Premium Bonds prizes: all you need to know
It has a reputation as the ‘nation’s favourite savings product’ but might not be your best investment option
National Savings & Investments (NS&I) has revealed the June results of its Premium Bonds draw, creating two millionaires overnight, with thousands more scooping smaller prizes.
The £1 million winners were from Leeds and Cheshire & West Chester, and have invested £42,425 and £32,800 respectively. Almost six million prizes worth more than £375 million in total were paid out in June, with the vast majority of winners receiving a more modest £25 or £50.
It brings the total won by Premium Bonds holders since the first draw in 1957 to £41.5 billion, said Andrew Westhead, NS&I’s retail director.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
There could be even more chances to win from next month after NS&I announced that its prize rate will increase.
What are Premium Bonds?
Launched in 1956 by the then chancellor Harold Macmillan, Premium Bonds are issued by NS&I and have been used by governments to raise funds.
They have become “one of the country’s most popular savings products”, said MoneyWeek. Premium Bonds have a “unique appeal”, with account holders being rewarded for saving by being entered into a monthly prize draw.
Unlike investments offering savers interest or a regular dividend income, Premium Bonds offer customers the chance to win between £25 and £1 million tax-free in a monthly prize draw.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Winning Premium Bonds are drawn at the beginning of each month, using a random number generator nicknamed ERNIE (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment).
How to buy Premium Bonds
Savers must deposit a minimum of £25 and can put a maximum of £50,000 into the accounts.
Each £1 you invest in Premium Bonds is entered into the draw up to a maximum of £50,000. This means your chances of winning increase with each entry you make, said Unbiased.co.uk, so “as the old adage goes, ‘you’ve got to be in it, to win it’”.
You can purchase Premium Bonds for yourself or for a child aged under 16 by phoning the NS&I customer helpline or on the NS&I website.
As part of the application, you will need to provide your address, date of birth, and bank account details. If applying for your own child, you will need to provide their date of birth, proof of identity, and address.
You can also buy Premium Bonds for someone else’s child, but will need to nominate a parent or guardian to manage the account until the child is 16.
Applications can take seven to 10 days to process, and you may be asked to provide extra documents to prove identities.
How to withdraw Premium Bonds
Premium Bonds can be cashed in, either in full or in part, “at any time without penalty”, said MoneyHelper. In fact, this can be done “straight away” for those who have an online account.
Alternatively, savers can download the NS&I’s Premium Bonds cashing-in form, fill it out and post it to the address on the form.
Once Premium Bonds have been cashed in, “you can choose” what to do next with the money, said LawHive, whether this is putting it into a savings account or pursuing an investment opportunity.
What are the Premium Bonds prizes?
Prizes that can be won from saving into Premium Bonds vary, but many will have their eyes on the £1 million jackpot, which two people will win each month.
Prizes are split into “three value bands”: higher, medium and lower, explained NS&I. Once the two lucky millionaires are decided, the company will then “allocate a percentage share of the monthly prize fund to each band”.
The highest-value band prizes are worth £100,000, £50,000, £25,000, £10,000 and £5,000, the medium-value prizes are issued in amounts of £1,000 and £500 and, finally, the lowest-value prizes are £100, £50 and £25.
What are my chances of winning a Premium Bonds prize?
The “nearest thing Premium Bonds have to an interest rate”, said MoneySavingExpert, is the annual prize rate. This rate is a benchmark of the “average” return investors get for their money – but “most people with typical luck” won’t get a prize, even with the maximum £50,000 invested.
The prize rate will increase in July, rising from 3.3% to 3.8%. This means NS&I will pay out £38 for every £1,000 worth of Premium Bonds purchased “up from £33”, said Moneyfacts.
The odds of winning any prize each month are 22,000 to one for every £1, and “each Bond has an equal chance of winning”, said Saga Magazine. But when it comes to the chances of striking it lucky with a “larger, life-changing amount”, these are “much smaller”.
Research by AJ Bell found fewer than 1% of the prizes awarded between February 2025 and January 2026 went to those with accounts worth less than £1,000, which highlights the “significant disadvantage” of only holding small amounts in Premium Bonds.
How to check if I have won Premium Bonds
Keep your contact details up to date, because NS&I informs each winner of their prize. Alternatively, you will need to check if your bond holdings “have been successful”, said The i Paper. To do so, holders can visit the NS&I website and enter their bond numbers into the prize checker. The “same information” is also available through the NS&I app for Apple and Android phones.
To find out if you’ve “been lucky”, holders can also ask an Alexa smartspeaker.
Do I have Premium Bonds?
Every year “thousands of Premium Bond winners die without being able to claim their prizes”, said The Telegraph.
Figures from NS&I showed “some £1.7 million” was inherited by surviving family members in 2024 – after 11,000 people died before collecting their winnings.
In September last year, over 2.6 million prizes worth a combined £106 million were still waiting to be claimed, including 11 bond numbers worth £100,000 each and 20 worth £50,000. London and the South East are the areas with the largest number of unclaimed prizes.
The provider is also in the process of contacting up to 34,000 estates after it admitted previously failing to trace accounts of dead customers and matching them with bereaved families’ claims.
If you have not checked for old, lost Premium Bonds wins, “don’t panic”, said Moneyfacts, as “there is no deadline to collect your winnings”, meaning you can claim as far back as the original 1957 draw. NS&I will “hold on to the funds for you” until they track you down, or you highlight the issue to them.
Those who “know or can find” their holder number will find it “straightforward” to claim any Premium Bond prizes, the financial website continued. The holder number includes either nine or 10 digits, or eight digits and a letter.
Understandably, some individuals will not be able to find their number. In this circumstance, “you can phone NS&I on 0808 500 7007 or write and ask for a replacement bond record to be sent to you”, Good Housekeeping explained. To better your chances, it is important to “give as much detail as you can”, such as your previous addresses, and when and where the Premium Bonds were bought.
NS&I also operates a tracing service to track down Bonds.
Are Premium Bonds a good investment?
The prizes are tax-free, plus NS&I is backed by the Treasury, “so 100% of your money is safe”, Which? said. By contrast, a maximum of £120,000 of money held in a savings account is protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme if a provider goes bust.
However, money held in savings accounts or an ISA will earn a rate of interest, but Premium Bonds will not. It’s a lottery, so “there is a chance you could win nothing at all”, the site continued. “And, as your savings won’t be earning any interest, they will effectively lose value over time due to inflation.”
It is important to note that Premium Bonds holders may see the real value of their savings “diminish over time”, said Saga. The money “isn’t going to be keeping up with inflation” unlike a traditional savings account that pays interest.
Research by Fidelity warns that “loyalty to Premium Bonds” comes at a price. Its analysis found that £5,000 put into Premium Bonds in 2016 could be worth £6,190 after 10 years based on historical prize rates. In contrast, £5,000 in a global tracker fund could now be worth £15,869.
Premium Bonds can “make sense” though if you are a higher-rate taxpayer and have already used your £20,000 annual ISA allowance, said Investors’ Chronicle, but they do now “pay less” than the top easy-access accounts on the market.
There are also alternatives to Premium Bonds that offer prizes rather than savings interest.
Ultimately, it’s best to view saving with Premium Bonds as “a bit of fun rather than a core savings strategy”, said MoneySavingExpert. As it is “capital-secure”, even if returns are negligible, investing a small amount could be worthwhile, as long as you “check the likely returns using the calculator”.
Marc Shoffman is an NCTJ-qualified award-winning freelance journalist, specialising in business, property and personal finance. He has a BA in multimedia journalism from Bournemouth University and a master’s in financial journalism from City University, London. His career began at FT Business trade publication Financial Adviser, during the 2008 banking crash. In 2013, he moved to MailOnline’s personal finance section This is Money, where he covered topics ranging from mortgages and pensions to investments and even a bit of Bitcoin. Since going freelance in 2016, his work has appeared in MoneyWeek, The Times, The Mail on Sunday and on the i news site.