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24 August 2026
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Fifteen UK tickets have won more than £100 million in the history of the National Lottery, and the largest of them changed what a British lottery win even looks like. Before 2011, no UK player had ever passed £100 million. Since then it has happened over and over.
This ranks the biggest jackpots ever won on a ticket bought in the United Kingdom. Almost every one is EuroMillions rather than Lotto, and the reason is structural: EuroMillions pools ticket sales across nine countries, which supports jackpots far beyond anything a single national game can reach.
Winners in Britain choose whether to go public. Roughly half of the entries below chose not to, and are known only by a date and an amount.
| # | Amount | Date | Winner |
| 1 | £195,707,000 | 19 July 2022 | Anonymous |
| 2 | £184,262,899 | May 2022 | Joe and Jess Thwaite, Gloucester |
| 3 | £181,073,415 | March 2026 | Anonymous |
| 4 | £177 million | December 2024 | Anonymous |
| 5 | £170,221,000 | October 2019 | Anonymous |
| 6 | £161,653,000 | July 2011 | Colin and Chris Weir, Largs |
| 7 | £148,656,000 | August 2012 | Adrian and Gillian Bayford |
| 8 | £121 million | April 2018 | Anonymous |
| 9 | £113 million | October 2010 | Anonymous |
| 10 | £110 million | September 2022 | Anonymous |
| 11 | £101 million | October 2011 | Dave and Angela Dawes |
| 12 | £78 million | February 2018 | Anonymous |
| 13 | £73 million | May 2014 | Anonymous |
| 14 | £66 million | January 2016 | Split; David and Carol Martin took £33m |
| 15 | £58 million | July 2018 | Anonymous |
*Each entry is explained in full below.*
Ranked by the sterling value of the jackpot won on a ticket purchased in the UK. Where a jackpot was shared between UK ticket holders, the total UK prize is used. Figures are as reported by the lottery operator at the time of the win.
The largest lottery prize ever won in Britain, claimed by a single anonymous ticket holder on 19 July 2022. The jackpot had reached its cap of €230 million and sat there through three draws without being won, until a UK ticket finally matched all seven numbers.
The winning numbers were 6, 23, 27, 40 and 41, with Lucky Stars 2 and 12.
The winner chose anonymity, which is their right under National Lottery rules and the choice most large winners make. The sum exceeded the estimated wealth of most entertainment figures on that year’s Sunday Times Rich List.
Joe and Jess Thwaite from Gloucester held the UK record for exactly two months. Their jackpot arrived after fourteen consecutive draws without a winner, one rollover short of the €230 million cap.
The ticket was a Lucky Dip. Joe checked it early the following morning, let his wife sleep for another twenty minutes, then told her he had a secret.
They chose to go public, and their line about the win having given them “time to dream” became one of the most widely reported winner quotes of the decade.
A single anonymous UK ticket holder matched main numbers 12, 14, 27, 44 and 50 with Lucky Stars 4 and 12, taking just over £181 million and third place in British lottery history.
The jackpot had been built by a EuroMillions Superdraw and two further weeks of rollovers, coming within striking distance of the national record before it was won.
Another anonymous single ticket holder, and another entry in a sequence of nine-figure EuroMillions wins that has become almost routine in Britain since 2019.
The scale is easier to grasp by comparison than in isolation. The sum placed the winner above several of the best-known British musicians and athletes on published wealth estimates.
Won in a Must Be Won draw, where the jackpot cannot roll over again and instead cascades into the next winning tier if nobody matches all seven numbers. Somebody did.
It held the UK record for two and a half years, until the two 2022 wins, and it was the first UK jackpot above £170 million.
Colin and Chris Weir from Largs in North Ayrshire, and for a decade the most recognisable lottery winners in Britain.
Their win mattered beyond its size for two reasons. It was the first UK jackpot to pass £100 million by any real margin, and the couple went public and then stayed public. They became substantial donors, including to Scottish political and charitable causes.
They remain the standard reference point for what a very large British win looks like when the winners don’t disappear.
Adrian and Gillian Bayford from Suffolk, the second UK couple past £100 million and, at the time, second only to the Weirs.
Their win drew sustained press attention over the following years, which is the recurring feature of going public. The decision gets made once. The consequences continue indefinitely.
An anonymous winner, and the third-biggest UK win at the time it was claimed.
By 2018 the pattern had settled. The great majority of nine-figure British winners choose anonymity, and the National Lottery’s advisers now build their support around that expectation rather than around a press conference.
An anonymous ticket holder, and one of the earliest very large UK EuroMillions wins. It stayed the third-largest British win for several years.
It arrived before the run of record-breaking jackpots that began in 2011, at a point when a nine-figure lottery prize in Britain was genuinely unusual rather than an annual occurrence.
A third UK nine-figure win inside the same calendar year as the two record-breaking 2022 jackpots, taken by an anonymous ticket holder with numbers 7, 12, 13, 20 and 45 plus Lucky Stars 3 and 12.
2022 was extraordinary. Three of the fifteen entries on this list were won within five months of each other.
Dave and Angela Dawes from Cambridgeshire, who won three months after the Weirs and became the second UK couple past £100 million.
Their case gets cited regularly in discussions of what large wins do to relationships, because they spoke publicly about the difficulty of deciding who to help and who to turn down.
An anonymous EuroMillions winner, in a year that produced several large UK jackpots. It sits comfortably inside the all-time top fifteen despite being roughly a third of the record.
A UK ticket holder took the eighth-largest British win at the time.
The National Lottery’s statement that “the champagne was on ice” is a standard formulation used while awaiting a claim, and it turns up in coverage of most large wins.
Notable because it was split. David and Carol Martin from Hawick in the Scottish Borders shared the jackpot with another ticket holder, taking £33 million each.
Shared jackpots are the most underappreciated fact in lottery mathematics. The advertised figure isn’t what any individual receives if more than one ticket matches, and popular number selections make sharing considerably more likely. Birthdays confine every pick to 1 through 31, and a great many people pick birthdays.
A single ticket matched all seven numbers to take £57.9 million, closing out the all-time top fifteen.
In any other decade this would have been a national record. In the current era it’s fifteenth.
EuroMillions is played across nine countries and pools ticket sales into a single jackpot. That produces a prize fund no individual national lottery can match, which is exactly why the UK Lotto game appears nowhere on this list.
The game also uses a jackpot cap. Once the top prize hits the ceiling it stops growing, and any further rollover value cascades into the lower prize tiers. That’s why so many of the largest wins cluster around similar figures rather than spreading out.
UK winners choose whether to publicise. Most large winners decline, and the reasons given by those who have gone public are strikingly consistent: sustained press attention, unsolicited requests for money, and the difficulty of managing relationships afterwards.
The National Lottery provides advisers to support winners through the decision. It’s made once, and it can’t practically be reversed.
The dates tell the story better than the amounts. Nothing on this list predates 2010, and eight of the fifteen have landed since 2018. That isn’t because British players got luckier. It’s because EuroMillions pools nine countries into one prize fund and raised its cap, which manufactured a category of prize that couldn’t previously exist.
The entry worth studying is fourteenth rather than first. A £66 million jackpot split two ways became £33 million each, and shared jackpots are the thing almost nobody factors in when they look at an advertised figure. Your chance of matching the numbers doesn’t change with how you pick them, but how many people you’d split with absolutely does, and birthday-range selections are the most crowded numbers on every slip in the country.
None of which makes the lottery a good bet. A ticket buys a specific, very small chance at a life-changing outcome, and the honest framing is that you’re paying a couple of pounds for permission to imagine it. The people on this list are the reason that imagining feels plausible. The ratio between them and everyone else who bought a ticket that week is the part that never appears in the coverage.
What is the biggest lottery win in UK history?
£195,707,000, won on a single anonymous ticket in the EuroMillions draw of 19 July 2022. It remains the largest National Lottery prize ever claimed by a UK player.
Who won the biggest UK lottery jackpot that went public?
Joe and Jess Thwaite from Gloucester, who won £184,262,899 in May 2022 on a Lucky Dip ticket. The larger July 2022 winner chose to remain anonymous.
How many UK tickets have won over £100 million?
Fifteen UK tickets had won jackpots above £100 million as of the most recent reporting, almost all on EuroMillions rather than the UK Lotto game.
Do UK lottery winners have to go public?
No. Winners choose whether to publicise their win, and the majority of large UK winners choose anonymity.
Why are EuroMillions jackpots bigger than Lotto?
EuroMillions pools ticket sales across nine European countries into a single prize fund, producing jackpots far larger than any single national game can generate.
Are lottery winnings taxed in the UK?
Lottery prizes aren’t subject to income tax in the UK. Income subsequently generated from the money, and inheritance tax on an estate, are separate matters.
Gambling should be treated as paid entertainment and never as a way to make or recover money. Set deposit and loss limits before you play. Free, confidential support is available at BeGambleAware.org and on the National Gambling Helpline, 0808 8020 133. GAMSTOP lets you self-exclude from every UK licensed online operator at once.
24 August 2026
24 August 2026
24 August 2026
