The two-round Lotto rules from June 2026
Since 7 June 2026 every Lotto draw has two rounds. What changed for prizes, odds, HotPicks and checking a ticket.
Lotto changed shape on 7 June 2026. A single draw now consists of two rounds, each producing six main numbers and a bonus ball, and every ticket line is entered into both. It is the biggest change to the game in years and it makes most older guidance on other sites wrong.
What a draw looks like now
- Two sets of seven numbers are drawn, from the same machine, one after the other.
- Your line is compared against round one and against round two, independently.
- You cannot combine numbers across rounds. Three matches in round one plus three in round two is not six matches.
- A single line can win in both rounds, and both prizes are paid.
Our draw pages show the two rounds separately with the machine and ball set for each, and the Lotto checker reports each round on its own line so you can see exactly where a match came from.
Prizes were rebalanced, not doubled
Because a ticket now has two chances instead of one, the per-round prize amounts were reduced. Lotto HotPicks is the clearest case: the fixed prizes are now half what they used to be, at £3, £30, £400, £6,500 and £175,000 for Pick 1 to Pick 5, against £6, £60, £800, £13,000 and £350,000 before the change. A HotPicks line still enters both rounds, so the maximum from one entry is two payouts at the new level.
Anything you read quoting the old HotPicks table is describing the pre-June-2026 game. Our HotPicks prizes page always shows the table in force for the draw you are looking at.
What it means for statistics
Frequency and gap tables cannot be compared across the change, because the number of rounds per draw is part of the denominator. Every statistics page on this site states the rule version and counts by round, not by draw, and refuses to mix figures from different rule versions. Sites that simply carried on counting draws produced numbers that do not mean anything after 7 June 2026.
Every draw is independent; past results do not affect future draws. The two-round format changes the odds of winning something, not the behaviour of any individual number.
Checking an older ticket
Tickets bought before the change were entered under the old single-round rules and are checked against that draw's own rules. The checker applies whichever rule version was in force on the draw date, so an old ticket is never scored against the new table.