At a glance
- Price
- $3 per play (includes one Gold Ball Draw entry)
- Format
- Pick 6 from 1–49, plus a bonus number drawn from what's left
- Draw days
- Wednesday and Saturday
- Classic jackpot
- Fixed at $5,000,000
- Gold Ball jackpot
- Starts at $10,000,000, up to $68,000,000
- Jackpot odds
- 1 in 13,983,816
- Any prize
- roughly 1 in 6.6
Two jackpots, not one, since September 2022
Lotto 6/49 used to work the way most people still assume it does: one number pool, one jackpot, rolling over and growing every time nobody matched six. That changed on 14 September 2022, when the game was split into two separate components that now run side by side on the same ticket.
The Classic Draw is the familiar 6-from-49 game — but its jackpot is now a fixed $5,000,000, every single draw, win or no win. It doesn't roll over and it doesn't grow.
The excitement that used to belong to the Classic jackpot moved to a new side game: the Gold Ball Draw. Every play includes a unique 10-digit number, and one gold ball carrying a matching number is drawn each week. Miss it, and every play at minimum wins a guaranteed $1,000,000 prize from among the other numbered balls in the draw. If the featured gold-ball jackpot itself isn't won, it grows by roughly $2,000,000 per draw — starting at $10,000,000, and capped at a maximum of $68,000,000 before the odds of it being awarded are stepped up further.
In short: the Classic Draw pays a smaller, certain jackpot every time someone matches six; the Gold Ball Draw is where the multi-million-dollar drama that 6/49 used to be known for now lives.
How to play
Pick six numbers from 1 to 49. At the draw, six main balls are pulled for the Classic Draw, then a bonus number is drawn from what's left — it only pays if you've already matched five of your six mains. A play costs $3 and automatically includes one Gold Ball Draw entry. Draws are held Wednesday and Saturday evenings.
Prize tiers and odds
| Match | Odds |
|---|---|
| 6 (jackpot) | 1 in 13,983,816 |
| 5 + bonus | 1 in 2,330,636 |
| 5 | 1 in 55,492 |
| 4 | 1 in 1,033 |
| 3 | 1 in 56.7 |
| 2 + bonus | 1 in 81.2 |
| Any Classic Draw prize | roughly 1 in 6.6 |
We're being deliberately careful here: several fixed-prize amounts changed with the 2022 restructure and different provincial lottery corporations (OLG, BCLC, WCLC, ALC and others) can present them slightly differently. Rather than print a specific dollar figure we can't verify against your province's own page, we're pointing you to the operator directly. The odds above are the format's odds and apply everywhere.
What the odds actually mean
1 in 13,983,816 is shorter than EuroMillions (1 in 139,838,160) or Powerball (1 in 292,201,338) — Lotto 6/49's single number pool with no independent second range keeps the maths comparatively gentler, even though "comparatively" is doing a lot of work at nearly 14 million to one. At two draws a week, a single line played every draw would take an average of around 134,000 years to land the Classic jackpot.
Number choice changes none of it. Every combination is exactly as likely as every other on every draw. The one thing it affects is how many people you'd split a jackpot with — the honest case for a random pick, covered in do lucky numbers work?.
Prices, prize amounts and rules change, and the 2022 split is proof this game gets restructured. Confirm current details with your provincial lottery corporation before you play. Lucky Dip is independent and not affiliated with any Canadian lottery operator.
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Related reading
Lotto 6/49 is entertainment, and it's for over-18s only. If it's stopped being fun, the responsible gambling page lists free, confidential support.