National Lottery Announces 2026 Christmas Jackpots
Last Updated: Tuesday 10th November 2026, 14:01
Christmas is marching closer and is bringing festive jackpots with it in 2026, including jackpots which must be won and other staggering prizes.
Festive specials have become a regular feature of the National Lottery calendar, but the exact draws and prizes change each year. This time around, the National Lottery is ensuring plenty to enjoy leading up to Christmas.
The Lotto Must Be Won Draws
There will be two Lotto Must Be Won jackpots this year, one that will take place on Saturday 21st November and another on Christmas Eve’s eve, Wednesday 23rd December. Both events are offering £12 Million jackpots that have to be won on the first drawing.
A Must Be Won draw, by definition, has to be won. So, even if there are no grand prize winners in the draws, the prizes will be awarded to players that manage to match lower prize tiers. It also means that prize amounts that would usually be modest can increase substantially for hundreds of thousands of players at a time.
How the Must Be Won Lotto draws Will Work
A normal Must Be Won drawing follows a five-draw rollover process, with the jackpot increasing for multiple draws until the sixth jackpot when the prize pot simply has to be won. The festive drawing is different. The jackpot has to be won that night. If no ticket matches all six main numbers in the festive draw, the boosted multi-million-pound jackpot rolls down immediately that evening.
Read more about Lotto Must Be Won draws.
EuroMillions draws
There will be two special pre-Christmas EuroMillions draws in December too, along with a drawing closer to the New Year. Here’s what is happening:
Friday 4th December: £109M Super Jackpot
This Super Jackpot is a EuroMillions draw where the jackpot is boosted to a guaranteed minimum, and this time it’s £109 million. To win, you must match all five main numbers plus the two Lucky Stars like in a regular EuroMillions drawing. Unlike the Must Be Won draws, this one will roll over if nobody wins and continue growing until a lucky player matches all the required numbers.
Last year, the EuroMillions Superdraw on Friday 5th December 2025 boosted the jackpot from £14.9 million to £114 million. Nobody matched all seven numbers that night, so the jackpot rolled over and grew to around £124.6 million. It was won just four days later, on Tuesday 9th December, by a single ticket holder in Belgium who took home €142.4 million.
10 UK Millionaires Guaranteed: Friday 25th December and Tuesday 29th December
Ten new millionaires will be made on the above dates. In these events, every EuroMillions ticket bought in the UK will come with a unique Millionaire Maker code. In a regular draw, one code is picked to win £1 million. In these two draws, ten UK millionaires are guaranteed.
This could bookend an incredible start to 2026, when a special EuroMillions draw on Friday 2nd January 2026 created nine new millionaires, while one £1 million prize went unclaimed. The National Lottery launched a public appeal asking players in the Mid Sussex area to check tickets bought around New Year, to great success. The missing millionaire claimed their prize later that month, so all ten prizes were paid out — a good reminder to check your tickets carefully, as Millionaire Maker codes don’t depend on matching any numbers.
Check the EuroMillions results here.
Play Today
If you’re looking to start playing sooner, then you can take part in Lotto twice a week (Wednesdays and Saturdays) and EuroMillions twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays). Simply go to the respective linked pages and grab a ticket online. Otherwise, enjoy the festive lottery events and remember to play responsibly.
