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

Yes, German players can and do play France Loto. 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.

France Loto is run by FDJ (La Française des Jeux), the French national lottery operator, 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 France, scans it into your account, and you hold that line for the Monday, Wednesday and Saturday 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 France Loto ticket in France, 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.

France Loto has three moving parts, and two of them are unlike anything in the games most international players know.

• **The five main numbers** come from a drum of 49. Five alone is rank 2; the jackpot needs one thing more.
• **The numéro Chance** is a second pick you make from 1 to 10, drawn from its own machine — not a supplementary pulled from the leftovers. Five mains plus the Chance is rank 1, at 1 in 19,068,840, exactly ten times the odds of the five-number match. Matched with no more than one main number, the Chance number instead refunds your €2.20 grid — a fixed rank-9 prize that lands about once in 11 grids and is the engine behind the game's 1 in 6 any-prize odds, the best of any draw we cover.
• **The raffle codes.** Every draw, FDJ assigns ten codes worth €20,000 each among the grids in play, independent of the numbers — a flat second chance stapled to every ticket.

The jackpot itself starts at a guaranteed €2 million and grows by a flat €1 million per draw until won, with no cap; the record run ended at €30 million (December 2021). For a player in Germany, the practical upshot is a game that returns *something* far more often than any American or pan-European draw — while being honest that the most common something is your own €2.20 coming back.

A note on the German audience for this game. France is next door and the comparison with Lotto 6aus49 is direct: the German game's full jackpot (with Superzahl) runs at 1 in 139.8 million, while Loto's is 1 in 19 million — seven times easier — in the same currency, with neither country taxing the prize. What 6aus49 offers back is scale: its jackpots regularly pass what Loto's flat €1-million-per-draw rollover can build.

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 France Loto — 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: five numbers from 1 to 49 plus one numéro Chance from 1 to 10.
• 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 Monday, Wednesday and Saturday draw the operator checks your line and credits any win.

An official France Loto line costs €2.20 per grid 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 France Loto 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 France, where Loto prizes are claimed — and the answer is short: nothing is taken. French law does not treat gains from games of chance as taxable income, however large the prize or however regular the player, so FDJ pays the full advertised amount with no withholding of any kind. There is no exemption threshold to track and no reclaim mechanism to invoke, because no tax was applied in the first place.

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 FDJ (La Française des Jeux), the French national lottery operator in France, 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 — five numbers from 1 to 49 plus one numéro Chance from 1 to 10 — at odds of about 1 in 19,068,840. There are nine prize tiers in total, and the overall chance of winning something is roughly 1 in 6. Draws are held Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at around 20:35 Paris 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. France Loto's 1 in 19.1M sits in the same range 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: three draws a week, a refund rank that returns something once every few grids, and a jackpot that builds by a flat €1 million a draw (the all-time record is €30 million (December 2021)). 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 €2.20 grid refund for matching the numéro Chance, converted into euros (EUR).

Three separate things decide what playing France Loto 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.** France Loto 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. France deducts nothing at all — Loto prizes are tax-free at source, at any size.

**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.

Every international lottery guide eventually becomes a tax guide. France Loto is one of the few games where there is genuinely nothing to explain — and the absence is worth spelling out, because players assume a catch.

**No tax on the prize, for anyone.** French law excludes gains from games of chance from taxable income, so FDJ pays the advertised amount in full — to a French resident, or to a winner in Germany, identically. There is no French equivalent of Spain's €40,000 threshold or Italy's €500 one, because there is no levy for a threshold to limit.

**No annuity mechanics either.** The jackpot figure is the amount paid, at once. Nothing like the US cash-option discount — where the lump sum is roughly half the billboard number — exists here, so a €15 million Loto jackpot is worth more in hand than a US jackpot advertised at twice that, before American withholding is even counted.

**What is left is your own country's side.** Since Germany does not tax lottery winnings either, a Loto prize is one of the very few that can cross a border completely intact — the only cost anywhere in the chain is the courier's fee.

**And the game behind the clean sheet** is the value pick of the European draws: 1 in 19,068,840 for the jackpot from a guaranteed €2 million floor growing €1 million a draw, nine ranks, and 1 in 6 overall — the best any-prize odds of any game we cover.

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.