Settlement times of 110,576 Polymarket markets, 15 August to 10 September 2026

Polymarket listed 110,576 markets under nine major topic tags with a scheduled end between 15 August and 10 September 2026, leaving out the short crypto up-or-down series. Together they traded $1.42 billion. Vultax read each market's scheduled end, its closing time and its resolution-state history. Of the 69,072 markets that closed after their scheduled end, half had closed within 2.2 hours and 90% within six. Another 41,151, 37% of the total, closed before the scheduled end because the answer was already known. Disputes were rare: 89 markets, 0.08% of the total, and 99.7% of markets were marked resolved automatically. Disputes clustered on geopolitics and on the largest markets rather than on slow ones; bigger markets were disputed more often, not settled more slowly. A later pass covered the 121,432 listings that ended between 11 and 18 September, open ones included: 41% closed early, 57% at or after their end, 1.2% were still open, and the median rose to 4.0 hours because 98% of those listings were sports. Limits: markets outside the nine tags are missing, a market with several tags is counted once, and the dispute count comes from the resolution-state history, which does not show who disputed or why. The record contains the page at https://vultax.com/research/how-long-polymarket-takes-to-settle-markets as a research note (PDF) and page (HTML, PDF) (27 October 2026), the data behind it from vultax.com/datasets/polymarket-end-date-closure-clock-audit (results as CSV and JSON, METHODS.md, a 61 MB reproduction zip), the proof-scope record and a CITATION.cff.