UK National Lottery Review

The UK National Lottery is owned and operated by Camelot and is the home to several big lotteries including Lotto, Lotto HotPicks, Dream Number, Thunderball, Daily Play and EuroMillions as well as National lottery scratchcards and online instant win games.

Since its launch in 1994, the National Lottery has paid out over £37 Billion in prizes and created a staggering 2,400 millionaires or multi-millionaires. On an average, more than 4 million lottery players win prizes every week with the National Lottery’s range of games.

The UK National lottery and its players have helped raise more than £24 billion for Good Causes and more than 330,000 individual grants have been made across the UK. With 40% of the lottery revenue kept aside for Good Causes and lottery duty, the National Lottery returns a higher proportion of earnings to society than any other major lottery in the world.

There are many different lottery games on offer, each with its own combination of prizes and wins. We've listed the most common lotto games below, with a brief description of how each of the lotteries work.

The EuroMillions is the biggest lottery in Europe and combines the prize pool of nine countries. In the UK, the National Lottery hosts the EuroMillions and combines the Millionaire Raffle which is specific to the UK market.  The lottery takes place every week on Friday evening and the tickets are priced at £2 per line of numbers.

In February, EuroMillions produced UK’s biggest ever winners when Nigel Page and Justine Laycock scooped a lottery jackpot of £56 million. You can play the EuroMillions lottery online by creating a UK National lottery account or by purchasing them from land-based retail stores across the country.

Lotto is the UK’s biggest lottery game and takes place twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday. To win the lottery jackpot all you have to do is match 6 numbers from 1 to 49. Tickets are priced at £1 per line of numbers and can be purchased online or from retail stores. The Lotto jackpot for Saturday, 3rd April is a massive £4,500,000.

The Thunderball lottery takes place twice a week and is your chance to win up to £250,000, though, as of 9th May, the lottery will be played three times a week with a top prize of £500,000. To win the Thunderball game all you have to do is select 5 main numbers from 1 to 34 and 1 Thunderball from 1 to 14 and match it to the results. Tickets for the game are priced at £1 per game and can be purchased online or from retail stores.

Lotto HotPicks gives you the chance to win big prizes for picking and matching fewer Lotto numbers. To play the game, simply decide the numbers you want to pick and select a number from 1 to 49. The Lotto draw takes place twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday and tickets are priced at £1 per game.

Dream Number is a lottery draw game that offers cash prizes of up to £500,000 and can be played on its own or with Lotto. The Good Causes money raised from the Dream Number game goes to the fund set up for the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games. Like the other National Lottery games, the Dream Number game is played twice weekly with a ticket price of £1.

The Daily Play lottery gives players the chance to win up to £30,000 daily by selecting 7 main numbers from 1 to 27. The draw is held six times a week from Monday to Saturday with a ticket price of £1 per line of numbers.

Buy your National Lottery tickets online