About The El Niño Lottery

El Niño is an annual lottery known to be one of the richest lotteries in the world since starting back in 1941, second in importance in Spain after the Spanish Christmas Lottery. The name “El Niño” (meaning ‘The Child’) gets its inspiration from Christian tradition and refers to baby Jesus.

The El Niño draw was traditionally held on the 5th of January up until the year 1999. The draw date has since been changed to the 6th of January (an important religious feast in Spain, coinciding with the Epiphany, or the visitation of the Magi or Wise Men). The draw usually takes place in Madrid.

El Niño lottery - How it Works

Similar to the El Gordo de Navidad, El Niño is played differently to other lotteries. There are 50 series with 100.000 numbers each. This means that for each serie 100,000 pre-set tickets are printed with 5 digit codes between 00000 and 99999.

Each ticket is divided into 10 shares. Individual shares of one ticket can be purchased by the players. These individual shares are called “decimos”, which means “the tenth part”. Each decimo amounts to one-tenth of a full ticket, so if that particular 5 digit number wins a prize, the ticket holder will then get a tenth of the prize available for that particular ticket.

The amount distributed as prizes is 700,000,000 euros. The total amount of the prizes paid per each serie is €14.000.000. For each of the 50 series there are 3 big top prize categories to be won, as well as 14 smaller prize categories, with prizes ranging from the top one of €2,000,000 to the lowest being €200.