Lotto HotPicks

How HotPicks works

HotPicks is a side game bolted onto the Lotto draw, and it has one rule that defines everything else: you must match every number you picked. Match four of your five and you get nothing. There is no partial credit.

You start by choosing which game you're playing — Pick 1, Pick 2, Pick 3, Pick 4 or Pick 5 — and then choose that many numbers from 1 to 59. Every game costs the same £1 per line. The more numbers you take on, the longer the odds and the larger the fixed prize.

You don't need to play Lotto to play HotPicks. It uses the Lotto draw, but it's a separate purchase and a separate entry.

Draws are Wednesday and Saturday at 8:00pm, riding along with the main Lotto draw. Online and app sales close at 7:30pm on draw day.

Which balls count

HotPicks uses the six main Lotto numbers only. The Bonus Ball plays no part in it — matching the Bonus Ball does nothing for a HotPicks line.

Since 7 June 2026 the Lotto draw has run in two Rounds, each with its own set of six main numbers, and HotPicks moved across with it. Both Rounds count towards your line.

Numbers cannot be combined across Rounds. A Pick 2 line needs both of your numbers to appear in the same Round. One in Round 1 and one in Round 2 is not a win.

What changed in June 2026

Two things happened at once, and they pull in opposite directions.

The prizes were halved at every tier. The odds also roughly halved — which in odds terms means they improved, because each £1 line now enters two draws instead of one. You're paying the same money for two goes at a smaller prize.

Prizes are paid per Round, so a line that matches in both Rounds is paid twice. A Pick 5 line that comes up in Round 1 and again in Round 2 collects £175,000 twice over — £350,000 in total from a single £1 line. That is astronomically unlikely, but it is how the rules work.

Prize tiers and odds

Other sites may still show the old single-round prizes, which were withdrawn in June 2026. If a figure doesn't match the table above, check the official game page.

There is no published overall "odds of any prize" figure for HotPicks, and that's deliberate on our part rather than an omission. Allwyn doesn't publish one — it wouldn't mean much anyway, since you're only ever playing one Pick game per line. Any such number you find elsewhere is somebody's own calculation, not an official figure.

No jackpot, no rollovers

HotPicks is a fixed-prize game from top to bottom. Nothing rolls over, nothing builds up week to week, and there's no Must Be Won draw. What the table says is what you get, however many other people win at the same time.

That's the main appeal over Lotto: you always know exactly what a win is worth before you buy.

Which Pick game is the better bet?

Here's a figure the operator does publish, and it's more useful than most: the average share of sales paid back out in prizes for each game.

The pattern is clean: Pick 1 returns the most and Pick 5 the least. For every £1 staked on Pick 1, around 61p comes back as prizes across all players over time. On Pick 5 it's closer to 42p.

So if "best value" means the game that gives back the largest share of what's staked, Pick 1 wins and Pick 5 loses. But be clear about what that does and doesn't mean: none of these games has a positive expected value. Every one of them pays out less than it takes in — that's the whole design. Pick 1 isn't a good bet; it's the least bad one, and it caps your win at £3.

What you're really choosing between is a decent chance of a trivial prize and a remote chance of a life-changing one. That's a preference, not a strategy.

What the odds actually mean

Pick 1 at 1 in 5.2 is genuinely gettable — roughly one line in five wins something. It pays £3 on a £1 stake, so a win is a win, but you'd need a lot of them to stay ahead of the four losing lines around it.

Pick 5 at 1 in 417,200 is a different order of thing. Playing one Pick 5 line in every draw — two a week, 104 a year — the arithmetic puts an average wait at something like 4,000 years. The prize is smaller than a Lotto jackpot, but so is the mountain you're climbing.

To say it plainly: no generator, system or pattern improves your chances here. Every number from 1 to 59 is equally likely to be drawn, and picking them carefully doesn't change that. See how lottery odds are calculated if you want the maths behind that claim.

Generating a HotPicks line

The Lotto HotPicks preset on this site generates 5 numbers from 1–59 — that's a Pick 5 line. If you're playing a smaller game, either take the first one, two, three or four numbers from the set, or change Main · how many in the options to match the Pick game you're buying.

Prices, prize values, draw times and rules do change — HotPicks halved every prize in June 2026 without much fanfare. Always confirm the current details with The National Lottery before you play. Lucky Dip is independent and not affiliated with Allwyn or The National Lottery.

Related reading

• Lotto →
• How lottery odds are calculated →
• Do lucky numbers work? →
• Responsible gambling →

HotPicks is entertainment, and it's for over-18s only. If it's stopped being fun, or you're spending more than you meant to, the responsible gambling page lists free, confidential UK support. 18+.