Elige 8 explained: La Quiniela's 8-match side game

Elige 8 is the 0.50-euro add-on to Spain's football pools: pick 8 of your 14 La Quiniela predictions and win if all 8 land. Price, odds and how prizes are shared.

La Quiniela is Spain's state-run football pools, operated by Loterías y Apuestas del Estado (LAE). Each week the coupon lists 15 matches: for the first 14 you predict 1 (home win), X (draw) or 2 (away win), and the 15th, the Pleno al 15, asks for the goals each team scores. Elige 8 ("choose 8") is an optional side game played on the same coupon.

How Elige 8 works

For an extra 0.50 euros per bet, you pick 8 of your 14 predictions. If those 8 are right you win, whatever happens in the other six matches. The Pleno al 15 is not part of it, and it can only be added to direct-method coupons (single or multiple bets), not to reduced or conditional systems. It has been running since October 2019.

• Price: 0.50 euros per Elige 8 bet; a La Quiniela bet costs 0.75 euros and the minimum play is two bets, so the cheapest Elige 8 coupon is 2 euros.
• Doubles and triples: each double among your 8 chosen matches doubles the Elige 8 bets, each triple triples them (4 doubles = 16 bets = 8 euros).
• Prize fund: 55% of Elige 8 sales, shared equally by the bets with the most hits.
• No jackpot in practice: if nobody gets all 8, the whole fund goes to the 7-hit bets, then 6, and so on.

Odds and prizes

If all three signs were equally likely, a single bet would have a 1 in 6,561 chance of getting 8 right, against 1 in 4,782,969 for all 14 Quiniela matches: 729 times easier. Because the fund is split, payouts swing widely. In the game's first 50 matchdays the 8-hit prize ranged from 4.84 to 74,143 euros per winner, depending on how many players called the same results.

The practical lesson: put the clear favourites in your 8 and leave the coin flips to the rest of the coupon. Matchday 18 of the 2026-27 season starts on Saturday 31 October; you can follow it on the matchday 18 page, browse the 2026-27 season archive or read how to play. For the full rules of the pools, see how La Quiniela works.

If you would rather play for fun, quiniPrats lets you predict every matchday for free and run a private pool with friends. Join whenever you like.