National Lottery Operator to Suspend Ticket Sales for Tech Upgrade
Last Updated: Thursday 24th July 2025, 15:10
From the 2nd of August to the 4th, the biggest National Lottery system upgrade since 1994 will be taking place, and lottery sales will be suspended for the duration. So what exactly is going on, and how will it affect players?
What's Going On?
The story starts with Camelot being replaced by Allwyn as the National Lottery operator back in February 2024. The new operator, Allwyn, intends to modernise the lottery system with new terminals at retail locations, new software, and new systems.
For example, some of the main items cited in the Allwyn press release are "launching new terminal software and moving systems to new platforms, as well as a number of other crucial back-end tech upgrades" as well as " 30+ new systems and complex data migrations, including the transfer of tens of thousands of retailer records and millions of transactions".
Clearly it's a big update, but players shouldn't get their hopes up for big exciting changes right off the bat. As you can probably tell, this tech upgrade won't have any direct impact on players, but it will pave the way for future improvements - more on that later.
Ticket Sales Outage
Players will be unable to purchase or cash-in any lottery tickets online using their National Lottery accounts, or in person at the shops, for the duration of the sales suspension. The suspension is currently scheduled to last from 11:00 PM on Saturday the 2nd of August until the morning of Monday 4th, but some final testing is required before the suspension gets underway.
Lottery terminals in shops, along with National Lottery apps and websites will all be down for the duration of the upgrade. Retailers should leave their terminals plugged in and powered on, otherwise they will likely face major delays coming back online on Monday.
8,000 of the 43,500 National Lottery retailers will also be getting a new 'Wave' lottery terminal, capable of processing transactions faster, and with more capabilities. These will be rolled out to all other retailers over the coming months.
Can I still play the lottery?
The timing has been chosen to avoid big lottery draws, falling after the Saturday Lotto and Thunderball drawings, and, all going well, coming back online before the Monday evening Set For Life draw. As a result, you shouldn't end up missing any big games as a result.
National Lottery scratch cards will still be available to purchase, and you can make lottery entries using 3rd party vendors online still, just not via the National Lottery website/app. Head over to the National-Lottery.com Tickets Page to participate online, even during the outage.
The Director's Statement - New Games Coming Soon?
Allwyn's press release ended with a quote from their Director of Operations, Jenny Blogg, thanking retailers for their cooperation and, more importantly, saying that the upgrade was a precursor to rolling out new lottery games! The last new game was Set For Life, added in 2019, so this sounds like a big deal.
"These critical tech upgrades follow on from our continuous progress in modernising The National Lottery, which hasn’t had a major refresh since 2009…"
"… 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."
