El Gordo hot and cold numbers
Every ball drawn in the last 549 El Gordo draws, ranked from most to least often — and whether the gap between the two ends is any wider than chance produces.
549 draws · Jan 2016 – Sept 2026 · 2,745 balls
These numbers describe the past. They cannot predict the next draw.
This describes the past, not the future. Every number has the same chance in every draw. Nothing here changes your odds.
Balls have no memory. In every draw each number has exactly the same chance — 1 in 54 of being the first ball out, whether it appeared last week or has not shown up for a year. Nothing on this page changes your odds. It is here because the patterns are interesting, and because knowing which combinations are popular can lower your chance of sharing a jackpot.
Draws analysed
549
2,745 balls drawn
Expected per number
50.8
If every ball were perfectly even
Drawn most
34 73
22.2 above expected
Drawn least
47 32
18.8 below expected
Every number, by how often it came up
Colour shows the gap from the expected 50.8 appearances.
Below expected · Expected · Above
−10.2 +10.2
below · expected 50.8 · above
Number 34
Drawn 73 of 549 draws
22.2 above expected
Last out withheld
Longest gap 26 draws
A spread like this is exactly what pure chance produces. Formally: χ² = 72.5 on 53 degrees of freedom, p = 0.04 — no evidence that any ball is favoured. How we test for bias →
Drawn most often
Appearances in 549 draws
Drawn least often
Appearances in 549 draws
Longest droughts on record
The longest run of draws each number has sat out. It never made them "due".
Turn up together most
Pairs appearing in the same draw
The one statistic that can actually help you
Roughly a third of players choose numbers from 1–31 because they are using birthdays, and thousands of tickets carry 1-2-3-4-5-6 every week. Picking outside those patterns will not make you more likely to win — but if you do win, you are less likely to be sharing the jackpot with a hundred other people.
Across 549 draws, the most-drawn number has come up 41 more times than the least-drawn.
That gap is 6.0 standard deviations wide. Take 54 numbers that behave identically and look at the highest and the lowest, and chance alone puts them 4.5 standard deviations apart. Both figures are calculated, not asserted.
The gap is wider than chance usually produces. That is worth noting, and it still does not make any number more likely next time — a draw has no memory.
Drawn most often
- 34 73 +22.2 vs expected
- 6 66 +15.2 vs expected
- 2 65 +14.2 vs expected
- 51 65 +14.2 vs expected
- 37 63 +12.2 vs expected
- 3 62 +11.2 vs expected
- 11 62 +11.2 vs expected
- 13 62 +11.2 vs expected
- 8 61 +10.2 vs expected
- 19 60 +9.2 vs expected
Drawn least often
- 47 32 -18.8 vs expected
- 17 38 -12.8 vs expected
- 1 40 -10.8 vs expected
- 36 40 -10.8 vs expected
- 14 41 -9.8 vs expected
- 4 42 -8.8 vs expected
- 16 43 -7.8 vs expected
- 29 43 -7.8 vs expected
- 43 43 -7.8 vs expected
- 20 44 -6.8 vs expected
Does playing hot numbers work?
No. A number that has come up often is not more likely to come up again, and a number that has been missing is not owed an appearance. The machine has no memory of either.
The chance of matching the jackpot with any line is 1 in 31,625,100 whichever numbers are on it. Choosing from the top of this page and choosing from the bottom give exactly the same result.
Then why publish it?
Because it is a genuine record of what has happened, and because the alternative is letting somebody else show you the same list with the implication attached. Counting past draws is interesting. It is not a forecast.
If you want something that does change an outcome, it is this: most players pick dates, so lines built from 1 to 31 are chosen far more often. A winning line above 31 is shared with fewer people. That changes the size of a prize, never the chance of one.
Last updated Sunday 20 September 2026, after the draw on Sunday 13 September 2026.
Full El Gordo number statistics · Generate El Gordo numbers · Every draw we hold
The reasoning behind the comparison number above: why hot and cold numbers do not work, what the record shows about shapes people avoid, and what a matrix change does to any count taken across it.