EuroMillions odds of winning

The odds for every prize tier

The odds are the figures published by The National Lottery, rounded up to whole numbers. The winning combinations column shows how many of the 139,838,160 possible lines win each tier.

How the odds are worked out

There are 2,118,760 ways to choose five main numbers from 50, and 66 ways to choose two Lucky Stars from 12. Multiply them and you get 139,838,160 possible lines, only one of which matches the winning numbers exactly: hence the jackpot odds.

The other tiers are worked out by counting the lines that match exactly the right number of balls. For Match 5 + 1 Lucky Star, for example, you need all five main numbers, one of the two winning Lucky Stars and one of the ten losing ones: 2 × 10 = 20 lines, or 1 in 6,991,908. For Match 2 there are 6,385,500 lines, which is why it comes up roughly once every 22 lines.

What 1 in 139 million looks like

If you played one line in every draw, around 104 a year, you'd expect to wait on average more than 1.3 million years for a jackpot. Playing ten lines a draw would cut that to around 134,000 years. That's not a reason not to play; it's a reason to play for fun and to spend only what you're happy to lose.

The odds are the same in every draw. A Superdraw, a record jackpot or a quiet Tuesday all give each line the same 1 in 139,838,160 chance; what changes is the prize, and how many people might share it.

When the jackpot reaches its €250 million cap it can stay there for up to five draws. If it still isn't won in the fifth, the money rolls down to the next prize tier with winners. Your odds don't change, but that tier's prizes can be huge. More in the EuroMillions jackpot.

The odds of the UK Millionaire Maker

The UK Millionaire Maker works differently: one code wins £1 million in every draw, so your chance is one in the number of UK entries for that draw. The National Lottery estimates it at about 1 in 4.27 million on a normal Tuesday and 1 in 6.04 million on a normal Friday, and longer when the jackpot has rolled over and more people play. The full table is in UK Millionaire Maker.

How the odds have changed

The 2011 change also added the 13th tier, for two main numbers, which improved the chance of winning some prize from about 1 in 24 to about 1 in 13.

Odds and value: where your £2.50 goes

Odds tell you how likely a win is; it's also worth knowing how much of your stake comes back in prizes. Of each £2.50 line, £1.74 is the EuroMillions entry, and on average half of it (87p) is paid out in prizes. The other 76p is the UK Millionaire Maker entry, of which 30% (about 23p) goes to prizes.

Put together, about £1.10 of every £2.50, or around 44%, comes back as prizes on average. The rest goes to National Lottery good causes, Lottery Duty paid to the government, retailers' commission and the cost of running the game. See EuroMillions and good causes.

Can you improve your chances?

• More lines give you more chances in proportion: two lines are twice as likely to win as one, but they also cost twice as much, so the odds per pound don't change.
• Syndicates let you hold more lines for the same money, at the cost of sharing any prize. Put the arrangement in writing; see our tips.
• Hot, cold or 'lucky' numbers make no difference: every combination has the same chance.
• Avoiding popular combinations doesn't improve your odds, but it makes it less likely you'd have to share a jackpot.
• There are no system entries in the UK: every line is five numbers and two Lucky Stars.

How EuroMillions compares with other games

Among The National Lottery's games, EuroMillions has the longest jackpot odds apart from Powerball (about 1 in 292 million) and the biggest one-off jackpots. Lotto's jackpot odds are about 1 in 22.5 million and it pays some prize about 1 in 4.9 times. The full comparison is in EuroMillions vs Lotto and other UK lottery games.

Frequently asked questions