McDonald's axe Monopoly game after nearly 20 years

If you were waiting for McDonald's to announce when they're starting their annual Monopoly prize offerings, then I'm sorry to say it's not happening this year.

The beloved promotion ran for 20 years after kicking off in 2005, and for two decades you'd get a little peelable sticker with your boxes that'd entitle you to win some prizes.

Taking last year's version as an example, the prizes to be won included big cash prizes, a Jet2 holiday, a TV and McDonald's Monopoly the board game.

Other prizes on offer included cinema tickets, gadgets, discount vouchers or more food from McDonald's, and the McDonald's Gold Card which entitled the winner to a free medium meal a week for a year.

McDonald's Monopoly usually starts this month and runs for a few weeks, but it won't be going ahead in 2026 and there's no confirmation on whether or not it'll be back in 2027 either.

McDonald's Monopoly usually starts in September, but not this year (Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)

Whether this is just a one year hiatus or if that's the end of McDonald's Monopoly for good is something only time will tell.

In a statement to LADbible, McDonald's said: "We know how much our customers love our promotions, from the brand-new launch of CARDS in March, to our first-ever XBOX partnership as part of the Side Missions launch.

"We're always looking for new ways to surprise and delight our customers, and while Monopoly won't feature in 2026, we'll continue listening closely to what they enjoy most as we shape future promotions."

The CARDS promotion had launched back in March where people could win cash prizes, free meals and other gifts in an event that sounds quite like McDonald's Monopoly.

So if you were worrying that Maccies was going to go a full year without some sort of competition where you could win things by buying their food, then you've had that to tide you over.

McDonald's have said this year they're running other promotions and competitions (Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)

While it started in the UK in 2005, the first ever round of McDonald's Monopoly began in the US in 1987 and has been rolled out in several countries since then.

As with any game, there are plenty who reckoned they'd found out a way to game the system and boost their chances of winning something, while McDonald's also encouraged people to register their stickers on the app.

People learned which menu items had the stickers on and which didn't, with the Big Mac apparently one to avoid as it didn't have stickers on the box unless you bought the chicken version.

Meanwhile, some in McDonald's developed a technique known as 'wombling' where they'd check discarded boxes nobody had peeled the stickers off and made use of the prizes other people weren't bothered about.

I suppose they were making good use of the things that they find, things that the everyday folks leave behind.