Spain has a quite complex range of lottery games. It's probably best known in other countries for the Christmas 'El Gordo' draw, which usually has a prize pot of over 2 billion Euros.

But Spain does have other lottery games. From the big special draws through to the more common weekly games.

The Big Draws

El Gordo de Navidad (the Christmas draw) is just one of the jumbo games that Spain runs. It used to be alone, until the jumbo Summer El Gordo was added. Then the huge January El Nino draw. So there is now a big draw every month.

All the special draws use an unusual approach. For Christmas El Gordo the balls each have a five digit number from 00000 to 84999. A single ball is then drawn for each winning number, and further ball taken from a separate machine to tie the number to a cash prize.

You can see a short movie of the draw here:-

Tickets are pre-printed for every possible number. So there is a limit to how many people can own each number. Once sold out, there are no more tickets.

These are excellent games to play with a syndicate because getting tickets outside of Spain is tricky. And increasing your chances of winning makes sense too. You can join my favourite Spanish special draws syndicate here.

Christmas El Gordo

This is the oldest of the special draws, and the most popular. It is drawn on 22nd December every year, and Spain comes to a halt to watch the big draw. The prize pot is typically more than 2 billion Euros, with thousands of big prizes paid out. The overall chances of winning something are 1 in 7.

El Nino

This is like a 'second chance' draw to a lot of Spaniards as it is drawn on 6 Jan each year. If you only win small on the Christmas El Gordo, you can easily put that money straight into El Nino for another go. Odds of winning a prize with this one are 1 in 3. It's not as popular as El Gordo but still generates a prize pot of well in excess of 800 million Euros.

Summer El Gordo

Drawn on 6 July, the Summer El Gordo has a smaller but very impressive prize pot of 140 million Euros. Like El Nino the odds of winning something here are also 1 in 3.

The Other Big Draws

There is then a big special draw every other month that the 3 big ones do not cover. The prize fund is smaller but they still generate around 80 million Euros of prizes.

Weekly Draws

On top of the jumbo games, Spain also runs more normal lottery draws. There is the Bonolotto which is a normal 6 balls from 49 draw. this is drawn four times per week. Then there is 'El Gordo de La Primitiva' (not to be confused with the Christmas El Gordo), where you select 5 balls from 54 plus a bonus ball. This is drawn every Sunday.

You can discover more about Spanish lotteries here.