Lotto odds for every prize: 6 from 59, with two rounds in every draw

Lotto prizes and odds, tier by tier

The table gives the prize for each tier, the published odds for one line in a draw, our exact figure and the odds in a single round. The per-draw figures count a win in either round. The published figures come from the National Lottery's Lotto Game Procedures, Edition 22, in force since 7 June 2026.

The exact and published columns agree to within rounding on every row. The official figures are rounded up: the jackpot works out at 1 in 22,528,737.25 per draw and is published as 1 in 22,528,738, and Match 4 works out at 1 in 1,090.17 but is printed as 1 in 1,091, where ordinary rounding would have given 1,090. Match 2 pays £1, rising to £5 in a Must Be Won Draw.

Two rounds: the per-draw and per-round figures

Each draw has two rounds, and each round draws six main balls and a Bonus Ball from its own machine. Your line is checked against round one and then, separately, against round two. Numbers cannot be carried across: three matches in each round are two Match 3 prizes, not a jackpot.

That is why two jackpot figures appear in articles. One round has 45,057,474 possible lines, so a round's jackpot is 1 in 45,057,474. Across the whole draw you have two goes, and the chance of hitting at least one of them is:

That gives 1 in 22,528,737.25, a shade more than half of the single-round figure, because the tiny chance of winning both rounds counts once rather than twice. The same sum turns every other row of the table from the round column into the draw column. If you read 1 in 45 million somewhere, it describes one round, or the game as it was before June 2026; the figure for the £2 line you actually buy is 1 in 22,528,738.

How the Lotto odds are worked out

To match exactly m of your six numbers, the round must draw m of your numbers and 6 − m of the 53 you did not choose. Match 4, for example, can happen in C(6, 4) × C(53, 2) = 20,670 ways out of 45,057,474, which is 1 in 2,180 per round.

The Bonus Ball is drawn from the same machine after the six main balls, so it comes from the 53 numbers left. It only matters for five matches. A line with five right numbers holds one wrong number, and the Bonus Ball is that number with a chance of 1 in 53. So Match 5 + Bonus Ball is C(6, 5) × C(53, 1) × 1/53 = 6 lines in 45,057,474, or 1 in 7,509,579 a round, and plain Match 5 takes the other 52/53 of the five-match lines. The lottery odds calculator runs the same sums for any number of lines and draws.

How the jackpot and the other prizes are paid

Every prize below the jackpot is a fixed sum: £1,000,000 for Match 5 + Bonus Ball, £1,000 for Match 5, £50 for Match 4, £10 for Match 3 and £1 for Match 2. These are only reduced in an extreme draw, when the fixed prizes together would exceed all of that draw's sales plus £40 million.

The jackpot is different. The rules set aside 8.88% of draw sales for it and share it equally between all the Match 6 winners of round one and round two. If that share would come to less than £1,000,000, Allwyn tops it up so every jackpot winner gets at least £1 million, a top-up limited to £10 million in total. Press coverage of the launch said jackpots start at £2 million; that figure does not appear in the game rules, which state only the £1 million minimum per winner.

A jackpot that is not won rolls over, up to five times. The sixth draw in a row is a Must Be Won Draw: if nobody matches six in either round, every Match 2 winner receives £5 instead of £1, with up to £8 million available from the Reserve Fund to pay for it, and the rest is shared equally between the Match 3 winners. The operator can also name any draw a Must Be Won Draw for a promotion, and runs occasional Guaranteed Millionaire Raffle draws paid from the Reserve Fund.

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What a £2 line pays back

The rules say that on average 50% of Lotto sales are available for prizes, and that 9.34% of that goes into a Reserve Fund. The table lets you check the rest. Multiplying the chance of each fixed prize by its value and adding them up gives 36.45p for every £1 staked. Add the 8.88p that goes to the jackpot and the total is 45.33p, which is exactly 50p less the 9.34% reserve (45.33p).

In other words, roughly 45p of each pound comes back as prizes on the draw itself. Match 3 and Match 2 together take 55% of the fixed-prize money, and the £1 million Match 5 + Bonus Ball takes 37%. The rest of the pound pays for good causes, Lottery Duty, retailers and the operator, which the UK lottery odds page breaks down across the whole National Lottery.

A year of Lotto, in numbers

One line in both weekly draws is 104 draws and £208.00 a year. On average it would win about 23 prizes, nearly all of them £1 or £10. At that pace, the average wait for a jackpot would be about 216,622 years, and fifty years of play would give a 0.023% chance of one. Buying more lines raises the chance in exact proportion, and the cost rises the same way.

What changed in June 2026

The two-round game went on sale on 7 June 2026, the date its rules took effect; some press reports and a later Allwyn release give 10 June, which was the first draw. The matrix stayed at 6 from 59 and the price at £2. Match 5 + Bonus Ball was set at £1,000,000, and Allwyn said the any-prize odds moved from about 1 in 9.3 to 1 in 4.9 and projected Lotto millionaires rising from around 140 to around 345 a year.

The lower prizes were cut to pay for the second round. According to a secondary source, which we could not confirm against an archived official table, the single-round game paid £1,750 for Match 5, about £140 for Match 4, £30 for Match 3 and a free Lucky Dip for Match 2.

Two chances per line still leave the jackpot very far away, so treat a ticket as the price of a small thrill, not a plan. The safer gambling page explains how to keep spending in check and where to find help.

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