
Every contract listed here is on Polymarket, but they are separate markets written around the same theme with different deadlines and different wording. The ones with the deepest volume cluster at zero; a smaller one prints far higher because it is asking a materially different question. The headline gap between highest and lowest therefore overstates any real disagreement about this specific date.
Can a position be closed before 31 December 2026?
Usually yes. Contracts trade continuously until settlement, so a position can normally be sold at whatever the price is at that moment rather than held to the end. That price will reflect whatever the market then believes about the outcome.

Related events

82%/ 18%
Yes / No
Open on Polymarket