The third biggest ever UK National Lottery winner has come forward and claimed a EuroMillions jackpot of £171 million.
National Lottery operator Camelot confirmed that it has received a claim for the £171,815,297.80 EuroMillions jackpot prize won by a single UK ticket-holder in the draw on Friday 23 September.
Following a validation process, the prize will then be paid at an appointment with one of Camelot's Winners' Advisers.
Once the ticket has been paid, the lucky winner will then decide whether or not to go public with their win.
There will be no information on whether they are an individual or syndicate winner, or where the ticket was purchased, unless the ticket-holder decides to go public.
Camelot’s Andy Carter, Senior Winners’ Advisor at The National Lottery, said it has been an "amazing" year for UK EuroMillions players.
"We are delighted to have received a claim for the third biggest ever win and look forward to supporting the ticket-holder and helping them to start to enjoy their truly life-changing win," he said.
The win marked the sixth EuroMillions jackpot won in the UK this year.
Five of these have been £100M-plus and they include the three biggest-ever National Lottery wins.
The new top three wins are an anonymous ticket-holder who banked £195M in the draw on 19 July, Joe and Jess Thwaite from Gloucestershire who celebrated a massive £184M win in the draw on 10 May and the £171M winning ticket-holder from the draw last Friday.
Recalling the moment he learnt of their win, Joe said he lay in bed in disbelief looking at properties until Jess woke up.
Joe said: "I looked it up and saw we’d won. I saw how much and I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t go back to sleep,
''I didn’t want to wake Jess up so I just laid there for what seemed like forever. I spent some time searching for property with no budget limit, which was a novelty!”
Eventually the alarm rang and as Jess struggled to turn it off Joe told her: “I’ve got a secret, I’ve got something to tell you."
Jess’ initial reaction when presented with the news was disbelief, thinking Joe had it wrong, the National Lottery app was wrong or that it was a joke.
Eventually she concluded that it wasn’t worth getting too excited about as it probably wasn’t true and got up to make a coffee and start their normal morning routine.
The couple called Camelot once The National Lottery Line opened at 8am and promptly had the life-changing win confirmed.
There has been a £110M win earlier this month, a £109M jackpot win from the draw on 4 February and a £54M EuroMillions jackpot win in the draw on 10 June.
All three of these ticket-holders chose to remain anonymous.
In all, just over £827M in EuroMillions jackpot prizes have been won by UK ticket-holders this year alone.
This latest ticket-holder has banked the 17th EuroMillions jackpot of over £100M in the UK in EuroMillions history.
