McDonald’s Monopoly 2023 – How to win
For most people, McDonald's Monopoly is a nice way to win an extra free side with your meal. But play your cards right and you could get a free electric car, holiday or £100k!
Every time McDonald's Monopoly pops up, the whole country seems to go into a mad frenzy – and students get especially competitive.
So, you'll probably already know that it's a competition where you collect stickers from special menu items in order to win a range of prizes. You need to be 18+ to take part.
If you're anything like us, you probably use McDonald's Monopoly as an excuse to eat far too many fries in one month. But while you're at it, you may as well play to win too!
In classic Save the Student style, we've done the research on how to maximise your chances of winning.
Don't miss: 40 ways to make money
What's in this guide?
When is McDonald's Monopoly 2023?
McDonald's Monopoly 2023 ran from Wednesday 6th September until Tuesday 17th October.
As has been the case in recent years, you were able to store all the stickers you collected online on the McDonald's Monopoly website or app.
Gone are the days of filling your wallet to the brim with those pesky (and greasy) stickers along with your fold-up Monopoly board!
What can you win with McDonald's Monopoly?
Credit: 8th.creator – Shutterstock
There's so much you can win with McDonald's Monopoly – and so many ways to win it all – that things can get a little confusing. But, before you start discarding your stickers after eating your burger, make sure you read our simplified tips below.
Put simply, there are four ways to win at McDonald's Monopoly:
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Instant win prizes
This is your best chance of winning. Plus, who doesn't want free food?
These are pretty self-explanatory. Just take the peel-off sticker that says "hash brown or cheesy bacon flatbread" or "Big Mac or McChicken Sandwich" (or whatever else) to the till before the expiry date and enjoy your free food.
In 2023, there were over 80,000,000 available, so your chances of getting one of these were pretty good. In fact, in 2022, 165 McDonald's Monopoly prizes were won every minute.
You could win, among other things, chicken nuggets, hash browns, apple pies, burgers, fries, plus plenty more. There were even some non-food goodies up for grabs (like cash, cinema tickets and a McDonald's Gold Card), and some of the property set prizes (listed below) were also available via instant win, including the wireless earbuds and the holiday.
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Online prizes
If you find a property sticker during the McDonald's Monopoly, you can also win online prizes. Simply scan the sticker or enter the codes in your McDonald's app or the website. You had an extra chance to win with the Digital Peel every time you added a property to your app.
You could win between £5 – £100 in cash, or some non-cash prizes like gift cards or even food vouchers to use at McDonald's. But it also included big prizes like £100,000 in cash or a MINI electric car!
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McDonald's Gold Card
This is technically one of the instant win prizes, but it's so good that we thought it deserved its own point.
As part of McDonald's Monopoly 2023, you had the chance to win a McDonald's Gold Card.
McDonald's was giving away 2,000 Gold Cards as part of the Monopoly promotion in 2023. If you won one, you were entitled to a free Maccy's meal once a week, every week for a whole year.
One Save the Student reader was previously lucky enough to win a Gold Card in the first week of the Monopoly promotion and kindly shared the pictures you can see above. So it really is possible to find this most coveted of prizes!
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Property 'set' prizes
We all know that in real Monopoly, once you've bought all of the properties of one particular colour, you get to double the rent you charge for them. But collecting a complete set in McDonald's Monopoly can be even more lucrative.
However, don't think that, just because you have two of a certain colour, you're definitely on to a winner. There's usually one property per set that is rarer than the others. If you see any of these on your McDonald's meal, keep hold of them!
Rare McDonald's Monopoly stickers
These were the rare McDonald's Monopoly stickers in 2023:
- Stations: Liverpool St Station – £200 cash (2,010 available)
- Brown: Old Kent Road – free McDonald's medium Extra Value Meal or Big Flavour Wraps meal (2,050,000 available)
- Light blue: Euston Road – Wireless earbuds from Skullcandy (3,150 available)
- Pink: Northumberland Avenue – Experience provided by Buyagift (3,200 available)
- Orange: Marlborough Street – £500 to spend on home entertainment with AO.com (205 available)
- Red: Strand – Omen gaming laptop (160 available)
- Yellow: Coventry Street – £2,000 TUI holiday (80 available)
- Green: Bond Street – A MINI Electric car (21 available)
- Dark blue: Mayfair – £100,000 cash (5 available).
How can you increase your chances of winning?
Credit: Mohd Nasirruddin Yazid - Shutterstock
Pretty much the only way to increase your chances of winning prizes with McDonald's Monopoly is to get your hands on more stickers.
There are a couple of easy ways to do this (that don't involve buying hundreds of burgers).
Which McDonald's meals have the most Monopoly stickers?
If you want to get the maximum amount of stickers available, you might need to slightly game your usual order. Some McDonald's menu items are 100% sticker-free, so you'll want to avoid these if you're trying to win.
Here are the food and drinks that came with stickers in 2023:
- Big Flavour Wraps
- The Spicy Veggie One
- Big Tasty
- Big Tasty with bacon
- Chicken and bacon salad or chicken salad
- Chicken Selects (3 or 5)
- Medium or large fries
- McPlant
- Flake raspberry McFlurry
- Flake chocolate McFlurry
- Mozzarella Dippers
- McCrispy
- McSpicy
- Soft drink
- Caramel iced frappé
- Mango and pineapple smoothie
- Frozen strawberry lemonade.
How many Monopoly stickers does each McDonald's menu item have?
In 2023, each McDonald's Monopoly game piece label came with two game pieces. These were either two property game pieces, or one property game piece and one instant win game piece.
Avoid Big Macs and regular McNuggets
Credit: urbanbuzz - Shutterstock
As much as it pains us to say this, if you want to get the maximum number of stickers for your buck, avoid Big Macs and McNuggets.
As the list above shows, Big Macs and McNuggets usually have absolutely no Monopoly stickers whatsoever.
Sure, the side and drink you go for will probably have some stickers. But given that pretty much every other main comes with stickers, we reckon it's worth sacrificing the old favourites while the Monopoly promotion is running.
Use McDonald's tricks and vouchers
Getting your meal for as little as possible is always a bonus. But can you combine McDonald's money-savers with the Monopoly promotion to get the most out of your meal? You bet you can.
You can use our sneaky trick to turn old McDonald's receipts into endless £1.99 Big Mac and fries. Of course, Big Macs don't come with any stickers, but the side could. And as you're getting a full meal (minus a drink) for £1.99, you can't really complain.
Or, alternatively, find the offers on bus tickets and in newspapers (like the Metro) that bag you a burger and fries for £1.99, too. Typically the mains available with this trick don't come with stickers, but the fries do.
And, as we mentioned earlier, we've also got an entire guide to getting to free and cheap McDonald's.
Womble to get more stickers
If you're an avid reader of Save the Student, you might have seen our guide to wombling – essentially using other people's rubbish to bag yourself free stuff. This trick works especially well during McDonald's Monopoly, as some people don't check for stickers.
Often people will only take the instant win food vouchers and leave behind the online codes or property stickers, so it's worth your while to take a look if you see any discarded McDonald's packaging.
It's best to be discrete about wombling for Monopoly stickers, and if staff do spot you having a womble it's probably a good idea to use any stickers you find at a different McDonald's – or even wait a while before coming back.
Wombling isn't illegal, but you could find that members of staff might take issue with it.
Sell or buy your stickers on eBay
This may not be totally worth it but you could get lucky.
It's highly unlikely that anyone will be selling the rare McDonald's Monopoly stickers on eBay, but you never know. If you are lucky enough to snag any rare stickers, you could use eBay to complete your set too.
Check out our guides to buying and selling on eBay to find out how to get the best prices.
McDonald's Monopoly review
Our Head of Editorial, Laura Brown, tried the McDonald's Monopoly in 2023. Here's her review:
This was my first time trying McDonald's Monopoly and I was surprised by how easy it was to win free food. Although, I still don't think I'll try it again in future because I'm not fully convinced it is the best way to save money.
My partner and I got a McPlant, a Big Tasty with Bacon, medium fries and a raspberry McFlurry. Each food item had two game pieces each, and three of the four items came with instant-win stickers for freebies like chicken nuggets and a Big Mac. That might have been beginner's luck though!
The closest we got to completing a set of properties was yellow (we had one to start with and got another by swapping them on the app). But the one we were missing was Coventry Street which we knew was rare so we resisted the temptation to go back to McDonald's purely for the sake of trying to complete the set.
As we've essentially got another free small meal each from the instant-win stickers, it worked out well, but I don't plan to try it again. The burger was okay but I feel like I could cook a similar meal at home for less money. And as there's no guarantee you'll win freebies, I'd overall say it's not worth doing the Monopoly unless you'd be going to McDonald's anyway.
You've got this far, so we're guessing that you love your Maccy D's? Check out this trick to get unlimited £1.99 Big Mac and fries.
