Philippines Lottery

The lottery in the Philippines: what there is and who runs it

The lottery in the Philippines is a government operation, run by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, usually just called the PCSO. Its website is pcso.gov.ph, and its revenue comes from four main products: the Sweepstakes Draw, the national lotto games, the Small Town Lottery, and horse racing³. The money raised funds charity and health programs, which is why the office carries "Charity" in its name.

The lotto itself dates back decades. Over the years the PCSO has added game forms beyond the original draw, including the three-digit (3D), four-digit (4D) and six-digit (6D) games, plus Mega Lotto 6/45 and Super Lotto 6/49⁴. The legality of the modern lottery was once questioned, but the Supreme Court ruled that it was legal, and it has been a fixture of Philippine life ever since⁶.

Today the lineup covers something for every budget and patience level: big six-number jackpot games drawn a few evenings a week, quick digit games with small stakes and daily draws, Keno, and the Small Town Lottery, which operates alongside the long-standing informal numbers game jueteng. You can buy tickets at authorized outlets across the country or online through the official PCSO e-Lotto platform².

The PCSO jackpot games: Ultra Lotto 6/58, Grand Lotto 6/55 and more

The five main six-number games are Lotto 6/42, Mega Lotto 6/45, Super Lotto 6/49, Grand Lotto 6/55 and Ultra Lotto 6/58. Each works the same basic way: you pick six numbers from the game's range, in any order, and win the jackpot if all six come up in the draw. If nobody matches all six, the jackpot rolls over and grows, which is how the top prizes reach the hundreds of millions.

Ultra Lotto 6/58 is the headline game. You select six numbers from 1 to 58, and the guaranteed minimum jackpot is PHP 75 million, raised from PHP 50 million in February 2025². On rollover, jackpots can climb toward a billion pesos, and a September 2026 draw carried PHP 330,176,341.88¹. Below the jackpot, five matching numbers pay a shared PHP 1.5 million and four matches pay a shared PHP 1.4 million². System Play lets you cover multiple combinations on one ticket to improve your chances².

Grand Lotto 6/55 sits just below it, played under a shared-prize consolation system with a jackpot that varies based on ticket sales². Mega Lotto 6/45 has a PHP 15 million minimum jackpot, up from PHP 9 million, and Lotto 6/42 starts at PHP 10 million, up from PHP 6 million². These games are drawn on set evenings, and a single ticket can change a life: one bettor won the PHP 15 million MegaLotto 6/45 jackpot on February 18, 2026 with the combination 35-05-45-04-38-23⁷.

For the full breakdown of each game, its prizes and how to fill out a playslip, see Ultra Lotto 6/58, Grand Lotto 6/55 and the PCSO Jackpot Games.

The digit games: Swertres, EZ2 and Lotto 6/42 and 6/45

Alongside the big jackpot games, the PCSO runs faster, cheaper games built around picking digits rather than six numbers. The digit family includes the three-digit (3D), four-digit (4D) and six-digit (6D) games, which were added to the lineup as the lottery grew⁴. Swertres, the best known of them, has you pick a three-digit combination, and EZ2 works the same way with two digits. Draws happen multiple times a day, so you get a result almost as soon as you buy a ticket.

The smaller six-number games also belong to this everyday tier. In Lotto 6/42 you choose any set of six numbers from 1 to 42 and win when those numbers are drawn in any sequence on the draw date⁶. Mega Lotto 6/45 works the same way with numbers from 1 to 45². If you do not want to pick your own numbers, Lucky Pick (LP) has the machine generate your combination for you².

Prizes at this level are modest compared with Ultra Lotto, but the odds of winning something are far better, and the games are cheaper to play: digit bets start at PHP 10, or PHP 12 for the 6D game, and prizes are fixed rather than pooled¹. For game-by-game detail on Swertres, EZ2 and the rest, see Swertres, EZ2 and the PCSO Digit Games.

Keno and the other PCSO products

Keno rounds out the PCSO's everyday offering. It is a rapid-draw game in the same numeric family as the digit games, with frequent draws and small stakes, and it was part of the nationwide suspension of PCSO games in 2020 alongside lotto and the digit games, which tells you it is a core product rather than a side offering⁸. You can check results for all PCSO games, Keno included, through the official results page at pcso.gov.ph¹.

Beyond the games most people think of, the PCSO also runs the Sweepstakes Draw, the original charity raffle-style product from which the office takes its name, and it oversees the Small Town Lottery³. Horse racing revenue also flows through PCSO channels³. In 2017 the office described its products as lotto, sweepstakes and the newly expanded Small Town Lottery, showing how STL has grown into a major part of the portfolio⁹.

Ticket prices, minimum jackpots and the 20% tax on winnings

A standard lotto ticket costs PHP 25. The price was PHP 20 for years, and the PCSO raised it in February 2025, at the same time lifting the guaranteed minimum jackpots across the main games². The current minimums:

One thing to keep in mind when you dream about a big win: prizes above PHP 10,000 are subject to a 20% withholding tax under the TRAIN Law². That comes off the top before you see the money, so a PHP 100 million jackpot actually pays out PHP 80 million. The tax applies to lotto winnings along with most other prizes, a rule the Supreme Court has confirmed in reading the tax code¹⁰. For a fuller picture of how gambling winnings are taxed, see Tax on Gambling Winnings in the Philippines.

Who can play

The legal gambling age in the Philippines is 21, and that applies to lotto players just as it does to casinos¹¹. Some international sites set their age limit at 18, but Filipinos are still expected to respect their own country's age limit of 21¹¹. Students, government officials and members of the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police face restrictions on gambling in regulated venues, rules that exist across PAGCOR-licensed establishments¹³.

For visitors and foreign residents, buying a lotto ticket at an outlet is straightforward and there is no citizenship check at the counter. The main practical difference concerns online play: PAGCOR-licensed offshore gaming is restricted to players located outside the Philippines who are not Filipino citizens, and Filipinos abroad are excluded from those platforms¹⁴. Some international sites do accept Filipino players, but the official PCSO e-Lotto is the channel designed for people in the Philippines².

How to claim a prize, and where

Where you claim depends entirely on how much you won²:

Before you go anywhere, sign the back of your winning ticket with your name and signature, and bring two valid government-issued IDs with your photo and signature for verification². For a jackpot, you will be making the trip to the main office on Shaw Boulevard in Mandaluyong City, so keep the ticket safe and unsigned by nobody but you.

PCSO e-Lotto: buying tickets online

The PCSO e-Lotto is the official web-based platform for buying lotto tickets online, so you no longer need to visit an outlet to play². Registration is quick: you sign up with your mobile number or email, receive an OTP, nominate a PIN, and provide your full name, gender, birthday and email².

Before you can load money onto your account and buy tickets, you have to verify your identity. You download the PCSO e-Lotto app and provide pictures of the front and back of a valid ID plus a selfie photo, and the PCSO verifies the ID first². The list of accepted IDs is long, and the following all work:

• PhilID or ePhilID
• SSS card
• GSIS card
• UMID card
• Driver's license
• PRC ID
• PhilHealth ID
• TIN ID
• Postal ID
• Philippine passport
• OWWA ID
• Voter's ID or voter's certificate
• IBP ID
• Senior citizen ID
• PWD ID
• NBI clearance
• PNP clearance
• Seaman's book

Foreign nationals can use an Alien Certificate of Registration ID card or a DOLE work permit².

The PCSO has been pushing the platform hard, aiming for a total jackpot prize of PHP 1 billion to generate interest in e-Lotto². Stick to the official platform and the official app; anything else claiming to sell PCSO tickets online is not the real thing.

Jueteng and the Small Town Lottery

Jueteng is the informal, underground numbers game that has been played in the Philippines for more than a century, and it remains in full swing despite never being legal¹⁵. Bets are placed with local collectors, draws happen in neighborhoods, and the game has survived every crackdown aimed at it.

The Small Town Lottery, or STL, was created as a legal, government-run alternative that would compete with jueteng by offering a similar product with official oversight and proceeds going to charity⁹. It has been expanded over the years into a significant PCSO product in its own right. During the 2020 suspensions, STL draws were halted only in Luzon while the STL in Visayas and Mindanao continued to be monitored every day, which shows how the game operates on a regional basis⁸.

For the full story of both games, how STL works and how it relates to jueteng, see Jueteng and the Small Town Lottery.

Draw schedules and where to watch them live

The main lotto games are drawn at the PCSO's regular evening draw⁷. Each of the six-number games has its own draw evenings, so on any given night only some games are drawn, while the digit games and Keno run multiple draws through the day. The February 18, 2026 MegaLotto 6/45 result, for example, came from the regular evening draw⁷.

If you want to watch live, the draws are broadcast on the official PCSO lotto draw television broadcasts, and you can also watch online through PCSO social media accounts and pages such as Facebook and YouTube². Results are published on the official PCSO results page at pcso.gov.ph¹, and third-party results sites like lottopcso.com compile them as well². Checking the official page is the safest way to confirm a win before you start planning.

Suspensions and shutdown claims: what actually happened

You may hear claims that the Philippine lottery was shut down. Something did happen, but it was temporary and had a clear cause. In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic lockdowns, the PCSO suspended lotto, digit games and Keno nationwide starting at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday, along with outlet operations, in connection with the community quarantine in Luzon⁸. The Small Town Lottery was suspended only in Luzon, while Visayas and Mindanao STL draws continued¹⁶.

The lotto games stayed suspended for three months¹⁶. When the PCSO resumed operations in July 2020, it initially sold only Lotto 6/42 and MegaLotto 6/45, following the existing draw schedule, and rolled ticket prices back to PHP 20 at that point¹⁶. By August 2020, the draw and sale of tickets for all five major games, Lotto 6/42, Mega Lotto 6/45, Super Lotto 6/49, Grand Lotto 6/55 and Ultra Lotto 6/58, had resumed in areas under general community quarantine¹⁷. One Ultra Lotto 6/58 catch-up draw in July 2020 carried a jackpot of PHP 304.8 million, covering the draws that had been missed¹⁶.

So the lottery was never abolished. The games paused for a quarter of 2020 and came back, and they have been running ever since, with ticket prices raised and minimum jackpots increased in 2025².