Geopolitics · 2026-10-11 · 12 min read · By Vsevolod

Abraham Accords Expansion 2026 Odds & Analysis

Prediction markets give no single country better than a 7% chance of formally joining the Abraham Accords before 2027. As of October 2026, Lebanon leads the nine-country board at 7.0%, followed by Kuwait at 6.5%, Qatar and Oman at 5.0%, Syria at 4.8%, Saudi Arabia at 4.5%, Turkey at 3.9%, Azerbaijan at 3.35% and Pakistan at 3.1%. The level matters less than the direction. Every one of these contracts opened between about 22% and 58% and has bled steadily lower, because each month without a signing removes a month from an already short window. With 81 days left until the December 31 deadline, the market is saying that the expansion push is still alive in Washington but has not yet produced a deal any of these governments is ready to sign. You can take a leveraged position on any of these nine outcomes on PredMart.

This analysis covers who sits at the top of the board and why, the contract that moved most in October, where the rest of the field is priced, and the dated catalysts that could reprice everything before year end.

How the Abraham Accords market resolves

Each country is a separate Yes/No contract, so the board is not a single winner-takes-all race. More than one country could resolve Yes, and all nine can resolve No. A contract pays out only if that country "formally signs a normalization agreement with Israel under the framework of the Abraham Accords" by December 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. The signing has to be publicly acknowledged by both governments and "clearly attributed to the Abraham Accords or their continuation."

That wording is the most underrated part of this market. A peace treaty, a security pact or a mutual recognition deal does not automatically count. It has to carry the Abraham Accords label. That matters most for Lebanon and Syria, where the live negotiations are about security arrangements and ending a state of war, not about joining a branded normalization club.

It also explains why the nine prices add up to about 43% while the chance that any one country signs is lower. Several of these outcomes depend on the same drivers (Saudi movement, the end of the Iran war, Israel's next government), so they tend to rise and fall together. Reading the sum as "a 43% chance someone joins" overstates the case.

The history of the board shows how far expectations have fallen. Kazakhstan was announced as a new member on November 6, 2025, the first expansion of the Accords in President Trump's second term (Axios). That announcement lit up the board. Azerbaijan peaked near 69.5% in late November 2025, Oman near 68%, Syria near 68.5% at the end of December, and Saudi Arabia near 59.5% in early November. Nothing followed. Kazakhstan, a country that already had full relations with Israel, remains the only addition, and the market has repriced every other name accordingly.

Front-runner: Lebanon at 7%

Lebanon holds the top spot on the board, though at 7% it is a weak leader. It opened near 47.5% in November 2025, spent the spring mostly between 12% and 18%, spiked to about 24.5% around July 1, then sat near 8.5% through August and September before slipping to 6.5% to 7% in October.

The early-summer bounce has a clear source. Israel and Lebanon opened direct negotiations in Washington on April 14, 2026, the first such talks in decades (NPR). On June 26, after the fifth round, the two countries' ambassadors signed a framework agreement in the presence of the U.S. secretary of state. It includes mutual recognition of each state's sovereignty and a commitment to keep negotiating toward ending the state of war, and it provides for Israel to withdraw from two areas in southern Lebanon and hand them to the Lebanese army (CNN).

That was a historic document, and the market still did not treat it as an Abraham Accords signing. It was right not to. The framework is not branded as part of the Accords, and Lebanese officials have framed the goal around Israeli withdrawal, prisoners and security arrangements rather than normalization. Hezbollah, which was not a party to the talks, has rejected direct negotiations with Israel.

Momentum has since stalled. A round planned for Rome in September was postponed, and on September 12 President Joseph Aoun said there were no new negotiations for now, tying progress to Israeli withdrawal and the return of prisoners and displaced people (Al Jazeera). Lebanese media now report a resumption in Tampa, Florida, tentatively on October 20, covering "military, security, and ground-level arrangements," according to a September 30 report by MTV (Naharnet). That agenda is about stabilizing the border, not signing up to a normalization brand within 11 weeks. Lebanon leads because it is the only country on the board in active, direct talks with Israel, not because a signing looks close.

Biggest mover: Saudi Arabia's October slide

The most important move this month came in the most important contract. Saudi Arabia traded at 7.5% in the first days of October, briefly touched 8.5% in late September, and dropped to 4.5% by October 6, where it has held. That is a 40% fall in the price of a Yes share in under a week, and it pushed Saudi Arabia from the upper half of the board to sixth place.

No single headline explains the drop. It reads instead as the market giving up on a pre-election scenario. In July, the White House tied its new civil nuclear agreement with Riyadh to normalization. The deal was finalized on July 22 and signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. The administration sent it to Congress on August 24, and a U.S. official told ABC News the deal "will only move forward if Saudi Arabia joins the Abraham Accords" (ABC News). The Saudi contract briefly spiked to about 13% in late July as that linkage became public, then faded.

Riyadh has given no public sign that it will meet that condition. Saudi Arabia has long refused to normalize relations with Israel without a path to a recognized Palestinian state, and the ABC report in late August noted that the kingdom had not publicly indicated it would join. Saudi strategy has also moved toward other partners. On August 7, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement in Mecca, a pact analysts described as a way to diversify alliances beyond Washington as the U.S.-Iran war drags on (Al-Monitor). Meanwhile, Houthi attacks on Saudi territory and tankers have put the kingdom's own security ahead of any diplomatic gesture toward Israel.

With the Israeli election on October 27 and no Saudi movement, traders priced out the idea of a signing before the vote. For a trader, the slide is a reminder that leverage on a fading long shot cuts hard: a 7.5% to 4.5% move is a 40% loss on an unleveraged Yes share, which means a 4x long would have been liquidated well before the bottom.

The case for Saudi Arabia is not zero. The nuclear deal gives Washington a real carrot, the 90-day review clock in Congress runs in days of continuous session and can be paused, and a new Israeli government formed after October 27 could change the calculation in Riyadh. But a formal signing would need a political decision by the crown prince, a negotiated Palestinian component and a signing ceremony, all inside about 11 weeks that include an Israeli election and coalition talks. At 4.5%, the market is pricing that as roughly a one-in-22 shot, which looks about right.

Rest of the field

Kuwait (6.5%) is the second-highest contract and the most interesting story underneath the price. It peaked near 52.5% in November 2025, sat flat at 5.5% through August and early September, then jumped to 9.5% on September 16 and has since faded back to 6.5%. Kuwait has historically been one of the firmest Gulf opponents of normalization; after the 2020 UAE deal its officials told a Kuwaiti newspaper it would be the "last to normalize" (Times of Israel). The September jump coincided with an Israeli media report that Kuwait was quietly moving closer to Israel amid the Iran threat. We could not confirm that claim in other reporting, and Kuwait has not announced any change in policy. The fade since then suggests traders give the report some weight but not much.

Qatar (5.0%) was added on May 27, right after President Trump, amid the U.S.-Iran negotiations, posted on May 25 that he was "mandatorily requesting that all Countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords," adding that "it should start with the immediate signing by Saudi Arabia and Qatar." Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, whose leaders had been on a call with Trump that weekend, were listed at the same time (ABC News Australia). Qatar opened near 26.5%, peaked at 27.5% on June 9, and has since fallen to 5%. Its order book is thin (about $9,000 traded), so the quoted price can jump on small orders.

Oman (5.0%) is the clearest case where the price is above what officials have said. Muscat has publicly ruled out normalization with Israel, a position Oman has long linked to progress on Palestinian statehood, and it has said nothing since to suggest that has changed. The contract fell from near 68% in late 2025 to about 5% and has barely moved since August. Traders holding Yes here are betting against a stated government position.

Syria (4.8%) once looked like the boldest call on the board, peaking near 68.5% at the end of December 2025. President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in 2025 that Syria would not join the Accords, and his position since has been to separate a security deal from normalization. Speaking at an Atlantic Council event in New York in late September, he said Syria and Israel had "almost reached 90% of agreements" on a security framework before Israel pulled back, and that "we can't talk about peace" before those security arrangements succeed (A News). He also said the Golan Heights is "Syrian territory under the recognition of the United Nations." That is a sequence (security first, peace later, Accords maybe never) that does not fit inside 81 days.

Turkey (3.9%) and Pakistan (3.1%) were both listed after the May 25 statement, opened near 27.5% and 26%, and have been repriced to the floor. Pakistan does not recognize Israel and has tied any change to a Palestinian state, and both countries are now in a formal defence pact with Saudi Arabia. Turkey already has diplomatic relations with Israel, but relations between the two have been tense enough in 2026 that prediction markets run a separate contract on an Israel-Turkey military clash.

Azerbaijan (3.35%) is the steepest fall from grace. It opened near 57.5% and peaked near 69.5% in November 2025, when Baku was widely reported as one of the next candidates after Kazakhstan. Like Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan already has full relations with Israel, so joining would be largely symbolic, which is exactly why the market once rated it the easiest win. Nearly a year without a signing has erased that premium. The contract traded as low as 1.3% on October 8 before its latest print near 3.4%, so it is also one of the noisiest prices on the board.

Two outside notes help read the board. The broader prediction market on this question also lists Jordan (about 6%), Egypt (about 5.75%) and Somaliland (about 16%), which are not part of the nine-country board covered here. Jordan and Egypt already have peace treaties with Israel, which limits what a new signing would mean. Somaliland is the real outlier. Israel recognized it as an independent state on December 26, 2025, the first country to do so, and its president said Somaliland would join the Accords (Times of Israel). Its contract roughly doubled from about 8.5% on October 5 to 16% to 18% over the following days, with no single public catalyst we could identify. Whether a signing by a state that almost no one else recognizes would satisfy every reading of the resolution rules is a question worth asking before trading it.

On the nine listed contracts, the cheapest asymmetry sits with Lebanon, which is the only name with a scheduled negotiating round inside the window. If the October 20 talks produced anything framed as a step toward the Accords and the contract went from 7% to 14%, that would double an unleveraged Yes position and return roughly 400% on margin at 4x, before fees.

Catalysts: the windows that will reprice the board

October 20 - Lebanon-Israel talks in Tampa (tentative). The first scheduled round since the September postponement. Expect a military and security agenda. Any language about a broader peace or the Accords would move Lebanon first; a cancellation or more fighting in southern Lebanon would push it toward the rest of the field.

October 27 - Israeli legislative election. This is the biggest event in the window. Polls going in show a tight race in which neither bloc is clearly on course for the 61 seats needed to govern. Governments that distrust the current coalition have every reason to wait for the result before committing to anything. Expect a reaction in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon on the result, and then another as coalition talks drag on into November, which will eat further into the time left.

The U.S.-Iran track. The war, now in its eighth month, has no truce in place after a June 17 memorandum briefly eased fighting and then broke down. In early October, Vice President JD Vance called for a "meaningful" reduction in Iran's enrichment capacity, a possible softening of the earlier demand for zero enrichment (Al Jazeera). In May, the White House linked an Iran settlement directly to new Accords signings. A sudden deal would be the most plausible path to several contracts moving at once, which is why the board is correlated.

The Saudi nuclear review in Congress. The 123 agreement went to Congress on August 24 for a review period of 90 days of continuous session, and its openness to future Saudi enrichment has drawn proliferation concerns. Any sign that the White House is dropping the normalization condition would be bearish for Saudi Yes; any sign of Saudi engagement on it would be the single largest upside catalyst on the board.

December - deadline compression. Without a catalyst, these contracts will keep decaying toward zero as the days run out. Every expansion so far, Kazakhstan included, was announced from Washington, so watch the White House calendar for any signing ceremony.

Bottom line

The Abraham Accords board is a picture of an expansion push that has not converted. One year ago traders priced Saudi Arabia, Syria, Oman and Azerbaijan as more likely than not; today no listed country is above 7%, and the only new member of this cycle, Kazakhstan, was a country that already had full ties with Israel. Our read is that the market is broadly right: the most likely outcome is that none of the nine signs before 2027. Lebanon has the most live process but the wrong kind of agreement on the table. Saudi Arabia has the largest prize and the clearest U.S. pressure but no sign of movement before Israel votes. The rest are mostly priced at or above what their own governments have said publicly.

The places where the board could still be wrong are concentrated in late October: a surprise outcome in Tampa, an Israeli election result that reshapes the conversation with Riyadh, or a U.S.-Iran settlement that brings the "sign the Accords" demand back to the table. For traders who want to express a view on those dated events, a small leveraged position on the contract most exposed to them keeps the cost of being wrong defined while the time runs out.

Trade with up to 4x leverage: predmart.com/event/which-country-will-join-abraham-accords-before-2027