Mega da Virada Odds and How Lottery Pools Really Work

What is different about the 2026 Mega da Virada

The facts in this section come from news reports I opened on November 10, 2026, and each is credited to the outlet that published it. Caixa's website returns a 403 to automated access, so I could not check the rules at the source; confirm the date, time and amounts in Caixa's own announcement before you bet. According to Agência Brasil (published in O Povo on November 4, 2026) and Seu Dinheiro, the special draw is contest 3100, held at 11 a.m. on January 1, 2027, at the Espaço da Sorte in São Paulo, with bets accepted until 10 p.m. on December 31. A simple six-number bet costs R$6.00. The estimated prize "should exceed R$1 billion", and Seu Dinheiro notes that the figure may rise. Times are Brasília time.

Two things matter for the math. The first is the split: 90% of the edition's prize goes to bets that match all six numbers, 5% to five hits and 5% to four hits. The second is that, as a special edition, "the Mega da Virada prize does not accumulate", in Agência Brasil's words: if nobody hits all six, the amount passes to those with five. In an ordinary Mega-Sena draw, whatever nobody wins rolls over and fattens the next prize. In the Virada the money of the top tier is always paid out, which also means it can be split as thinly as last year: according to O Povo, the previous edition paid R$1.09 billion in the top tier, shared by six winning bets, with more than R$181.8 million for each.

The odds by number count and the exact cost

On the Mega-Sena, and therefore on the Virada, you can mark 6 to 20 numbers on the same ticket. Marking n numbers is equivalent to buying, all at once, every six-number game that fits inside them, C(n,6) games, and the price is C(n,6) times R$6.00. The chance that the winning six fall inside your ticket is C(n,6) divided by 50,063,860. Because the chance and the price have the same multiplier, the result is a property the general lottery-probability guide only touches on and that is worth proving here with the whole table.

What it means in practice: marking 20 numbers for R$232,560.00 gives a jackpot chance 38,760 times larger than a simple bet, but it also costs 38,760 times more. No ticket size "buys more chance per real". The only thing the number count changes is the size of the outlay and, with it, the swing in the result. To compare the cost of any configuration, use the Bet Cost Calculator.

Expected value in plain words

Expected value is what each bet returns, on average, across everybody who plays. It is not what you will receive, it is what the arithmetic would give if the same bet were repeated many times. The temptation with the Virada is the naive calculation: if the prize is R$1 billion and the chance is 1 in 50,063,860, each R$6.00 bet is "worth" R$1,000,000,000 ÷ 50,063,860 = R$19.97, more than three times the price. That calculation is wrong, and understanding why is the heart of this section.

• It assumes you win alone. The R$1 billion prize exists because hundreds of millions of bets were sold, and every bet sold is one more chance for somebody to hit the same jackpot: if N simple games are sold, the expected number of winners is N ÷ 50,063,860. In 2025 there were six (Tribuna PR).
• It ignores tax. The Receita Federal 2026 table lists a 30% rate for "prizes and draws in cash". If Caixa withholds at the source, as Money Times says, the amount that reaches you is net; if the announced figure is already net, the calculation already reflects that. The reports I read about the Virada do not say which case applies.
• It forgets that the prize is shared out. The total prize does not depend on how much you bet, only on how much was sold. More sales make the prize larger and raise the number of winners at the same rate.

In words: if the total paid in prizes is lower than the total wagered, the expected value of the average ticket is below the price. In an ordinary Mega-Sena draw, Law 13.756/2018 (article 16) allocates about 43.79% of revenue to prizes and the income tax on them. I did not find, in an open source, what share of Virada sales becomes prize money, so I do not state a numeric expected value for it. The method above lets you check once the total paid and the number of bets are published. Until then, what can be said with a source is the general rule: in Caixa's lotteries, the average return per real wagered is below one real.

Most-drawn numbers and unpopular combinations

Two ideas circulate every New Year: bet on the numbers that come up most, and avoid the combinations "everybody plays". The first does not work; the second works, but for something different from what people imagine. The site's draw history shows the first one clearly. Across 3,049 Mega-Sena draws, from 1996 through August 25, 2026, each number was expected 304.9 times, with a standard deviation of 16.6. The most frequent, number 10, came up 356 times and the least frequent, number 26, 250 times. That looks like a difference, but it is what luck produces when you look at 60 numbers at once: there will always be a first and a last.

The honest test is persistence: if a number were really "more drawable", it should stay ahead when you change the period. I split the 3,049 draws into two halves of 1,524 and 1,525. The six most-drawn numbers of the first half (5, 4, 54, 33, 51 and 53) came up 151, 146, 146, 157, 138 and 179 times in the second half, an average of 152.8, against 152.5 expected for any number. The correlation between the two halves' frequencies is 0.08, practically zero. Put plainly, one period's frequency ranking does not predict the next. You can browse the history and test your own numbers in the Lottery Checker, the Simulator and Lottery Statistics; the Lottery Generator draws uniformly for exactly this reason.

And unpopular combinations? They do not change the chance your bet comes up: 1-2-3-4-5-6 and 09-13-21-32-33-59 (the 2025 Virada result, per Tribuna PR) have the same 1-in-50,063,860 probability. What changes is what happens if they do come up. Because the top tier is divided among all winners, a combination chosen by many people must be shared with all of them: that is what happened in 2025, when six bets shared a prize of about R$181.9 million each (had only one hit it, it would have taken the full R$1.09 billion). Which combinations are popular is not published by Caixa; the reasoning is common sense: birthdays sit between 1 and 31, and obvious sequences are chosen a lot. Avoiding those only lowers your chance of splitting, and only matters if you win.

The pool: it multiplies the chance and divides the prize by the same factor

A pool combines the money of several people to buy more games and divides the prize by share. The math is simple. With G distinct combinations in the pool (the sum of C(n,6) over all its games), the group's chance of hitting the jackpot is G ÷ 50,063,860. Each of the k shares takes 1/k of the prize. A person who joins with one share therefore has k times the chance of being on a winning ticket, but receives k times less if it happens. The product of chance times prize per share is the same as a solo bet of equal cost per share; only the variance of the outcome changes: a pool trades a ticket with a tiny chance of a huge prize for a slightly less tiny chance of a smaller slice.

Read the second row with a calculation. If the prize were R$1 billion and your pool hit the jackpot alone, each R$16.80 share would receive 1/100, or R$10 million, with the group's chance 1 in 178,800. Multiplying: R$10,000,000 ÷ 178,800 = R$55.93 per share, and R$55.93 ÷ R$16.80 = R$3.33 per real invested. That is exactly the naive figure for a solo R$6.00 bet (R$19.97 ÷ R$6.00 = R$3.33). The pool does not create value; it changes the shape of the risk, and the whole calculation still only holds if nobody else hits, which in the Virada rarely happens. The example numbers are hypothetical, a yardstick only.

The same arithmetic applies to any lottery, including the US games this site also calculates. A Powerball ticket costs US$2 and has a 1-in-292,201,338 jackpot chance; a Mega Millions ticket costs US$5 and has 1 in 290,472,336. A pool of ten distinct Powerball tickets costs US$20 and gives the group 1 in 29,220,134; ten Mega Millions tickets cost US$50 and give 1 in 29,047,234. In every case the price rises tenfold, the chance rises tenfold and each of the ten members is left with one tenth. If you are an expat or a visitor, check the local rules for pools and for taxes on prizes in the country where you buy the ticket; this article only covers the Brazilian game.

Two cost caveats. The first is the retailer's fee: O Povo says lottery retailers may organize shares and charge an additional service fee, without stating an amount. Every real paid as a fee buys no chance: a 10% fee (a hypothetical example) leaves each real with 1 ÷ 1.10 = 91% of the chance, a 9.1% loss. The second is that overlapping numbers shrink the real chance: the table assumes games with no repeated combination; if two games share six numbers, the exact chance is lower than the sum. The Lottery Pool Calculator does both calculations, splits the amount into shares without cent errors and prints an agreement for the group.

On the rules of the official pool I only have press sources: according to Agência Brasil in O Povo, a pool can be made by ticking the dedicated field on the slip or asking the clerk, runs from 2 to 100 shares on the Mega-Sena, with up to ten bets per receipt, and all bets must have the same number of marked numbers. Minimum amounts per share and fee ceilings appear in secondary sources, and I could not confirm them in the rulebook. For an informal pool, write the agreement first: who holds the ticket, who checks it, what happens if someone pays late and how the prize will be split.

Tax, claiming a prize and playing responsibly

Tax. The Receita Federal 2026 table, under "Outros rendimentos", lists 30% for "prizes and draws in cash", 20% for prizes in goods and services, and 15% for net prizes from fixed-odds betting (article 31 of Law 14,790/2023); the page gives no legal basis for the 30% and says nothing about withholding at source. Law 13,756/2018 mentions the income tax levied on prize money (articles 16 and 21) without giving the rate. Money Times states that Caixa withholds the tax and hands over the prize already discounted, and that the announced amount of a March 2026 Mega-Sena was net; I found no open-source confirmation for the Virada. Winners should ask Caixa at the time of claiming how much was withheld, and ask an accountant about their own situation.

1. Check the ticketCompare your receipt with the result in the Lottery Checker and, in a pool, with the group's receipt.
2. Keep the original ticketMoney Times recommends filling in your name and tax ID on the back of the ticket in advance. For online bets, the same report describes a temporary redemption code and QR Code.
3. Claim within the deadlineAccording to Olhar Digital and Money Times, Caixa prizes lapse 90 calendar days after the draw date; after that the amount is transferred to the Fies student-financing fund, the destination Law 13,756/2018 (article 14, paragraph 2) sets for unclaimed prizes. Smaller prizes can be collected at a lottery retailer; larger ones only at a Caixa branch. The reports differ on the threshold amount, and above R$10,000 payment usually takes at least two business days. Confirm with Caixa.