What are the odds of winning the lottery? Lotto odds explained

The short answer

The odds of winning the Lotto jackpot are 1 in 45,057,474 for each line, in each round.

Since June 2026, every Lotto line is checked against two separate draws, Round 1 and Round 2. That gives each £2 line two goes at the jackpot on a draw night, so your chance per draw is about 1 in 22.5 million.

The odds of winning any prize are much better. It’s about 1 in 9.2 per round, or roughly 1 in 4.9 per line on a draw night. Most of those wins are £1.

Lotto odds for every prize

Each round has the same prizes and the same odds. You pick 6 numbers from 1 to 59, and the numbers in each round are drawn from their own set of 59 balls.

You can’t mix numbers across rounds. Three numbers in Round 1 and three in Round 2 isn’t a Match 6. It’s two separate £10 wins.

Our guide on how to play Lotto explains the two rounds in more detail.

What 1 in 45 million actually means

It’s hard to picture a number that big, so here are a few ways to think about it.

• Buying every line. There are 45,057,474 possible lines. Buying all of them would cost £90,114,948.
• Playing for a lifetime. If you play one line every Wednesday and Saturday, that’s 208 goes at the jackpot a year across both rounds. On average, you’d wait more than 216,000 years for a win.
• A real draw. On Saturday 10 October 2026, 1,852,096 lines matched 2 numbers and 178,962 matched 3. Just 98 matched 5. Nobody matched 5 plus the Bonus Ball, and nobody matched all 6.

None of this means a jackpot is overdue. Every draw is a fresh start, and the balls don’t remember what came out last time.

Does playing more lines help?

Yes, but only in line with what you spend. Each extra line adds the same small chance.

Ten lines makes you ten times more likely to win than one line, but you’re still very unlikely to win. A syndicate is the cheapest way to play more lines, but you’d share any win.

Do your numbers make a difference?

Not to your odds. Every set of 6 numbers has exactly the same chance, including 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. A Lucky Dip is no more or less likely to win than numbers you pick yourself.

What can change is how many people you share a jackpot with. Lots of people play birthdays, so numbers from 1 to 31 get picked more often. If you win with popular numbers, there’s a bigger chance someone else has them too.

If you’d rather not choose, our Lotto number generator picks a random line for you.

What about Must Be Won draws?

Lotto can only roll over 5 times. The fifth rollover is a Must Be Won draw. If nobody wins the jackpot that night, it rolls down to the smaller prizes.

Your odds of matching numbers stay exactly the same. What changes is how much you win. On the Must Be Won draw of 10 October 2026, nobody hit the £12 million jackpot, so Match 2 paid £5 instead of £1 and Match 3 paid £35 instead of £10.

How often is the jackpot won?

The jackpot isn’t won every draw, which is why it rolls over. Since 2015 it’s been won in about 1 draw in every 6. Our guide on how many people win the Lotto jackpot has the numbers year by year.

If you want to know how Lotto compares with EuroMillions, Thunderball and the rest, see which lottery has the best odds.

Questions people ask