7 Star Lottery

7 Star Lottery, known in Chinese as Qi Xing Cai (七星彩), is one of the flagship draw games of the China Sports Lottery. It is a digit-matching game: you choose a seven-digit number, and the closer your digits line up with the drawn number, in the right positions, the more you win. It sits alongside Super Lotto (Da Le Tou) on the sports lottery side of China's two-lottery system, with the China Lottery overall being split between sports and welfare games.

How a draw works: numbers, format and prize tiers

A 7 Star Lottery bet is a seven-digit number with an unusual twist in the last position. You pick a six-digit number from 000000 to 999999 for the first six positions, and then a single number from 0 to 14 for the seventh position². That seventh position is wider than a normal digit, which is a deliberate design choice: when the game was revamped in 2020, the range for the final number was expanded from 0 to 9 up to 0 to 14, which actually made the first prize harder to hit⁵.

The draw produces a seven-digit winning number in the same format. Your ticket wins according to how many of your digits sit in the same positions as the drawn number.

The game has six prize tiers. The first and second prizes are floating prizes, meaning their value depends on how much money is in the prize pool and how many people win. The third through sixth prizes are fixed amounts that never change².

The fixed amounts come straight from the official game rules². Note that the second prize only requires the first six digits to match, so a ticket that gets everything right except the final 0-to-14 number still lands a substantial prize.

Draw schedule and where results are published

7 Star Lottery draws three times a week, every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, at 21:25¹. That schedule fills a gap in the sports lottery week: Super Lotto draws on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday, so between the two games there is a draw almost every night⁶.

Each draw has a betting cutoff time, shown on the sales page for the current issue, after which no more tickets are sold for that draw⁷. A ticket is valid only for the draw period in which it was bought, so you cannot buy a ticket now and apply it to a future draw⁸.

Results are published by the Sports Lottery Administration Center of the General Administration of Sport of China, which runs the official lottery website where schedules, results and prize data appear⁹. The draw details for each issue, including the winning number and prize amounts per tier, are posted on the results page for the game⁸. Major lottery portals such as zhcw.com also carry the winning numbers and prize breakdowns shortly after each draw⁷.

Ticket price and how prizes are calculated

A single bet costs CNY 2². You can play the same seven-digit number multiple times on one ticket, with the multiplier ranging from 2 to 99 times, and the total amount of bets on a single ticket cannot exceed CNY 20,000². One thing to know: since August 31, 2020, the multi-draw option has been cut back, and you can now buy into only one draw at a time rather than stringing a ticket across up to 15 consecutive draws as before⁵.

The prize money for each draw comes from a share of sales. 7 Star Lottery splits its sales 50% to prize money, 13% to issuance costs and 37% to the lottery public welfare fund that funds sports and community programs².

The floating prizes work like this. After the fixed prizes for the third through sixth tiers are set aside, the remaining prize money is split: 90% goes to the first prize and 10% to the second prize, divided equally among all winning bets in each tier, with each bet capped at CNY 5,000,000².

There is one special rule worth knowing. If the accumulated prize pool reaches CNY 300,000,000 or more before a draw, the allocation flips: the first prize takes 10% and the second prize takes 90% of the floating money for that draw². This is designed to release a swollen pool to second-prize winners, who only need the first six digits to match.

If nobody wins the first or second prize in a draw, that unclaimed floating money rolls into the prize pool and carries forward into future draws, building the pool for later winners². There is no redraw; the money simply moves on.

How to buy a ticket at a China Sports Lottery outlet

7 Star Lottery is sold by provincial sports lottery agencies through physical stores within their own regions, using the national computer network system². There is no other legal way to buy it.

A genuine China Sports Lottery store is easy to recognize. It carries clear signage and the China Sports Lottery logo, and inside you will find a China Sports Lottery Sales Agency Certificate issued by the lottery center and bearing its official seal, usually posted in a prominent position³. If a shop selling lottery tickets does not have that certificate on display, treat it with suspicion.

At the counter you have three ways to get your numbers onto a ticket:

• Mark your numbers on a betting slip
• Ask the clerk to enter them
• Take a quick-pick style random selection

You pay CNY 2 per bet, choose any multiplier up to 99 times, and receive a printed ticket. Keep that ticket safe: it is the only proof of your bet, and you need the physical ticket to claim any prize.

When you win, redemption is regional. A winning ticket can be redeemed anywhere within the provincial-level administrative region where it was purchased, so a ticket bought in Shanghai is claimed in Shanghai, not in another province¹². Winners have 60 natural days from the draw date to present the ticket at a designated redemption point; if the last day falls on a public holiday or closure, the deadline extends to the first working day after it, and prizes left unclaimed past the deadline are forfeited to the lottery public welfare fund².

Playing from outside mainland China: what changes

The biggest change is that there is no legal online route. The state has never approved any institution or individual to sell lottery over the internet, and official guidance is blunt: all platforms claiming to accept online bets are illegal, and offline physical stores are the only legal purchase channel³. China Sports Lottery has never authorized any website, app or mini program to sell its tickets, and any sports lottery sold online is illegal⁴. So if you are outside mainland China, you cannot legally buy a 7 Star Lottery ticket at all, and any site offering to sell you one is operating outside the law.

Foreign lotteries face the mirror-image rule: they are prohibited from being issued or sold within the People's Republic of China, so you will not find licensed overseas draw games on sale there either.

For visitors inside mainland China, buying a ticket at a physical outlet is a normal, everyday activity, and tourists do it regularly. The practical points are the CNY 2 price, the regional redemption rule, and the 60-day claim window, which can matter if your stay is short. A large prize would need to be claimed in the province of purchase within that window, so plan accordingly if you are leaving soon after a draw.

When the numbers stop being fun

Lottery tickets in China do not return principal and pay no interest; a losing bet is simply spent². The fixed-prize structure of 7 Star Lottery means most winning tickets pay CNY 5 or CNY 30, and the odds of matching all seven digits, with that 0-to-14 final position, are long by design⁵. If playing stops being a small entertainment expense and starts being money you cannot afford, it is worth stepping back. China's lottery system exists to fund public welfare programs, and the healthy way to treat it is as a CNY 2 flutter on a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday night, not as an investment plan. If gambling of any kind is causing you or someone around you trouble, help resources are listed on our Gambling Help in China page.