EuroMillions Jackpot Still Up for Grabs

There’s still a chance for someone in the UK to win the biggest lottery prize in the country's history, as no one claimed the EuroMillions jackpot in Friday’s draw.

The prize has now rolled over to an estimated £208 million, after Tuesday’s draw—worth £199 million—also passed without a winner. Either amount would have set a new record for the National Lottery’s largest payout.

A winner of this jackpot would immediately surpass the net worth of celebrities like Adele and Harry Styles, and would also top the National Lottery’s list of biggest wins.

Andy Carter, senior winners' adviser at Allwyn, explained that the EuroMillions jackpot has now reached its cap, meaning that any additional money no longer increases the jackpot itself but instead boosts the prize amounts in the next highest tier. As a result, players who match five main numbers and just one Lucky Star could end up winning massive sums.

The current record-holding prize was claimed in July 2022 by an anonymous UK ticket-holder who took home £195 million.

Just two months earlier, Joe and Jess Thwaite from Gloucester became overnight millionaires when they won £184,262,899 with a Lucky Dip ticket. At the time, Joe worked in communications sales and Jess co-owned a hair salon with her sister. Joe recalled waking up at 5 a.m. as usual and seeing an email that read, "Good news, you have won a prize." But instead of waking Jess immediately, he let her sleep while he processed the shocking news alone.

"I saw the amount and didn’t know what to do," Joe said. "I couldn’t go back to sleep and didn’t want to wake Jess, so I just lay there for what felt like forever. I even started browsing for properties without a budget—something I’d never done before!"

When Jess finally woke up, she initially thought the National Lottery app was displaying an error.

More recently, in February of last year, Richard and Debbie Nuttall from Lancashire won £61 million. At first, they believed they had won only £2.60, but later discovered they had actually won half of a £123 million jackpot, which was shared with a winner from Spain.

So far this year, the largest EuroMillions win for a UK ticket-holder stands at £83 million, claimed in January.