France Loto

Most lotteries draw their extra number from the machine. France Loto does something different, and it changes how the game feels to play.

**The five main numbers** come from a single drum of 49. Matching all five puts you in the top two ranks.

**The numéro Chance** is a second pick you make yourself, from 1 to 10, drawn from its own machine. It is not a supplementary drawn from the leftovers — it is a separate 1-in-10 event, like La Primitiva's Reintegro but chosen rather than printed. Five mains alone is rank 2; five mains *plus* the Chance number is the jackpot, at exactly ten times the odds: C(49,5) × 10 = 19,068,840.

**And at the bottom of the table** the Chance number works alone: match it with no more than one main number and FDJ refunds your €2.20 grid price as a fixed rank-9 prize. That refund lands about once every 11 grids, and it is the main reason France Loto's overall any-prize odds are roughly 1 in 6 — the best of any game we cover, a whisker ahead of El Gordo de la Primitiva's 1 in 6.2.

Be clear-eyed about what that 1 in 6 means, though: most of those "wins" are your own €2.20 coming back, not a prize in any meaningful sense.

The nine ranks, with odds computed from the official 5/49 + 1/10 matrix:

• Rank 1 — 5 + Chance — 1 in 19,068,840 — jackpot
• Rank 2 — 5 — 1 in 2,118,760
• Rank 3 — 4 + Chance — 1 in 86,677
• Rank 4 — 4 — 1 in 9,631
• Rank 5 — 3 + Chance — 1 in 2,016
• Rank 6 — 3 — 1 in 224
• Rank 7 — 2 + Chance — 1 in 144
• Rank 8 — 2 — 1 in 16
• Rank 9 — Chance number only — 1 in 10.8 — fixed €2.20 refund

Ranks 2 to 8 are pari-mutuel: each takes a share of the prize fund and splits it among that draw's winners, so amounts move with sales. Only rank 9 is fixed.

On top of the main table, every draw also assigns **ten raffle codes worth €20,000 each** to grids in play — a flat second chance that has nothing to do with your numbers. The full rank-by-rank table with every figure is in our [France Loto odds guide](/guides/france-loto-odds-and-prizes/).

France Loto's jackpot mechanics are unusually simple. The rank-1 prize is guaranteed at **€2 million**, and every draw without a winner adds **€1 million** — not a percentage of sales, a flat million — with no upper cap.

With three draws a week, a long roll builds quickly and visibly: three million a week, every week, until somebody matches five plus the Chance. The record stands at **€30 million, won on 4 December 2021** in Ille-et-Vilaine after 28 consecutive rollovers — the largest prize in the game's history, which stretches back to 1976, when Loto became FDJ's founding draw game.

By international standards those are modest numbers — EuroMillions can pay eight times the Loto record — and that is the honest trade: France Loto gives you dramatically better odds per grid at a jackpot scale that changes a life rather than a dynasty.

France does not tax lottery winnings. Gains from games of chance are not treated as taxable income under French law, however large the prize and however regularly you play, so FDJ pays out the full advertised amount with no withholding of any kind. A €30 million jackpot is €30 million in the bank.

That puts France Loto in the same clean category as an Australian or UK prize, and makes it materially simpler than Spain's SELAE games (20% withheld above €40,000) or Italy's SuperEnalotto (20% above €500) — and a world away from the US games, where 30% comes off a non-resident's prize before conversion.

Two follow-on points still apply. What the money *earns* afterwards — interest, dividends, rental income — is taxed normally, in France or wherever you are resident. And if you play from outside France, your own country's treatment of a foreign lottery prize applies on top; our country guides below cover that side.

France Loto sits alongside EuroMillions in every French tabac, and the two games split the same audience in a way worth understanding before choosing.

**France Loto** is the domestic game: €2.20 a grid, jackpot from €2 million growing €1 million a draw, odds of 1 in 19,068,840, three draws a week, and the 1-in-6 any-prize profile driven by the Chance refund.

**EuroMillions** is the continental one: ~€2.50 a line, jackpots from €17 million to a €250 million cap, at odds of 1 in 139,838,160 — more than seven times harder per line for a ceiling more than eight times higher.

Put plainly: Loto is the value pick and EuroMillions is the scale pick, and French players routinely run both. FDJ also runs special **Grand Loto** draws — notably the Friday-the-13th and Christmas editions — on the same matrix with boosted guaranteed jackpots, which is worth knowing if you see an unusually large Loto figure advertised.

One disambiguation for international readers: "Loto" is also the generic French word for lottery-style games (and for bingo). This page is about **FDJ's Loto**, the national Monday/Wednesday/Saturday draw — the game theLotter sells as France Loto.

FDJ sells Loto at tabacs across France and online — but its own website and app are restricted to players located in France. There is no rule preventing a foreigner from holding a winning ticket; what a player abroad lacks is a way to buy one.

That is the gap a licensed lottery courier fills: it buys a genuine FDJ grid in France on your instruction, scans it into your account, and that entry is yours for the draw. You pay the €2.20 face price plus the operator's service fee, and prizes — tax-free at source, remember — come back through the same account.

Our country guides cover the legal position, home-country tax and claiming in detail for [the United Kingdom](https://toplotteryonline.com/how-to-play-france-loto-from-united-kingdom/), [Germany](https://toplotteryonline.com/how-to-play-france-loto-from-germany/) and [Canada](https://toplotteryonline.com/how-to-play-france-loto-from-canada/).

And a final word on proportion: 1 in 6 is the chance of *something*, mostly your stake back; 1 in 19,068,840 is the chance of the jackpot, and no way of picking numbers changes it. Play it as entertainment within a budget you would not miss — our [responsible play guide](/responsible-play/) has the practical limits worth setting.