Uno

Overview

Two to ten players race to shed every card by matching the top of the discard pile by colour, number or symbol. First to 500 points across several rounds wins.

This entry is written against Mattel's own printed instruction sheet — the official UNO rules, item GDJ85 (PDF, ©2018) — and quotes it where the wording matters. Several rules almost everybody plays are not in that document, and they are identified as such below rather than left ambiguous. What that document is, and where it stops.

1. The deck — and why the count is disputed

Mattel's current sheet lists 112 cards:

Cards	Count
Blue, green, red, yellow, 0–9	19 of each colour — 76
Draw Two	8 — two per colour
Reverse	8 — two per colour
Skip	8 — two per colour
Wild	4
Wild Draw Four	4
Wild Shuffle Hands	1
Wild Customizable	3

Each colour has one 0 and two of every other number, which is why it is 19 per colour rather than 20.

The widely quoted figure of 108 is the older deck — the same game without the Shuffle Hands card and the three blank Customizable cards. Both numbers are right for their respective printings, and a great many sources state 108 as though it were still current.

It is messier than two numbers, though. Mattel currently serves three different standard-UNO sheets, and the 112 is made up differently in each:

Sheet	The last four cards
Item 42003	4 Blank cards
Item FFK04	1 Wild Swap Hands + 3 Wild Customizable
Item GDJ85	1 Wild Shuffle Hands + 3 Wild Customizable

Swap Hands and Shuffle Hands are not the same card. Swap Hands lets you pick one opponent and exchange hands with them. Shuffle Hands collects every hand at the table, shuffles the lot and redeals. Both score 40.

So "what is in an UNO deck" has no single answer. Check the box you own.

2. Setup

1. Each player draws a card; highest deals. Action cards count as zero.
2. The dealer shuffles and deals seven cards each.
3. The rest form the draw pile, face down.
4. Turn the top card over to start the discard pile.

If an action card is turned up to start, it takes effect immediately — except a Wild Draw Four, which is returned to the deck and another card drawn.

3. Playing a card

On your turn, match the top of the discard pile by number, colour or symbol.

If the card on the DISCARD pile is a red 7, the player must put down a red card OR any color 7.

If you have no playable card, draw one. If it is playable you may play it immediately; otherwise your turn ends.

You may decline to play

This rule is in the sheet and almost nobody knows it:

You may also choose NOT to play a playable card from your hand. If so, you must draw a card from the DRAW pile. If playable, that card can be put down in the same turn, however you may not play any other card from your hand after the draw.

So you may pass on a playable card — at the cost of drawing one — and you may then play only the drawn card, not something else from your hand.

4. Action cards

Each action card carries its own matching restriction, and they are more specific than the general "colour, number or symbol" rule suggests.

Card	Effect	May be played on
Draw Two	Next player draws 2 and misses their turn	A matching colour, or another Draw Two
Reverse	Direction of play reverses	A matching colour, or another Reverse
Skip	Next player loses their turn	A matching colour, or another Skip
Wild	You choose the colour that continues play	Anything, even if you hold a playable card
Wild Draw Four	You choose the colour; next player draws 4 and loses their turn	Only when you hold no card matching the current colour
Wild Shuffle Hands	Collect every hand, shuffle, redeal from your left	Anything; you also choose the colour
Wild Customizable	Whatever house rule is pencilled on it	Anything; you also choose the colour

The cross-symbol clause matters: a blue Draw Two may be played on a red Draw Two, because the symbol match overrides the colour requirement. The same applies to Reverse on Reverse and Skip on Skip.

5. Stacking — read the two sentences together

This is the most argued rule in the game, and the sheet never uses the word "stack". What it says about the Draw Two is:

When you play this card, the next player must draw 2 cards and miss their turn. This card may only be played on a matching color or on another Draw Two card.

Two claims sit inside "can you stack", and they have different answers.

Can a Draw Two be played on a Draw Two? Yes. The sheet says so explicitly, and it works across colours.

Can the player being hit respond with their own Draw Two? On the plain reading, no — they "must draw 2 cards and miss their turn". Missing a turn leaves no opportunity to play anything.

Those reconcile if you read the matching clause as describing whose turn it legitimately is. A Draw Two sits on the discard pile; the player it hit has drawn and been skipped; play passes on; and that player may now put their own Draw Two down on it regardless of colour.

On that reading the penalty never accumulates. Nobody ever faces four, six or eight cards, because the person who would pass it along has already lost their turn.

The escalating stack is therefore a house rule — an extremely good one, played almost universally, and not what the printed sheet describes.

Mattel has said the same thing twice more, and the second time is decisive.

In May 2019 the official UNO account posted that if someone plays a Draw Four you draw four and your turn is skipped, and that you cannot answer it with a Draw Two to push six onto the next player. That is a social media post rather than a printed rule, so it carries less weight than the sheet — but it is the publisher.

Then in 2023 Mattel released UNO Show 'em No Mercy, whose instruction sheet prints stacking as an official rule under that name, with a worked example and an equal-or-higher constraint. Publishing a rule as the selling point of a separate product is a strong signal that it is not a rule of the base game. The same sheet also makes the seven-swap, the zero-pass, drawing until you can play, and Reverse-as-Skip-with-two-players official — every one of them a classic UNO house rule. Mattel knows exactly what people play. They sold it back to us as a different game.

6. The Wild Draw Four condition

You may only play a Wild Draw Four when you hold no card matching the colour currently in play.

it is acceptable to play this card if you have matching number or Action Cards

So holding a red 7 when red is up blocks you; holding a blue 7 does not.

The challenge

The next player may challenge. The challenged player shows their whole hand to the challenger.

Outcome	Result
Guilty — they held a matching colour	They draw the 4
Innocent	The challenger draws 4 plus 2 more — 6 total

7. Going out

When you play your next-to-last card, you must yell "UNO"

If you fail to and are caught before the next player begins their turn, you draw two cards. Once that next turn has started, it is too late to call you.

The round ends when a player has no cards left.

You may finish on an action card. If the last card played is a Draw Two or Wild Draw Four, the next player still draws the 2 or 4, and those cards count toward the scoring.

If the draw pile empties before anyone goes out, reshuffle the discard pile and continue.

8. Scoring

The player who went out scores the value of every card left in the other hands:

Card	Points
Number cards 0–9	Face value
Draw Two	20
Reverse	20
Skip	20
Wild	50
Wild Draw Four	50
Wild Shuffle Hands	40
Wild Customizable	40

First to 500 points wins.

Alternative scoring

Each player instead tallies the points left in their own hand each round. When somebody reaches 500, the player with the lowest score wins.

9. What the official sheet does not say

Worth knowing, because these are played as though they were rules:

• There are no two-player rules in the sheet. The familiar "Reverse acts as a Skip with two players" appears in some older editions and in common practice, but it is not in the current document.
• Nothing about stacking penalties, in either direction. The word does not appear.
• Nothing about playing an action card onto a Wild. The Draw Two, Reverse and Skip each carry a "matching color or another card of the same kind" clause, but a Wild has no printed colour, so the clause gives no answer when a Wild Draw Four is on top. Read strictly it would forbid every Draw Two after a Wild Draw Four, including a matching one, which cannot be intended. The sensible reading — and universal practice — is that the declared colour governs, exactly as it does for a number card.
• Nothing about a 0 or 7 swapping hands. That comes from other editions and from house play.
• Nothing forbidding finishing on an action card. It is explicitly allowed.
• Nothing about drawing until you can play. You draw one.

The Customizable cards exist precisely so a table can write its own rules down and agree them, which is a tacit acknowledgement that most tables already do.

10. The other UNO decks

Several of the arguments on this page are settled — differently — in Mattel's other UNO products, each of which has its own instruction sheet:

Game	What changes
UNO Show 'em No Mercy	168 cards. Stacking, 7-swap, 0-pass and a 25-card knockout, all official
UNO Flip!	Double-sided deck. Flip the game over and the penalties get much worse
UNO All Wild!	Every card is wild. No matching at all
DOS	The sequel. Match a centre row, or two cards that add up

A rule being official in one of those does not make it official here. Each deck is its own game with its own sheet.

11. Where this comes from

Everything above is checked line by line against one document: Mattel's UNO instruction sheet for item GDJ85. It is worth being precise about what that is, because it decides how far the entry can be trusted.

• It is primary. Mattel publishes it, on Mattel's own servers, as the sheet that ships in the box. It is not a summary of the rules by somebody else.
• It is one printing. ©2018, uploaded by Mattel in August 2019 and unchanged since. It is the North American sheet — French, English and Spanish on three pages. Other editions, other regions and the many UNO spin-offs differ, and the 112-card contents list is specific to this one.
• Mattel does not version these sheets. There is no revision number and no changelog, so a newer printing could quietly replace it at the same address. We re-check the file rather than assume.
• It is short. Three pages for a game people argue about constantly. Most disputes are not settled in it because it never raises them — which is exactly why chapter 9 exists.

Read it yourself if a rule matters at your table. Where this entry and the sheet disagree, the sheet wins, and we want to know: tell us.

Commonly argued

• The current deck is 112 cards. The familiar 108 is the pre-2018 deck.
• A Draw Two may be played on a Draw Two, across colours. The sheet says so.
• The penalty does not accumulate on the plain reading, because the player hit by it has missed their turn. Escalating stacks are a house rule.
• You may decline to play a playable card, at the cost of drawing one.
• You draw one card when you cannot play, not until you find something.
• Wild Draw Four is conditional on holding no matching colour — number and symbol matches do not block it — and a failed challenge costs the challenger six.
• You may finish on an action card, and the penalty still applies and scores.
• UNO must be called before the next player's turn begins. Two cards after that is too late.