Has the Lottery Ever Drawn the Same Numbers Twice? We Checked 41,753 Draws
In September 2009 the Bulgarian lottery drew 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 - and four days later drew exactly the same six numbers again. The government ordered an inquiry. A year later Israel's national lottery repeated a winning combination within a month and checked the result several times before confirming it. Both times the reaction was the same: this is impossible. It isn't, and we can show it with our own archive. We took every draw we hold for 13 lottery formats - 41,753 draws going back to 1955 - and counted how often the main numbers had come up before. Chance predicts 9.9 repeats. We found 10.
Two Repeats That Made the News
Bulgaria: the same six numbers, four days apart
Bulgaria's national lottery drew 4, 15, 23, 24, 35 and 42 on 6 September 2009, then the same six numbers in a different order on 10 September. The government ordered an inquiry; the operator called it a freak coincidence, and no manipulation was ever found. Nobody had won the jackpot with those numbers the first time. The second time, 18 people did.
Israel: a repeat in exact reverse order
Israel's national lottery drew 13, 14, 26, 32, 33 and 36 on 21 September 2010 and the same six numbers again on 16 October - this time in exactly the reverse order. Officials checked the result several times before confirming it. Only the separately drawn 'strong number' was different.
The Birthday Problem on a Lottery Ticket
The headlines always quoted the same kind of number: the chance that one particular draw repeats one particular earlier draw. For a 6-from-49 game that is 1 in 13,983,816, and it genuinely is tiny. But nobody was waiting for one particular draw. The real question is whether any draw, in a long history of draws, matches any other - and that question has a very different answer.
It is the birthday problem. In a room of just 23 people, it is more likely than not that two share a birthday - not because any one pair is likely, but because 23 people make 253 pairs. A lottery archive works the same way: every new draw is compared with every draw before it, and the number of pairs grows far faster than the number of draws.
For 6 aus 49, the chance of at least one repeat passes 50 percent after about 4,403 draws. Germany's lottery reached that point in January 2006. With 6,562 draws by September 2026, the maths expects about 1.5 repeats and puts the chance of at least one at roughly 79 percent. Seen from the other side, every new draw now has about a 1 in 2,131 chance of repeating one that came before.
The statisticians Persi Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller gave this a name in 1989: the law of truly large numbers. In their words, "with a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen."
Our Archive, Lottery by Lottery
We compared main numbers only; the Superzahl, Lucky Stars, Powerball and other extra balls are left out. Where a lottery changed its number field, each format is counted separately. 'Expected' is how many repeats pure chance would produce over that many draws.
| Lottery | Format | Period | Draws | Expected | Found |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 aus 49 | 6/49 | 1955–2026 | 6,562 | 1.54 | 2 |
| Bonoloto | 6/49 | 1988–2026 | 9,393 | 3.15 | 4 |
| La Primitiva | 6/49 | 1985–2026 | 4,192 | 0.63 | 1 |
| SuperEnalotto | 6/90 | 1997–2026 | 4,270 | 0.02 | 0 |
| UK Lotto (49 balls) | 6/49 | 1994–2015 | 2,065 | 0.15 | 0 |
| UK Lotto (59 balls) | 6/59 | 2015–2026 | 1,173 | 0.02 | 0 |
| French Loto (old format) | 6/49 | 1976–2008 | 4,858 | 0.84 | 0 |
| French Loto (since 2008) | 5/49 | 2008–2026 | 2,811 | 2.07 | 2 |
| EuroMillions | 5/50 | 2004–2026 | 1,982 | 0.93 | 1 |
| Eurojackpot | 5/50 | 2012–2026 | 991 | 0.23 | 0 |
| El Gordo | 5/54 | 2005–2026 | 1,123 | 0.20 | 0 |
| Powerball | 5/69 | 2015–2026 | 1,405 | 0.09 | 0 |
| Mega Millions | 5/70 | 2017–2026 | 928 | 0.04 | 0 |
| Total | 41,753 | 9.9 | 10 | ||
The Ten Repeats
The longest gap belongs to Germany: the numbers drawn on 27 May 1962 came up again on 8 January 2020, almost 58 years later. Germany's first repeat, by contrast, came early - in June 1995, at draw number 3,016, when the chance of having seen one yet was still under 30 percent.
EuroMillions only repeated its five main numbers, 4, 30, 31, 38 and 42 - with different Lucky Stars: 2 and 11 in May 2014, 4 and 6 in August 2018. In May 2014 a single ticket bought in the UK matched all seven.
Spain's two 6-from-49 games even share combinations. Counted across La Primitiva and Bonoloto together, our archive holds ten repeated combinations - exactly the ten listed by the Spanish results archive La Web de la Primitiva. Five of them jumped from one game to the other.
The Near-Misses Are the Real Test
Ten repeats are too few to prove much on their own. Pairs of draws that match in every number but one are far more common, which makes them a better test of whether a lottery behaves like pure chance.
None of the 13 formats is off by more than about two standard deviations - the kind of wobble chance produces on its own. Put differently, the archive looks exactly the way fair draws should look.
How draws are kept honestWhat This Means for Your Numbers
- 1A combination that has already won has exactly the same chance in the next draw as any other. The machine has no memory in either direction: it doesn't avoid old results, and it doesn't favour them.
- 2Old winning numbers can be crowded, though. When Bulgaria repeated its draw, nobody had won with those numbers the first time and 18 people won the second - a strong hint that plenty of players had simply re-used the previous draw's numbers. If a repeat does come up, expect to share.
- 3Finding out whether your numbers have come up before is a nice piece of history, not a forecast. It says nothing about the next draw - which is exactly how a fair draw is supposed to behave.
Has Your Combination Ever Been Drawn?
Our checker runs your numbers against the same archive this article is built on - and shows your best historical match, lottery by lottery.
Sources: main numbers of 41,753 draws across 13 lottery formats from our own archive, as of 22 September 2026. Repeats cross-checked against lottozahlende.de (6 aus 49), lotto.net (EuroMillions), La Web de la Primitiva (Bonoloto and La Primitiva) and published FDJ results (Loto). Israel 2010 as reported by Haaretz and CNN; Bulgaria 2009 as widely reported at the time.
Disclaimer: Gambling can be addictive. Play responsibly. Participation from 18 years. Past draws say nothing about future ones. This article is for informational purposes only.