NS&I Premium Bonds draw: Ernie selects 255 winners in December 2025

NS&I's monthly Premium Bonds prize draw is one of the most watched events in Britain's savings market. On the first working day of each month, more than 22 million Premium Bonds holders learn whether their bond numbers have come up in the draw. The selection is performed by NS&I’s Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment, a device nicknamed Ernie—a grain-of-rice-sized computer that the program says uses quantum technology to sift through about 133 billion Premium Bonds numbers in roughly 20 minutes. Since the draw began in 1957, Ernie has awarded 803 million prizes with a total value of about £39 billion. Each £1 bond carries the same odds of winning; the size of a holder's portfolio determines how many chances they have in the pool.

In the latest December 2025 draw, Ernie selected 255 winners. Of those, seven people named Ernie were winners, while Ernests—people named Ernest, often shortened to Ernie—made up the larger share with 248 winners. The report notes that while the names of winners can be a curiosity, they do not indicate any favoritism by Ernie; the distribution simply reflects the random outcome of the numbers drawn. The piece also nods to the cultural resonance of the name Ernie, recalling Benny Hill's popular Ernie character in a discussion of how names appear in prize lists. In 2025 alone, the machine drew about 72 million Premium Bonds prize wins across all draws. Since its first use in June 1957, ERNIE has drawn 803 million prizes with a total value of £39 billion. The odds are uniform across the £1 bonds, and the probability of winning grows with the number of bonds held, though every individual bond still has the same chance as any other in the same draw.

Premium Bonds can be bought in amounts from £25 to £50,000, with the average bond holder keeping roughly £5,613 in Premium Bonds. Prizes range from £25 up to £1 million and are tax-free. Each valid £1 bond contributes to the pool of numbers eligible for that month’s draw, so ownership size remains the primary driver of potential wins within the constraints of a fair, random process. In December 2025, prize lists highlighted the geographic breadth of winners, with entries spanning counties and cities across the country, underscoring that NS&I’s prize fund remain distributed in a wide geographic footprint rather than concentrated in a few regions.

The long-running program sits within a broader context of government-backed savings products offered by NS&I, and its opaque internal workings have grown into part of the public conversation around randomness, probability, and the allure of “risk-free” prize-based savings. NS&I emphasizes transparency around the process, noting the electronic random number generation is designed to be unpredictable and independent of outside influence, even as it captures public interest and curiosity about the names that appear on the monthly lists. As with any discretionary saving product, potential and current customers are encouraged to review terms, understand the tax treatment of payouts (which are tax-free for Premium Bonds), and consider how Premium Bonds fit into a broader financial plan.

Prosper