El Gordo Navidad Lottery Tickets

The El Gordo Navidad is a special draw held on 22nd December every year in Spain. It is one of the biggest lotteries in the world due to its huge prize fund which stretches into the billions of Euros, and due to the fact it gives away hundreds of prizes making many people millionaires. Playing the El Gordo Navidad is a national pastime in Spain, with 98% of Spanish residents estimated to play, and the lengthy draw televised in its entirety.

The El Gordo Navidad plays a little like a raffle. Players choose five-digit numbers, and can either buy a whole ticket, a billete, or one tenth of one, named a decimo. A decimo is offered due to the high price of a full billete. Spanish people will club together to form syndicates to buy billetes, and often whole villages, workplaces or families will own small amounts of many tickets.

What makes the El Gordo unusual is the draw. On the day of the lottery, two large drums or bombos will contain all the numbers and prizes separately. It is customary for school children to pull the number and the corresponding prize out, singing each number as they go. However, each winning number does not just win once. The tickets are sold in series, which means the same number can be sold up to 195 times, depending on how many tickets are being sold that year (usually hundreds of thousands). So, if a number wins a prize, every single player with that number will win that prize.

So for example, if the number to win the second prize of €1,250,000 was 26543 and 180 series of that number was sold, each player with the number 26543 will win €1,250,000. If they purchased a full billete they will win the full prize, and if they purchased the decimo they will win a tenth of the prize - €125,000.

The sheer quantity of the cash prizes on offer in this Special draw make the El Gordo Navidad a game like no other, which explains why almost every person in Spain participates. It truly is a Christmas Draw which can make hundreds of people's Christmases.

There are six main prizes to be won on the El Gordo Navidad, plus a whole host of supplementary prizes which will be confirmed after the draw, and relate to the numbers which won. The six main prizes are detailed in the table below: