National Lottery Services Set To Go Offline From 2-4 August

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Brace yourself for a National Lottery blackout from 2-4 August, as operator Allwyn carries out a major technology upgrade that will improve its systems and ultimately lead to greater rewards for players and good causes.

What’s happening, and when?

Allwyn is working to modernise the National Lottery, having taken over as operator from Camelot in February 2024. The next step in this process involves ‘launching new terminal software and moving systems to new platforms, as well as a number of other crucial back-end tech upgrades’. 

With more than 30 new systems to be delivered and huge amounts of data to be transferred, including retailer records and millions of transactions, it is a complex migration that will see the National Lottery go offline for a period of between one and two days.

Services are scheduled to shut down at 11pm on Saturday 2nd August, after the evening’s Lotto and Thunderball draws. They are not expected to resume until late on Monday morning. Please note, final testing will need to go ahead before final approval is given for the outage to happen at this time.

Lottery terminals will not be in use during the outage, while the National Lottery app/website will also go down. You will not be able to buy tickets in-store during this time, log in to your account, or claim prizes. Scratchcards will still be available for the duration.

Retailers have been told to keep their terminals online and running all weekend so that the critical software updates can take place, otherwise they will face major delays.

The upgrade is part of a move to new ‘Wave’ terminals. Once the shutdown is over, retailers can expect to be able to process player transactions more quickly and provide users with more functionality. 

Will I Still Be Able To Play?

Allwyn has scheduled the update to minimise disruption, as the retail shutdown will occur through Sunday when there are no draws and then be back up and running sometime on Monday before the evening Set For Life draw.

You won’t be able to buy tickets in-store during this time, or access your National Lottery account, but you can still take part in games via Lottery.co.uk’s Tickets page. You can join a syndicate for Lotto or Thunderball, play EuroMillions or even choose numbers for the biggest international lotteries.

New Games On The Way

Allwyn’s Director of Operations, Jenny Blogg, has thanked the retailers for their support and revealed that the changes will lead to the National Lottery being able to roll out new games at some point in the future.

She said: “These critical tech upgrades follow on from our continuous progress in modernising The National Lottery, which hasn’t had a major refresh since 2009. This includes introducing a fresh new look in our 43,500 retail partners with new stands, dispensers and signage, as well as rolling out state-of-the-art lottery terminals and a new in-store network provided by Vodafone.

“We’re very grateful for our retail partners’ continued support through these latest upgrades. We’ve been working hard to make sure retailers can get back up and running as quickly as possible after the weekend, so it’s really important that they follow the instructions in their support pack. 

“While these significant updates will mean short-term disruption for players and our retail partners, they will allow us to deliver on our promise to bring new, exciting games to The National Lottery; a better player experience; and our commitment to double returns to Good Causes from £30m to £60m every week by the end of the 10-year licence.”