Prediction markets and perpetual futures have spent 2026 merging in real time, with major platforms launching perpetual products within weeks of each other and several exchanges developing their own event contracts. For institutional desks, the question is no longer whether these products are relevant, but what they actually are: a genuine new hedging and market-structure tool, or a rebrand of retail speculation dressed in institutional language. This session explains what's live today, where the regulatory line sits in Europe versus the US, and where the real institutional use case begins.