First Comments From Anonymous €250,000,000 Irish Euro Millions Winner!
Last Updated: Friday 18th July 2025, 14:52 pm
It's been five weeks since the not-quite-record-breaking €250 million Euro Millions jackpot was won in County Cork on the 17th of June. Now that the dust has settled, the winners have shared some of the details of their big win, although they will be remaining anonymous.
The winnings are being shared by a family syndicate, although just how many winners there are hasn't been disclosed. The winner hadn't entered the previous couple of draws (for which the jackpots were also €250 million) but decided on a whim to pick one up at Clifford's Centra on Shannon Street, Cork. We've got a pretty thorough comment from the winner themselves, so we'll let them tell the story for themselves:
"As you can imagine, sleep was out of the question"
“I saw the sign at the till that the EuroMillions jackpot was €250 million. Although I’m a regular player, I hadn’t bought a ticket for the last two draws. I picked one up and honestly, didn’t think much of it.”
“I was watching the Nine O'clock News and saw that someone in Ireland had the winning EuroMillions ticket. So naturally, I got my ticket and scanned it on the National Lottery app, and a message popped up, ‘You’ve won big, contact the National Lottery.’ Obviously, this wasn’t a message that I was used to seeing, so I must have checked it four more times, I just couldn't believe my eyes!"
“I ran upstairs to my wife who had just gone to bed and woke her up. We both checked the numbers multiple times on the website. We sat at the edge of the bed, saying ‘Oh my god’ over and over – I reckon we said it about 50 times. We were in total shock, complete disbelief. As you can imagine, sleep was out of the question that night.”
The Next Steps
After a very excited night, the winners called the National Lottery the next day to confirm their win, and kept the ticket safely hidden in a pile of folded laundry. However, they decided to wait to actually redeem to get their affairs in order. As you can imagine, there were a lot of big decisions to make - first of all, the question of anonymity.
The family have been mulling over what they'd like to do with this astonishing new wealth - one member of the syndicate has been window-shopping for a Rolex, and the others are agreed that a family holiday is in order. The family will also be purchasing houses for the kids - with the state of the housing market, winning the lottery might soon be the only way for a young person to buy a house!
All that said, the winners are keen for their newfound wealth not to go to their heads, with one of them joking “I'll still be having my favourite ham and cheese sambo for lunch every day!”
Tied for First-Place
At the start of the article, we mentioned that this jackpot win wasn't quite a record-breaker. That's because another Euro Millions jackpot of €250,000,000 was won in Austria in 2022. The jackpot currently can't pass €250 million as that's the Euro Millions jackpot-cap, which means these two jackpot wins are tied for the biggest lottery prizes ever won in Europe!
The jackpot might not reach the cap for a while yet, but to an extent, it doesn't really matter how many millions you've won- it's still just as life-changing. Get your tickets in time for the next draw, don't miss out!
