Spain has a very varied collection of lottery games. It’s undoubtedly best known abroad for the Christmas ‘El Gordo’ draw, which usually has a prize fund of over two billion Euros.

But Spain has other lottery games. From the big monthly special draws to the more usual weekly games.

Those Monthly Draws

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

All the special draws use an unusual approach. For El Gordo the balls each have a 5 digit number from 00000 to 84999. One ball is then drawn for each winning number, and second ball drawn from a different machine to match the number to a prize.

You can see a brief clip of the draw here:-

Tickets are pre-printed for every possible number. Which means there is a limit to how many people can have each number. Once sold, there can be no more tickets.

These are great games to play with a syndicate because buying tickets outside of Spain is not easy. And increasing your chances of winning makes sense too. You can join my favourite Spanish special draws syndicate here.

El Gordo Christmas

This is the oldest of the special draws, and the most popular. It gets drawn on December 22nd every year, and Spain slows to a halt to watch the big draw. The prize fund 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 many Spaniards as it gets drawn on 6th January each year. If you only win small on the Christmas El Gordo, you can easily put that money straight into El Nino for another try. 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 fund of well in excess of 800 million Euros.

El Gordo Summer

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

Other Monthly Draws

There is then a Superdraw every other month that the other big ones do not cover. The prize fund is smaller but they still generate around 80 million Euros of prizes. Bigger than many jackpots ever get.

The Other Regular Draws

In addition to the jumbo games, Spain also runs more standard lottery draws. There is the Bonolotto which is a standard 6 balls from 49 draw. this is drawn 4 times a week. Then there is ‘El Gordo de La Primitiva’ (not not the same as the Christmas El Gordo), where you select 5 balls from 54 plus a bonus ball. This is drawn every Sunday.

You can find out more about Spanish syndicates here.