What is EuroMillions?
Euro Millions is a European lottery that takes place twice a week, on a Tuesday and Friday evening. Most national lotteries in Europe are generally restricted to the residents of that particular country. The Euro Millions lottery pools the stakes of the European countries who participate in it. Of course this makes the prizes a lot larger than the individual prizes in national lotteries. And because the main prize pool is "rolled over" to the next draw if there is no jackpot winner, prizes can - after a few weeks without a winner - be as high as 50 million Euros.
There are nine countries currently participating in Euro Millions. In alphabetical order, these are Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. This makes Euro Millions one of the biggest lotteries in the world.
The Euro Millions lottery idea began in 1994. Originally, it had been intended to launch this new European Lottery at around the same time as a single European currency. But politics. bureaucracy, and various other factors meant that the plan was delayed a number of times before finally getting it's launch some ten years later.
The first Euro Millions draw took place on Friday 13th February, 2004. It was originally presented by three major lottery organisers: Camelot in the United Kingdom, the Francaise des Jeux in France and the Loterias y Apuestas des Estad in Spain. The first jackpot was worth 15 million Euros. The highest has been over 80,000,000 Euros!
How To Play Euromillions
In Euro Million Lottery you choose 5 numbers and 2 stars. The EuroMillions draw is a combination draw involving 5 balls drawn from 50, PLUS 2 balls drawn from 11 (termed 'Lucky Stars'). 5 balls plus the 2 lucky stars must be matched to claim the jackpot.
What Are My Chances Of Winning?
The simple answer is, a lot! There are twelve prize categories in total, with the odds of winning naturally being better for smaller prizes than they are for the jackpot. The twelve prize categories, and the odds of you winning each, are as follows:
| Prize | Main board numbers |
LUCKY STAR numbers |
Odds of winning |
| Jackpot | 5 |
2 |
1 in 76,275,360 |
| 2 | 5 |
1 |
1 in 5,448,240 |
| 3 | 5 |
0 |
1 in 3,632,160 |
| 4 | 4 |
2 |
1 in 339, 002 |
| 5 | 4 |
1 |
1 in 24,214 |
| 6 | 4 |
0 |
1 in 16,143 |
| 7 | 3 |
2 |
1 in 7,705 |
| 8 | 3 |
1 |
1 in 550 |
| 9 | 2 |
2 |
1 in 538 |
| 10 | 3 |
0 |
1 in 367 |
| 11 | 1 |
2 |
1 in 102 |
| 12 | 2 |
1 |
1 in 38 |
So to win the jackpot you would need to correctly find all five main board numbers and both lucky star numbers. The odds of this occurring are slightly less than 1 in 76 million. Those are very long odds, but when you consider the size of the jackpot prize (usually at least 10 million Euros, and often a great deal more), the cost of a basic entry (just 2 Euros), is not a bad deal.
Of course, the Euro Millions draw offers eleven more prize categories apart from the jackpot, and the odds of a player winning one of these are a lot better. In fact, the odds of a player winning the smallest prize category are an impressive 1 in 38! So you can on average expect 1 or 2 of the small wins every year! And who knows?
Overall, the odds of a player winning any prize are around 1 in 24.