How to Play BonoLoto from Germany: A German Player's Guide

Yes, German players can and do play BonoLoto. The honest caveat, which we set out in full below, is that the route into it is less clearly licensed in Germany than in most of its neighbours.

BonoLoto is run by Loterías y Apuestas del Estado (SELAE), the Spanish state lottery, and like most state lotteries it sells to whoever holds a valid ticket rather than to a particular nationality. What Germany lacks is a domestic outlet selling those tickets, so German players reach the game through a licensed lottery courier: the service buys a genuine ticket in Spain, scans it into your account, and you hold that line for the every day, Monday to Sunday draw.

The ticket is real and the entry is identical to a local's. Everything that differs is around it, not in it.

German players should be straight with themselves here. Germany regulates gambling tightly under the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag, supervised by the GGL (Gemeinsame Glücksspielbehörde der Länder), and lottery courier services occupy a genuine grey area inside that framework rather than a clearly licensed lane. Couriers do serve German customers and do buy an official BonoLoto ticket in Spain, but you are relying on the operator's own compliance position rather than a German licence. Use only long-established operators, and understand that the regulatory picture here is less settled than in Britain or Ireland.

BonoLoto's design is one idea executed thoroughly: take Spain's classic 6-from-49 grid and run it as cheaply and as often as possible.

• **The bet is €0.50** — half a La Primitiva line and the lowest face price of any game we cover. SELAE requires tickets of at least €1, so a single-draw ticket carries two combinations; one combination is allowed when it enters several draws that week, and a weekly ticket (all seven draws) costs €3.50.
• **The draw is daily.** Monday to Saturday since 1988, and since 25 September 2022 Sundays too — the only major Spanish game drawn every night of the week, at 21:30 Spanish time.
• **The grid is full-sized.** Six numbers from 49, so the jackpot odds are 1 in 13,983,816 — identical to La Primitiva's, because the price discount buys a smaller prize pool, not worse mathematics. A Complementario ball upgrades a five-match into the second category, and a Reintegro digit (0-9) printed on the ticket refunds the stake when matched alone, which is why the chance of some return is about 1 in 10.

Small stakes and a nightly draw keep the botes modest — typically hundreds of thousands to a few million euros, with the all-time record only reaching €10.6 million (January 2024, Lorca) after 36 years. From Germany that is the trade to see clearly: BonoLoto is the frequency-and-price pick among the Spanish games, not the jackpot pick.

A note on the German audience for this game. For a German player BonoLoto is the structural opposite of home: Lotto 6aus49 draws twice a week at €1.20 plus fee, BonoLoto draws seven times a week at €0.50 flat. The 6-from-49 grid itself is identical in size, so the comparison is unusually clean — same pick, a third of the price per bet, and a draw every night instead of Wednesday and Saturday.

For a player in Germany this is the unusual case where currency simply does not feature: the game is priced in euros and so is your account, so nothing is converted in either direction.

• Pick a licensed courier that serves Germany and actually carries BonoLoto — not every operator offers every game.
• Open an account and verify your identity. Expect a photo ID and a proof of address, usually cleared within a day or two.
• Choose your numbers: six numbers from 1 to 49, with a Complementario bonus ball drawn from the remaining 43 and a Reintegro refund digit from 0 to 9.
• Pay in euros (EUR). German cards and SEPA-based e-wallets generally work, though some German banks decline gambling-coded transactions and you may need to try more than one method.
• Check the ticket scan appeared in your account before entry closed. That scan is your proof of entry.
• After the every day, Monday to Sunday draw the operator checks your line and credits any win.

An official BonoLoto line costs €0.50 per bet where the game is sold. Through a courier you pay that face price plus the operator's service fee, charged in euros (EUR) at the rate applied on the day, so your real cost per line always sits above the face price.

**A local benchmark.** In Germany, a 6aus49 line costs €1.20 plus the operator fee — so a courier-bought BonoLoto line is a visibly more expensive entertainment purchase than the game you can buy locally, before the odds are even considered. That is not an argument against playing it; it is the number to have in mind when you decide how many lines to take.

One quiet advantage of paying from the euro area: on a euro-denominated game there is no conversion spread at all, only the operator's fee.

Start with Spain, where BonoLoto prizes are paid — and where, for this particular game, the tax rule is close to academic. The gravamen especial takes 20% only above a €40,000 exemption, and almost nothing BonoLoto pays gets there: the fixed €4 three-number prize, the €0.50 Reintegro refund, even most category wins sit far under the threshold and are handed over whole. Only a bote crosses it — on the record €10.6 million, the first €40,000 was exempt and 20% came off the rest. SELAE withholds at payment whoever the winner is; whether a resident of Germany can recover any of that via the treaty with Spain (a Modelo 210 filing) is a jackpot-sized question for a Spanish adviser, not a fifty-cent one.

Then there is Germany. Germany does not treat a lottery prize as taxable income — it is not one of the seven income categories in the Einkommensteuergesetz, so the prize itself is untaxed. What follows it can be taxed: investment returns fall under the Abgeltungsteuer, and passing a large prize to family can trigger Schenkungsteuer (gift tax).

None of this is tax advice, and rules change. For a prize large enough to matter, pay for an hour with a qualified adviser in Germany before you claim — not after.

Lower-tier wins are credited to your courier account and withdrawn to a bank account in Germany, converted into euros (EUR).

Larger prizes are paid by Loterías y Apuestas del Estado (SELAE), the Spanish state lottery in Spain, not by the courier. For a top-tier win the operator transfers the official ticket into your name and handles the claim on your instruction, which means identity documents, the local tax paperwork, and — for the biggest prizes — sometimes a trip to collect in person. Ask how your operator does this before you play; the answer differs between them more than people expect.

Practical notes for Germany: as an EU citizen you can travel to claim with nothing more than an ID card — free movement applies, so there is no visa question at all. A large inbound transfer will be reported by your bank under the Außenwirtschaftsverordnung thresholds — routine, but expect the question.

Here is what you are actually buying. The jackpot needs the full set — six numbers from 1 to 49, with a Complementario bonus ball drawn from the remaining 43 and a Reintegro refund digit from 0 to 9 — at odds of about 1 in 13,983,816. There are six prize tiers in total, and the overall chance of winning something is roughly 1 in 10. Draws are held every day, Monday to Sunday at 21:30 Spanish time.

**How that compares with playing at home.** Lotto 6aus49 gives German players jackpot odds of 1 in 139,838,160 — once the Superzahl is included, Germany's own game is about twice as easy as US Powerball — and, unlike it, pays out in euros with nothing withheld. BonoLoto's 1 in 14M sits in the same range, or better, rather than the ten-times-worse canyon a US game asks you to cross — so this is not the usual trade of odds for ceiling. What you are choosing instead is the format: a draw every night at the lowest stake in lottery play, with jackpots that top out in the millions rather than the hundreds of millions (the all-time record is €10.6 million (January 2024, Lorca)). A different game, honestly priced — not a bigger prize.

No selection method shifts those odds; the realistic outcome of ordinary play is a lower-tier prize, most often the Reintegro handing back your fifty cents or the fixed €4 for three numbers, converted into euros (EUR).

Three separate things decide what playing BonoLoto from Germany is really like, and only one of them is usually written about.

**The prize is not taxable income.** German income tax works on a closed list: the seven Einkunftsarten in §2 of the Einkommensteuergesetz. A lottery prize is not one of them, so it is not income and there is nothing to declare. This holds whatever the amount and wherever the lottery is.

**The route in is a grey area, and we are not going to soften that.** Germany regulates gambling under the Glücksspielstaatsvertrag, with the GGL licensing a defined set of categories since 2021: sports betting, online poker, virtual slots, and the state lottery block that runs 6aus49. Lottery courier services — which buy a foreign ticket abroad on your instruction — are not a licensed category. They are also not a listed prohibition. They sit in the gap between the two. Established operators do serve German customers and do pay out; what you do not have is a German regulator to complain to, German deposit-limit protections, or German dispute resolution. If an operator failed to pay, your recourse would be wherever it is licensed. That makes trading history and payout record the only real protection available, so weigh them far more heavily here than a British or Irish player would need to. Expect too that some German banks decline gambling-coded transactions outright, which is an inconvenience and also a signal about how the transaction is read.

**What the euro game removes.** BonoLoto is priced and paid in euros, so the EUR/USD spread that is charged twice on an American game — once funding the account, once converting the prize — is simply absent. There is also no IRS in this picture at all: no 30% non-resident withholding, no W-8BEN before payment, no ITIN, no US return afterwards. Spain's 20% levy starts only above a €40,000 exemption, a line the everyday BonoLoto prizes never reach — only a multimillion bote is touched.

**And what is waiting afterwards.** Two German taxes attach to a prize once it is yours. Investment returns fall under the Abgeltungsteuer, withheld at source by German institutions above the Sparer-Pauschbetrag. More significantly, Schenkungsteuer applies to gifts: sharing a large win with family is a gift-tax event, with allowances that vary sharply by relationship — generous between spouses and to children, considerably less so to siblings, nieces, nephews and friends — and rates that climb with both the amount and the distance of the relationship. Allowances refresh on a ten-year cycle, which is exactly why staged giving over time is the standard German approach and why this is worth planning before the money moves rather than after.

For context at home: Lotto 6aus49 with the Superzahl runs at 1 in 139,838,160 and a line costs €1.20 plus fee — cheaper, and tax-free at both ends, like this one.

BonoLoto is taxed under exactly the same Spanish law as La Primitiva and El Gordo — Ley 16/2012's gravamen especial — but on this game the rule behaves differently in practice, and that is worth understanding rather than copying a generic "Spain taxes lotteries at 20%" line.

**The exemption is bigger than the game.** The first €40,000 of any prize is exempt; 20% applies only above. BonoLoto's fixed 5ª categoría pays €4, the Reintegro returns €0.50, and even the pari-mutuel categories above them usually pay hundreds to low thousands of euros on a normal night. In other words, the entire everyday prize table sits inside the exempt band — a BonoLoto player can win for years without SELAE ever deducting a cent.

**Only the bote is taxable territory.** A jackpot in the millions crosses the threshold, and then the arithmetic is the standard SELAE one: record bote €10.6 million → first €40,000 exempt, 20% withheld on the remainder at payment, whoever and wherever the winner is.

**For a winner in Germany** the follow-up question is the treaty one: where the Spain-Germany double taxation treaty allocates taxing rights over this income decides whether any withheld amount can be pursued through a Modelo 210 refund claim. That is worth professional help on a bote and obviously not on the wins the game mostly pays.

**One comparison to anchor it.** On a US game, 30% comes off a non-resident's prize from the very first dollar. On BonoLoto, nothing comes off until €40,000 — for the small, frequent wins this game is actually built around, the Spanish regime is about as gentle as lottery taxation gets.

SELAE runs three pick-your-numbers games and sells them side by side in every administración, so from Germany the real question is rarely "can I play BonoLoto" but "which of the three should I be playing". They divide cleanly.

**BonoLoto — frequency and price.** The 6-from-49 grid at €0.50 a bet, drawn every night of the week. Jackpots are unguaranteed and usually modest; the all-time record is €10.6 million (January 2024). No Categoría Especial — six numbers alone take the whole bote.

**La Primitiva — the flagship.** The *same* 6-from-49 grid at €1 a line, Monday, Thursday and Saturday, with a guaranteed €2 million floor and a Categoría Especial (six numbers plus the Reintegro) behind its headline jackpots — record €101.7 million. Per line the jackpot odds are identical to BonoLoto's; what €1 buys over €0.50 is a far larger prize pool. Our [La Primitiva country guide](/how-to-play-la-primitiva-from-germany/) covers it from Germany.

**El Gordo de la Primitiva — the Sunday game.** A different matrix entirely: 5 from 54 plus a 0-9 Clave, €1.50 a bet, €5 million guaranteed floor, jackpot at 1 in 31,625,100, and the best any-prize odds of the three (about 1 in 6.2, against roughly 1 in 10 for the two 6/49 games).

Between them the three cover every night of the week, and all three sit under the same €40,000-exempt Spanish tax regime. The clean way to choose: El Gordo for the biggest guaranteed floor and the most frequent small wins, La Primitiva for the serious jackpots, BonoLoto for the cheapest possible daily habit. And none of them is the Christmas Sorteo de Navidad, the once-a-year pre-printed raffle that shares El Gordo's nickname.

Three rules protect you more than any system for picking numbers: you cannot win a draw you never entered, no legitimate operator ever charges a fee to release a prize, and a licence should be verified on the regulator's own register rather than trusted from a badge.

Be sceptical of German-language sites claiming domestic licensing for foreign lottery products; the GGL register is the only thing worth trusting on that.

We would rather you played less than played badly. If it stops feeling like entertainment, the BZgA gambling helpline can help, and our [responsible-play page](/responsible-play/) lists the practical limits worth setting.