Lotto Must Be Won Draws

Lotto Must Be Won draws guarantee that the jackpot prize money will be given away, boosting the payouts for thousands of winners and making for some exciting draws. Find out all about Must Be Won draws and Rolldowns on this page.

What is a Must Be Won draw?

A Must Be Won draw occurs after the Lotto jackpot has not been won for five consecutive draw nights. On the sixth draw night – which is the Must Be Won draw night - the jackpot prize money has to be won, even if no one matches all six winning numbers in either round.

If at least one player does match six numbers in a Must Be Won draw, they will win the jackpot just like in any standard draw. However, if the jackpot then remains unclaimed after both rounds of the sixth draw, the funds will instead be used to award a £5 prize to every Match 2 winner (barring any exceptional circumstances). Any remaining prize money will then be distributed among the Match 3 winners.

Special event Must Be Won draws are also scheduled from time to time. These are usually organised by the National Lottery to mark significant occasions such as Easter or Christmas, and take place on a pre-determined date without having to rely on five rollovers to activate the Must Be Won draw. The jackpot is usually raised even higher, to a value such as £15 million, but the Rolldown prizes work in the same way if nobody matches all six numbers.

After a Must Be Won draw, the Lotto jackpot always resets to its starting value of £2 million for a Wednesday draw or £3.8 million for a Saturday draw.

Two Rounds for Must Be Won Draws

In June 2026, Lotto changed its draw format, with two rounds taking place per draw night instead of one (two sets of winning numbers selected). The jackpot still needs to roll over for five consecutive draw nights to trigger a Must Be Won draw, so Draw 1 in the graphic above would include both draw rounds on one day, and so on.

With twice as many chances to win on each draw night, the chances are also doubled that someone will match all the numbers on a Must Be Won draw night. If there’s no winner in the first round of a Must Be Won draw, for example, the money does not roll down instantly. The second round also takes place before the prize information is processed. Here are a few examples of what could happen in a Must Be Won draw.

One jackpot winner in Round 1; No jackpot winners in Round 2 – The full jackpot amount goes to the Round 1 winner
No jackpot winners in Round 1: One jackpot winner in Round 2 - The full jackpot amount goes to the Round 2 winner
One jackpot winner in Round 1, One jackpot winner in Round 2 – The jackpot amount is split between the winner from Round 1 and the winner from Round 2
No jackpot winners in Round 1; No jackpot winners in Round 2 – Everyone in the Match 2 category wins £5 and any remaining funds are distributed between Match 3 winners

Match 2 winners are awarded a fixed £5 prize instead of £1 if there is a rollown. The money needed to pay the £5 prize is taken from the rolled down jackpot before the remaining funds are split between Match 3 winners. The exact prize amount for the Match 3 tier will vary depending on how much the jackpot is worth and how many winners there are.

Previous Lotto Jackpot Caps and Rollover Limits

The current format is just one of many that have been used for Lotto since the game’s launch. Must Be Won draws have taken place in the past, although with different rules on when they were used, as well as jackpot caps that limit the top prize to a specific value. Here’s how the rules around rollovers and the jackpot cap have changed over the years.

November 1994 – National Lottery Launched
When the National Lottery was launched, there was initially a rollover limit in place rather than a jackpot cap. Under the original rules the jackpot could only roll over four times before it had to be won.

Must Be Won draws occurred only a handful of times in the 20 years that the original ruleset was in place. The biggest Rolldown happened in the draw on 17th December 2014, when a jackpot of £15 million was shared between five players who matched five numbers plus the Bonus Ball. They received just over £3 million each.

October 2015 – Jackpot Cap Introduced
Big changes were introduced to Lotto in October 2015, including the addition of 10 extra numbers and a new jackpot cap of £50 million. The cap replaced the previous limit of four rollovers and rules stated that the jackpot could roll over any number of times until someone won it or it surpassed the £50 million threshold. Only one more rollover was allowed after the jackpot reached this amount, and then it had to be won.

November 2018 – Launch of New Must Be Won Format
A five-rollover limit was introduced in November 2018 to ensure the jackpot would be won more regularly, with the new rules marking the first time in National Lottery history that funds would roll down between multiple prize tiers if the jackpot was not won. The National Lottery also began to hold special Must Be Won draws, in which the jackpot would be increased to a guaranteed amount, such as £15 million or £25 million, and the entire amount had to be won in that draw.

November 2020 – £5 Rolldown Prize Introduced for Match 2 Winners
The National Lottery introduced a new £5 prize for any players that match two numbers when the jackpot rolls down in a Must Be Won draw. The £5 prize is fixed and is awarded on top of the free Lucky Dip that winners in that tier ordinarily receive. The percentage of the rolled down jackpot allocated to the other prize tiers was updated in order to fund the £5 prize.

June 2026 – Change to Rolldown Prizes
Following the introduction of the two-round draw format, Must Be Won rolldowns were adapted. Match 2 winners would win a fixed £5, and any remaining jackpot money would go to Match 3 winners. Higher prize winners would no longer receive a percentage of the rolldown pot.