Sticking to numbers 1 through 31 doesn't change your odds of winning, since every six-number combination is equally likely. What it changes is how many people you'd split with. Birthday players crowd the low half of the 60-number grid, so a winning line built from calendar dates tends to be shared.
The game at a glance
6 of 60
Tue · Thu · Sat
Brazil
1 in 50,063,860
The same for every possible combination, including this one.
18+
Must be 18+ to play Mega-Sena.
Mega-Sena, in brief
Mega-Sena is Brazil's biggest lottery, run by Caixa Econômica Federal, the state-owned bank that operates the country's federal games. A basic bet asks a player to pick six numbers from 1 to 60 on a single grid. There is no bonus ball and no second machine. Match all six and you win the jackpot.
Draws take place three evenings a week, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. When nobody matches six numbers the jackpot rolls over to the next draw, and because tickets are cheap and sold across the whole country, a run of rollovers can push the top prize into the hundreds of millions of reais.
The bet slip is unusually flexible. Instead of six numbers you can mark anywhere from 6 to 15, and Caixa enters every six-number combination inside your selection as a separate bet. The price climbs steeply with each extra number, but so do your chances of landing a prize.
Prize tiers
6 numbers (Sena)Jackpot
The jackpot, split evenly among every ticket matching all six numbers
5 numbers (Quina)
A share of the pool reserved for five-number matches, divided among all Quina winners that draw
4 numbers (Quadra)
A share of the pool reserved for four-number matches, usually modest because many tickets qualify
Where Mega-Sena came from
A federal game since 1996
Caixa launched Mega-Sena in March 1996 as the flagship of its federal lottery portfolio, built around a bigger number pool and bigger jackpots than the national games that came before it. It became the draw Brazilians follow by default, and its record prizes routinely lead the evening news.
Three draws a week
For most of its life the game was drawn on Wednesday and Saturday nights. Caixa moved to three weekly draws in August 2023, settling on the current Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday schedule.
The Mega da Virada
Since 2009, the final draw of the year has been split out as the Mega da Virada, held on New Year's Eve with a jackpot built up over months of dedicated ticket sales. It is reliably the largest lottery prize in Brazil each year, and it carries one rule no regular draw shares: the jackpot cannot roll over. If no ticket matches all six numbers, the money rolls down to the tickets that matched five.
Picking numbers, honestly
No number is ever due. The balls have no memory, and a number absent for fifty draws carries exactly the same odds next Tuesday as one that hit last week. Caixa publishes frequency tables, but they describe the past rather than predict anything.
Marking the maximum 15 numbers on one slip doesn't buy a single super-bet. It buys 5,005 separate six-number combinations, which is why the price runs to thousands of times a basic bet while the jackpot odds improve by exactly the same factor.
Mega-Sena — frequently asked
They're the three prize tiers. Sena is all six numbers matched and pays the jackpot, Quina is five, and Quadra is four. The two lower tiers split fixed slices of the prize pool, so their payouts change from draw to draw.
Three times a week, on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday evenings. The calendar shifts slightly at the end of the year to make room for the Mega da Virada on December 31.
Caixa's special New Year's Eve draw, held since 2009 with a jackpot far larger than any regular week's. Its defining rule is that the top prize can't roll over: if nobody matches six numbers, the full amount rolls down to the five-number winners.
Yes, genuinely, because every six-number combination inside your selection counts as its own bet. A 7-number slip covers 7 combinations and a 15-number slip covers 5,005. The ticket price scales in exact proportion, so the cost per unit of odds never improves.
Yes. Caixa calls its quick pick the Surpresinha, and it has the same odds as any hand-picked line. A separate option, the Teimosinha, repeats the same bet across several consecutive draws.