- Fact-checked by Josh Miller
- Edited by Diana Westfield
Ask anyone at the paper shop how to play Lotto and they’ll tell you in one breath: six numbers out of 59, two quid, check it Wednesday or Saturday. They’re right, mostly. It’s the small print that trips people up. The cut-off is earlier than the draw, two numbers no longer gets you a free ticket, and since June 2026 every line plays twice in the same night. This page goes through it in the order you’ll need it, and we last checked the facts on 6 November 2026.
How to play Lotto at the counter or online
Most regulars have a set of six they’ve played for years, birthdays and house numbers between 1 and 59; everyone else just asks for a Lucky Dip and lets the terminal pick. Each set of six is a line and costs £2. You can play the same line for several draws in advance or set it up to repeat online. You have to be 18 or over, in shops and online.
On draw night the machine picks six main balls and a bonus ball, then does it again for Round 2. Your line is checked against both rounds separately. Match three in Round 1 and two in Round 2 and you collect both prizes. The bonus ball only matters for one prize, five main numbers plus the bonus, which pays £1 million.
What time is the draw for Lotto?
Lotto is drawn on Wednesday and Saturday evenings at around 8pm. Ticket sales for that draw close at 7.30pm, which is the time people mean when they ask what time the lottery shuts. Buy at 7.35pm on a Saturday and your ticket goes into Wednesday’s draw instead. The times stay the same in summer and winter.
Results appear on the official site and app within minutes, and the full prize breakdown, with how many people won each tier, follows later in the evening.
How many numbers in Lotto, and what they pay
There are 59 balls. Anyone who played in the nineties remembers 49 balls, and that’s the reason two people at the same bus stop will quote you different odds. Two numbers in a round gets you a pound back now, three gets you a tenner, four is £50 and five is £1,000, while five plus the bonus is the famous million and six is whatever the jackpot has grown to. The CasinoCalcs UK Lotto prize calculator adds up both rounds for you, and the Lotto odds calculator has the chance of every tier per line.
The jackpot is the one prize that isn’t fixed. It’s shared between everyone who matches six in either round, and if nobody does it rolls over. Once it has rolled up to its cap, the next draw is a Must Be Won: if nobody hits six, the jackpot rolls down to the lower tiers, and two numbers pays £5 instead of £1.
How do I claim my lottery winnings?
Small prizes are easy. Take the ticket to any shop that sells the game and they’ll scan and pay it. Online wins up to a set limit land in your account automatically. Above the shop limit, which is where the “how do I claim my lottery winnings over £500” searches come from, you claim through the official claim process instead of over the counter, and for prizes over £50,000 you call the operator and they arrange it, usually with a visit. We’d honestly ring or check the official claims page before taking a winning ticket anywhere, because the rules on who pays what have moved around a few times.
Sign the back of a paper ticket as soon as you buy it; if it blows out of your pocket on the way home, that signature is what makes it yours. Claims close 180 days after the draw. Unclaimed prizes go to good causes, and every year a few large ones do.
When did the UK lottery start?
Noel Edmonds hosted the first National Lottery draw on Saturday 19 November 1994, when it was a pound a go and the odds of the jackpot were about 1 in 14 million. Since then the ticket has doubled to £2, ten more balls went into the machine and, this June, a second round got bolted on. You can argue about whether the game got better, but it’s certainly a different game from the one your parents played.
Is it worth it?
As a way to make money, no: on average a £2 line gives back well under half its price. As two quid of entertainment with a tiny shot at changing your life, plenty of people think it’s fine, and that’s a fair way to look at it as long as it stays two quid. Our UK Lotto simulator plays years of draws in seconds if you want to see how that usually goes, and how the lottery works explains where the money goes.
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