Thunderball Questions and Answers

To play Thunderball, you pick five numbers from 1 to 39 and a Thunderball number between 1 and 14. You can take part online or at authorised retailers. Head over to the How to Play page for a full step-by-step guide.

Thunderball is a 4x weekly lottery draw game. The rules are simple, and will be familiar to anyone who's played the lottery before. Simply pick five numbers from 1 to 39, and a Thunderball Number from 1 to 14 – this number can be the same as one of your main numbers. Match as many as possible to win a prize, starting at £3 by matching just the Thunderball, up to £500,000 for matching all six numbers. In Thunderball, prizes are fixed, and do not vary from draw to draw.

If you've won a prize, be sure to claim it within 180 days of the draw, or else your ticket & prize will expire, and cannot be recovered. You can read more on the How to Play page.

Draws take place every Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday at approximately 8.15pm.

The cut-off time for ticket sales is 7.30pm on draw days. If you miss this deadline, you have to wait for sales to reopen later that evening for the next draw.

You can play up to four weeks in advance, so it is possible to enter 16 consecutive draws if you choose every draw day. If you have an online account, you can also set up to play continuously so that you never miss a draw.

It costs £1 per line to play Thunderball.

Yes, you can pick the same number twice on one line: once among your five main numbers and once as your Thunderball. The Thunderball is selected from a separate machine, containing a separate set of balls, so the same number can appear twice in the same draw.

The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 8,060,598 – that’s better than the odds of landing the top prize on Lotto, EuroMillions or Set For Life. The overall chances of winning a Thunderball prize are 1 in 13.

Lotteries are no longer just limited to the country where the game is hosted. You can take part in Thunderball without being located in the UK thanks to online ticket services. If you win a prize, you will be notified and paid automatically.

You win Thunderball prizes by matching your numbers to the winning numbers. There are nine different winning combinations, and you are guaranteed a prize as long as you match the Thunderball. Go to the Prizes and Odds page to find out about all the ways to win.

Unfortunately not, unless that one number happens to be the Thunderball Number. If you manage to match the Thunderball number alone, you're entitled to a £3 prize. 3x your stake isn't bad for the bottom prize tier! Visit the Prizes and Odds page for more details.

Matching 1 main number along with the Thunderball Number returns a fixed prize of £5 – it may be the second-lowest prize available in the game, but it's still worth 5x your stake! Check the rest of the prizes on the Prizes and Odds page.

Yes. The prizes are all fixed so you know exactly how much you stand to receive for each winning combination.

There are no rollovers as the game is designed to pay out set prizes in every draw. This structure is in place to offer a point of difference to other games such as Lotto and EuroMillions, appealing to players who are chasing smaller, more regular wins.

Paying out a fixed prize to each jackpot winner means you are guaranteed that amount. You don’t have to share £500,000 with other players if there are multiple winners, as is the case in many other National Lottery games.

With its fixed jackpot prize of £500,000, Thunderball doesn't grab the same attention that Lotto, EuroMillions, and more recently Powerball have been getting, with their multi-million jackpots. However, most would agree that £500,000 is still an incredible, life-changing sum – it's absolutely worth playing in comparison to those games if you're happy to trade jackpot-size for better odds. At £1 per ticket, it's also much cheaper than the others. Ultimately though, Thunderball is a game of chance with negative Expected Value, so in some people's books, it'll never be "worth playing".

Absolutely! On average, there are a few Thunderball top-prize-winners every month! A quick search online for "Latest Thunderball winner news" will return dozens of stories. We'd mention some here, but they'd quickly go out of date.

No. All number combinations have the same chance of winning as each other – even 1-2-3-4-5 and 6. However, picks we've chosen ourselves do have an increased chance of matching someone else's pick, especially if they're derived from dates or patterns. This actually isn't an issue in Thunderball though, as the top prize is not pari-mutuel: if two players win, they each get their £500,000 in full.

Although the Thunderball jackpot is not pari-mutuel (nor are the other prize tiers), imagine the scenario: a draw occurs where the winning numbers actually are 1-2-3-4-5 and 6 for the Thunderball Number. Hundreds of these curious players finally win the jackpot, but how is the lottery going to pay out all their £500,000's? They won't!

There is a prize capping rule (also known as a Liability Limit) in place, which limits the total amount that can be paid out in one draw to four times the value of the total entries for that draw. A calculation will then be made to see which prize amounts may need to be reduced. In a regular draw, approximately 52 percent of the money raised from ticket sales is expected to be paid out in prizes, so prize capping is extremely rare even if there are more winners than average.

The most commonly drawn numbers are 15, 18, 26, 30, 32, and Thunderball 3. Go to the Thunderball Statistics page to see in-depth stats about the game and the numbers that have previously been drawn.