11 June 2026
New Lotto: two draw rounds every night, and how LottoBase handles it
LottoBase Team · 5 min read
Lotto has changed. Under rules in effect from 7 June 2026, each Lotto draw night now produces two sets of winning numbers rather than one, a format the National Lottery is calling New Lotto. The first draw night to run under the new format was Wednesday 10 June 2026. This post sets out what has actually changed for players, what has stayed the same, and how LottoBase already reflects the two-round format across its screens.
What changed on the draw night
The headline change is the second round. Every Lotto draw night — still Wednesdays and Saturdays — now draws two separate sets of numbers, Round 1 and Round 2. Every line you play is automatically entered into both rounds for the same price, so a single line now has two chances to win on the same night rather than one. You do nothing differently when you buy: the second round is part of the standard ticket. You can read the official summary of the change on the National Lottery New Lotto page.
Alongside the second round, the non-jackpot prize tiers were revised, and they are lower than before. We are deliberately not quoting tier figures here, because the exact amounts are what LottoBase pulls live into its Prize Breakdown — checking the app is more reliable than trusting a number copied into a blog post.
What stayed the same
It is worth being precise about what did not change, because that part matters for reading the history. The jackpot itself is unchanged, including the headline odds of 1 in 45,057,474 for matching all six main numbers. The ball pool is the same 59 balls it has been since October 2015, so the underlying draw is mechanically the familiar one — there are simply two of them per night now.
That distinction also explains why the change does not reset any of the long-run history. Because the 59-ball pool is unchanged, every past draw remains directly comparable to every new one.
How LottoBase shows the two rounds
LottoBase was updated for New Lotto, so the two-round format is already visible in the app. On the Numbers tab, the Results view lists both rounds of each draw night as separate rows, labelled R1 and R2, so you can see each set of numbers in its own right rather than having them merged. The latest result still sits at the top of the list with its Prize Breakdown button, now carrying the revised tier amounts.
Both rounds of each New Lotto draw night appear in Results, and the change date is marked on Insights.
Switch to the Insights view and the start of New Lotto is marked with a “Dual Draw” indicator, so when you look back over the draw history the point where the second round began is clear rather than hidden. None of this changes the odds of any line; it is simply a faithful record of how the draw now runs.
A note on the “All Draws” Insights period
If you use the Insights Period Selector and pick All Draws, LottoBase analyses Lotto history back to its last significant rule change — the ball-pool expansion of 10 October 2015. The arrival of two rounds per night does not move that baseline. The pool is the same, so the existing history stays valid, and “All Draws” continues to run from October 2015 for now.
The app follows a deliberate convention here: it waits roughly 18 months before adopting a brand-new rule change as an Insights starting point, so that enough draws have accumulated for the patterns to mean anything. In keeping with that, LottoBase will in time offer an “All Draws” period that begins at this rule change as well, once enough dual-round draws have been recorded. Until then, you lose nothing — the full history is still there to read.
What it means in practice
For most players the day-to-day experience is straightforward: buy as before, and each line now rides in two rounds instead of one. The useful habit is the same one New Lotto makes slightly more worthwhile — actually checking every result. With two rounds a night, there are simply more outcomes to look at, and more small wins that are easy to overlook. If you scan your paper ticket into LottoBase and leave it set to Tracking, the app checks your numbers against both rounds as the results come in and records any win, so nothing depends on you remembering to look.
Lotto remains a game of chance, and the sensible approach is unchanged: play only what you can comfortably afford. The second round gives every line an extra go on the night, but it does not change the fact that each individual draw is a random, independent event. LottoBase’s job is to keep that record straight for you — both rounds, every draw night, accurately logged.