The short answer. New York Lotto draws six numbers from 1–59 every Wednesday
and Saturday at 8:15 PM US Eastern, then draws a seventh, the Bonus, from the balls left over. The
jackpot needs your six to match the six. The Bonus matters for one thing only: second prize, which is
five of the six plus the Bonus.
How does New York Lotto work?
New York Lotto format and schedule | Game | You pick | Drawn | Draw time |
|---|
| New York Lotto |
6 numbers from 1–59 + Bonus 1–59 |
Wednesday and Saturday |
8:15 PM ET |
You choose six numbers between 1 and 59. At the draw, six balls come out of a single drum of fifty-nine,
and a line that holds all six of them wins the jackpot. There is no second drum, no coloured ball and no
separate number for you to pick. That makes it simpler to play than the multi-state games, and it trips
up readers who come to it from Powerball, because the results line looks as if it has an extra ball on
the end.
It does. After the six winning numbers are drawn, one more ball comes out of the same drum. That is the
Bonus, and it is where almost all the confusion about this game starts.
Most recent New York Lotto draw on record: 3 Oct 2026 — 3, 18, 23, 28, 30, 56 + B 47.
What does the Bonus number actually do?
It is not a sixth-number substitute
The Bonus cannot stand in for one of the six on the way to the jackpot. A line with five winning
numbers and the Bonus has not won the jackpot, whatever it looks like at first glance. The jackpot is
six out of six, full stop.
It splits five-of-six into two prizes
Its whole job is to decide second prize. Every line that matches five of the six winning numbers has
one number left over. If that leftover number is the Bonus, the line takes second prize. If it is
anything else, the line takes the lower five-of-six prize. The Bonus plays no part at any other level.
It can never repeat a winning number
Because it comes from the balls still left in the drum, the Bonus is always different from all six
winning numbers. This is the opposite of Powerball or Texas Two Step, where the extra ball has its own
drum and can carry a number that is already among the main ones.
One consequence is easy to miss when you are checking in a hurry. Matching the Bonus on its own, or with
two or three of the six, is worth nothing extra. The Bonus only becomes interesting once you already have
five. So the right order is always the same: count your matches among the six first, and only look at the
Bonus if that count is exactly five.
What are the odds of winning New York Lotto?
New York Lotto top-prize odds: there are 45,057,474 ways to choose 6 numbers from 1–59, so matching all of them with one line is 1 in 45,057,474. This is arithmetic on the game’s format, not a claim about any draw.
The Bonus does not enter that figure, and our odds line leaves it out on purpose. Games like Powerball
multiply their jackpot odds by the size of a second pool because the extra ball is part of the jackpot.
Here it is not, so the jackpot odds are just the count of ways to choose six numbers from fifty-nine.
Second prize is where the Bonus shows up in the arithmetic. Take the six winning numbers, drop any one of
them, and put the Bonus in its place: that gives a line of five winners plus the Bonus. There are exactly
six ways to do that, one for each winning number you could drop. So of all
45,057,474 possible lines, six win second prize, which works out at
1 in 7,509,579. It is the same method any lottery uses to
publish its prize odds, done here from the pool size so that it cannot drift from the game.
Neither figure has anything to say about the next draw. Each draw is independent, and a number missing
from the last twenty New York Lotto results is exactly as likely as any other to appear on Saturday. The
frequency counts on our lucky numbers page are there as a record of the past,
with a clear note that they do not beat random picks.
What time is New York Lotto in the UAE and India?
The New York Lotto draw in your local time | Game | Local draw time | UAE (GST) | India (IST) | Pakistan (PKT) | UK |
|---|
| New York Lotto |
8:15 PM ET |
4:15 AM (next day) |
5:45 AM (next day) |
5:15 AM (next day) |
1:15 AM (next day) |
Converted for 6 October 2026. US clocks change in March and November, which moves every US draw by an hour against the Gulf and India; this table is recalculated every time the page loads.
At 8:15 PM Eastern, New York Lotto is the earliest of the US evening jackpot draws, and that has a
practical effect here. It is usually the first big US result of the morning, landing in the UAE while
most people are still asleep and in India before six on a summer-time morning. By the time you wake on
a Thursday or a Sunday it has long been drawn.
As with every US game, the date on the ticket is the US date. The Saturday-night draw is the one you read
about on Sunday, and it is filed on our New York Lotto results page
under Saturday. When US clocks go back in November the local times in the table move an hour later;
the full picture for every US game is in our guide to
US lottery draw times in India and the UAE.
How do I check a New York Lotto ticket?
- Note the draw date on the ticket. New York Lotto draws only on Wednesday and Saturday, so any other day
means you are reading the wrong date or the wrong game.
- Open the New York Lotto results page and find that date.
- For each line, count how many of your six numbers are among the six winning numbers. Ignore the Bonus
for now.
- If the count is six, that line matches the jackpot numbers.
- If the count is exactly five, now look at your one unmatched number. If it equals the Bonus, that line is
a second-prize match; if not, it is a five-of-six match without the Bonus.
- For any lower count, the Bonus is irrelevant. Check the official prize table for what that level pays.
- Confirm any win with the New York Lottery before relying on it.
We are not the New York Lottery. This site publishes results for reference only. We do not sell
tickets, we are not affiliated with the New York Lottery, and we cannot validate a claim. Where and whether
you can buy or claim depends on where you are; ask the official operator.
Is New York Lotto the same as other US Lotto games?
No, and the shared name causes real mix-ups. Florida Lotto, Lotto Texas and Lotto America are all separate
games with their own pools, their own draws and, in Lotto America’s case, a separate Star Ball drum.
None of them uses a same-pool Bonus in the way New York does. If a ticket just says “Lotto”,
the state printed on it tells you which results to check. Every New York draw we publish, including the
daily games, is listed on the New York lottery results page, and
the rest of the state’s games are explained in
our New York guide.
