One lucky Thunderball ticket and suddenly your life changes forever – you’re holding a £500,000 top prize. Transform your dreams into reality, treat your family, buy a new car, or take that dream holiday in an exotic location.

There are nine Thunderball prize tiers, including a top prize of £500,000 for matching all five main numbers and the Thunderball. The odds of winning the top prize are 1 in 8,060,598, while the odds of landing a prize is 1 in 13. Thunderball draws are held on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

We love it when one of our Thunderball winners chooses to share their incredible news with the world. You can find the amazing stories of some of those who have here. One thing is certain: there is no typical Thunderball winner. Some recent top prize winners include a computer maintenance engineer from Great Yarmouth, a machine setter from Harlow and a grandad from Rochester. Wherever you live, whatever you do, a Thunderball top prize is your best chance to win £500,000 on a £1 National Lottery game.

Len and Hazel – the power of positive thinking

A lucky grandad from Rochester credited his positive thinking for his £500,000 Thunderball win. And his wife credited the brief shortage of Champagne in their part of Rochester to celebrations following the amazing win!

Len Parsons always believed he was going to win a big National Lottery prize one day.

Len and his wife Hazel got the whole family together to celebrate their good fortune. Hazel even reckons their gathering may have caused a brief shortage of Bollinger in the local area.

John – fun in the sun

Great Yarmouth man John Lingard scored a £500,000 Thunderball win twelve months to the day after he had surgery for kidney cancer. With his winnings safely in his bank account, he vowed to make the most of a life-changing year.

John, a computer maintenance engineer, had always loved spending time in the Canary Islands. He said his big Thunderball win would allow him to spend a lot more time in his favourite place in the world.

John told us, “I visit Tenerife three or four times a year, but when I left in September, I told friends I probably couldn’t make it back for a little while. Now, thanks to my Thunderball luck, I can afford to take a week off – unpaid – and head back for a little winter sun.”

Raymond – “I must be dreaming!”

A lucky man from Edinburgh celebrated a £500,000 Thunderball win after initially believing it had just been a crazy dream in the middle of the night!

Raymond Young, who had recently retired from his job working for British Gas, checked his Thunderball ticket while half asleep. It took him a while to realise he had a winning ticket.

Fully awake the next morning, he assumed it had all been a dream…until he checked his ticket again to find that he had, in fact, won the top prize of £500,000.

PLAY THUNDERBALL

Winning a Thunderball top prize can be a life-changing experience. If you win the top prize, it’s all yours – you won’t have to split it with anyone else who also wins the top prize in the same draw. Nice! Andrew Carter, senior winners’ advisor at Allwyn UK, the operator of The National Lottery, said most Thunderball top prize winners take their time to consider what to do with the money. He explained, “If they’ve got a mortgage, they might pay it off; if they’ve got kids, they set them up. And if they’ve got a dream they go and do it.”

Encouraging responsible play is at the heart of everything we do. You can find out more about player safety and wellbeing at www.national-lottery.co.uk/responsible-play.

We all fantasise about having £500,000 in the bank, but when the dream becomes reality, there are some important questions to be answered. Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about winning a Thunderball top prize.

Can winners remain anonymous?

A: Yes, absolutely. People can decide to share their amazing news, of course, but it’s entirely up to them.

Are Thunderball wins taxable?

A: There is no tax to be paid on the win. When players buy a National Lottery ticket, 12p in every pound is paid to the Treasury in Lottery Duty, but there's no tax imposed on the initial prize. However, if the win is invested and produces income, it will be taxed in the same way as any other income.

How can you gift your wins?

A: You can certainly gift all or part of your winnings, but there can be implications so make sure you take advice first.

If a Thunderball top prize winner decides to share their fantastic news, they will be able to join a community of winners who know first-hand what it’s like to win a big National Lottery prize.

PLAY THUNDERBALL

Every time you buy a Thunderball ticket you’re helping The National Lottery raise more than £30MMillion a week for Good Causes right across the UK. From renovating sports centres, community halls and cherished buildings, to supporting the young and old and helping the arts flourish, in every postcode district across the UK hundreds of projects have been supported with National Lottery funding.

By playing National Lottery games, you’re helping make a real change to people and communities in every corner of the UK. Whether it’s reviving local parks and building youth centres or bringing people together on allotments or sports fields, The National Lottery helps ordinary people do amazing things.

Making sure as much money as possible goes towards life-changing Good Cause projects is incredibly important to us. In fact, it’s what we’re here for. For every National Lottery ticket sold, a proportion of the money received goes to a huge variety of projects, both big and small – from repairing Scout huts to making sure our Olympic and Paralympic champions are at their medal-winning best. So, every time you play, the UK wins.

Many of our winners use their good fortune as an opportunity to give back. Many winners tell us that being able to make a difference to causes that mean a lot to you and your family is one of the best parts of winning.

But even if you’re not a winner, your ticket is still helping change lives – and we have plenty of stories to share about amazing projects you’ve helped support by playing The National Lottery. You can read our most recent highlights below.

July 2025