The first National Lottery draw took place on Saturday 19th November 1994 with seven ticket holders correctly matching the six main numbers and sharing a jackpot of £5.8 million. The largest jackpot in the history of the game was £42 million, shared by three winners in 1996, and the largest top prize won by a single ticket stands at £22.5 million, claimed in 1995 by two business partners from St Leonards-on-Sea who bought their ticket together.
The flagship game changed its name to Lotto in 2002 with the first price rise in its history coming in October 2013 alongside the introduction of the Lotto Raffle, which gives at least 50 ticket holders in every draw a £20,000 prize. To learn more about the history of the National Lottery, visit the Lotto page of Lottery.co.uk.
To celebrate their anniversary, lottery officials are looking back at some of their proudest moments over the course of the 20 years, including Lotto’s key role in providing £1 million of funding for the Oscar-winning hit movie The King’s Speech. The National Lottery is also proudly trumpeting its funding of Team GB, whose heroics at the London Olympics and Paralympics in 2012 created a wave of patriotic pride across the country.
Games like Lotto, EuroMillions and Thunderball continue to make millionaires and fund worthy projects within the UK, all funded by you buying your tickets for the game. The next Lotto draw is on Wednesday 5th November with an estimated jackpot of £2.1 million, and tickets are available now online or from authorised retailers.
