NS&I Premium Bonds winners January 2026 announced as date confirmed | Personal Finance | Finance

The latest Premium Bonds winners have been released – with two holders scooping £1 million in the January 2026 draw. In an announcement this morning NS&I which administers the draw said two Premium Bonds holders from Suffolk and Berkshire are celebrating a life-changing start to 2026.

The first Premium Bonds £1 million winning Bond number this month is 570QM451332 and is held by someone from Suffolk. They purchased the winning Bond less than two years ago in February 2024 and hold £50,000. They are the 11th jackpot winner from Suffolk.

The second Premium Bonds £1 million jackpot Bond number is 377PG290829 held by someone in Berkshire. They’ve held £50,000 since December 2019. They are the fifth person to win the £1 million jackpot in Berkshire.

Andrew Westhead, NS&I Retail Director, said: “We’re delighted to kick off 2026 by creating our first Premium Bonds millionaires of the year in Suffolk and Berkshire. The jackpot winners aren’t the only ones celebrating. This month, ERNIE drew more than six million tax-free prizes worth over £406 million, bringing a happy new year to savers across the country.

“Premium Bonds holders can check if they’ve won a prize from Saturday, 3 January on our quick and easy NS&I prize checker app.”

In the January draw £406,932,450 will be paid to Premium Bonds prize draw winners totalling 6,165,643 tax-free prizes. This month there were 135,644,148,620 £1 Bonds eligible for the draw. This brings the grand total of prizes since the first draw in June 1957 to 809 million and the total value to over £39.5 billion.

Premium bonds are an investment product from the National Savings and Investment (NS&I), which is owned by the government. Each month, millions of savers are entered into a prize draw to win cash prizes ranging from £25 to £1 million, with two millionaires made at every draw.

Every £1 entered has a 22,000-to-one chance of winning. The minimum investment is £25, while the maximum is £50,000.

Personal finance expert Martin Lewis has explained if he thinks Premium Bonds are a good investment. He recently said: ” The premium Bond prize fund rate is 3.6 per cent currently. Now what that means is if you were to add up every single Premium Bond in existence in the UK and you take 3.6 per cent of it that’s how much they are paying in prizes in a year.”

 “Now what that doesn’t mean because it doesn’t work that way is if you put £100 in Premium Bonds you’re going to get £3.60 because that’s impossible. The smallest prize is £25. So what happens on £100 is a lot of people get nothing and a few get £25. That means the mean average is 3.6 per cent but far more important is the median average which is zero on £100 in Premium Bonds over a year.

“Median is if you lined everybody up who had £100 in Premium Bonds from those who win the most to those who win the least what would the person exactly half way along win.

“I state that so I can explain to you that when I’m going to talk to you about Premium Bonds now, when I talk about someone with average luck, I’m talking about someone who wins the median average amount because that is the best way to address typical luck in Premium Bonds.

“The first thing to say is someone with typical luck will always win less than the mean average, less thank the 3.6 per cent. What affects the amount you win, generally, is the amount you’ve got in. The more you have in the closer you will get to the mean average of 3.6 per cent on typical luck.”

He revealed that for Josie and her partner, with their £60,000 investment, they were likely looking at returns of approximately 3.2 or 3.3 per cent. Nevertheless, he pointed out this rate fell short when compared to leading savings accounts.

Mr Lewis clarified: “So then the question is, if we factor it on typical luck, how good is 3.2 or 3.3 per cent? The answer is not very. The best easy access savings accounts on the market are paying about 4.5 per cent. The top fixes on the market are in the 4.4 to 4.5 per cent type range.”

However, he noted that the ‘tax-free’ nature of Premium Bonds could offer an advantage. He explained: “Let’s just play this through: Most people do not pay tax on savings. That’s because, as well as your normal personal allowance up to £12,570 a year you can earn from any source, most people are getting either a £1,000 personal savings allowance – so that’s £1,000 of interest they can earn a year without paying tax on it – or £500 personal savings allowance if you are a higher rate taxpayer.

“You’ve got quite a lot of savings so you may well be paying tax on savings, you may well be over that threshold. In which case if I’m doing this purely on statistically likely returns you are likely to get, then the next thing you want to do is make sure you’;re filling up your cash ISA allowance each year, that’s assuming you’re not using it for shares ISAs.

“If you have a cash ISA allowance available, I’d recommend putting it there. Then, if you’re paying tax on your savings and you’ve maxed out your cash ISA allowance, especially if you’re higher rate taxpayers which means you’ll lose 40 per cent off your savings interest on any amount you pay tax on, at that point, Premium Bonds with typical luck yielding around 3.2 to 3.3 per cent after tax start to look like good value.”