The Biggest Winners
The Swedish Lottery has been paying out great prizes since it began in the late 19th century, but the jackpots have got higher and higher since Lotto started in 1980. New games such as Joker, Drömvinsten and Keno have arrived since then, while Viking Lotto and Eurojackpot pool the prize money from several countries to create large jackpots. Find out about the biggest wins to have been seen in Sweden.
Eurojackpot Winners
561 million kr
The biggest jackpot to have ever been won in Sweden came in Eurojackpot and was worth 561 million kr. It was quickly revealed after the draw on 15th March 2019 that the winner was a man from Närke, who had spent just 50 kr on two rows.
It took a few days for the Swedish Lottery to track him down, and his first response was to ask the lottery official whether he was sober and really telling the truth. He was a man in his 60s from Örebro, who had played with his wife and said he had used some family birthdays to select his numbers. A party was held in their honour in the centre of town, complete with seven specially ordered giant cakes showing the winning Eurojackpot numbers. The couple revealed they would use the money they won to travel the world.
257 million kr
The 2019 win was worth more than twice as much as the previous Swedish record, which was set less than a year earlier in July 2018. A man from Gothenburg won 257 million kr on that occasion, and was actually at sea on a boat holiday with friends when he got the call to say he was a winner. He splashed out on an electric bike straight away, but said he would take his time before deciding what to do with the rest of the money and wanted to invest a lot of it.
Top 10
The following list shows the 10 biggest winners in Swedish Lottery history. You can see the amount won, which game it came on and where the winning ticket was sold.
- Eurojackpot: 15th March 2019 - 561, 942, 260 kr - Örebro
- Eurojackpot: 20th July 2018 - 257, 985, 846 kr - Gothenburg
- Drömvinsten: 20th April 2013 - 237, 697, 528 kr - Norrköping
- Drömvinsten: 27th March 2010 - 214, 595, 981 kr - Helsingborg
- Drömvinsten: 2nd May 2018 - 208, 358, 976 kr - Partille
- Drömvinsten: 16th August 2014 - 187, 776, 430 kr - Farsta
- Drömvinsten: 4th July 2015 - 159, 838, 152 kr - Järfälla
- Drömvinsten: 9th October 2013 - 151, 999, 213 kr - Stockholm
- Eurojackpot: 8th May 2020 - 141, 236, 224 kr - Ludvika
- Drömvinsten: 19th February 2020 - 137, 916, 733 kr - Göthenburg
Drömvinsten
As the Drömvinsten is always at least 75 million kr, it is responsible for many of the biggest lottery wins in Sweden. The minimum Drömvinsten is 75 times more than the Lotto 1 jackpot of 1 million kr.
The biggest Drömvinsten win went to a man from Norrköping, who pocketed 237 million kr in April 2013. At the time it was the largest prize to have ever been paid out in Sweden, and it left the winner feeling ‘dazed but calm’. He was in his 50s and had spent just 100 kr on his ticket. It was also revealed that he was not a regular shopper at the small newsagent where he purchased his ticket.
Other Big Wins
It’s not just Eurojackpot and Drömvinsten that have produced big wins. Lotto, Keno, Viking Lotto and Triss have also created many multimillionaires over the years.
A man from Timrå was stunned to find out that he had won 10 million kr on Joker in August 2021, having forgotten to check his tickets. He thought he had won just 21 kr on Lotto 1 and was surprised to receive a call from lottery officials to tell him he had in fact received an eight-figure sum.
A woman from Nyköping made headlines in April 2021 with a 1 million kr win on Lotto 2. She revealed that she had already won 1 million kr in the early 1990s as part of a group of co-workers. Having put the money towards a honeymoon the first time around, she and her husband were looking forward to buying a new car and going on holiday with the latest prize.
Another remarkable story emerged in 2021 when the same Hemköp store in Dalby sold two big winning tickets in the space of four months. First, a Triss player won 1.2 million in February, then a Keno player landed 20 million kr in June after matching all the numbers with King Keno.