Florida Lottery For 2026

With no state law either way, a third-party courier service is the only possible route to buying online, and the Florida Lottery has stopped the ones that tried to set up here. We actually do not have any reputable options to recommend to you at this time.

The Florida Lottery doesn’t sell tickets online either. Its app checks tickets and builds digital playslips, but you still buy at a retailer.

Florida Lotto, Mega Millions, Powerball, Jackpot Triple Play, Fantasy 5, Cash Pop and the Pick games (as well as a long list of scratch-offs) are sold throughout FL at convenience stores, grocery stores and gas stations.

As for overseas games, Florida online gambling law doesn’t address online messenger services that sell entries into lotteries such as Spain’s La Primitiva, Italy’s SuperEnalotto and EuroMillions, and we can’t vouch for any of them today.

These are messenger services with agents around the globe. For a small fee per transaction, these companies use professional couriers to purchase your tickets on your behalf at physical lottery retail outlets in participating countries.

Sign the back of every ticket as soon as you buy it. The Florida Lottery recommends it for all tickets, and a winner worth $600 or more must be signed to be paid. Where you cash a winning ticket depends on its size:

• Under $600: any Florida Lottery retailer or district office.
• $600 to $1,000,000: any Florida Lottery district office, walk-in or by appointment, with a completed Winner Claim Form and a copy of your photo ID. Prizes up to $250,000 can be mailed to the claims office in Tallahassee instead, but the ticket travels at your own risk.
• Over $1,000,000, or any prize with an annual payment option: Lottery headquarters in Tallahassee. Mega Millions and Powerball prizes up to $1,000,000 can still be claimed at a district office.

Don’t sit on a winner. Draw game prizes must be claimed within 180 days of the draw, and a mailed claim must be postmarked by the 180th day. Scratch-offs run on a different clock: 60 days after that game officially ends, which can be long after you bought the ticket. Big winners face a shorter deadline for one decision. In games that offer a choice of payment, the cash option must be chosen within 60 days of the draw, or the prize is paid in yearly installments, and once you pick, the choice is final.

Florida has no state personal income tax, so the state takes nothing from your prize. The federal government does. With a valid Social Security number, the Lottery withholds 24% of any prize over $5,000, and 30% of every prize without one. That withholding isn’t the final bill: the top federal rate for 2026 is 37%, on a single filer’s taxable income over $640,600, so a large winner can owe more at tax time. On prizes of $600 or more, the Lottery also checks for money owed to the state, such as unpaid child support or overpaid reemployment assistance, and pays that first.

Florida Lottery winners can’t stay anonymous. If you win $250,000 or more, your name stays out of public view for 90 days from the day you claim, unless you waive that. After that, your name, city, the game, the date and the amount can be released, though your home address and phone number stay confidential.

Here is when the main draw games run, all times Eastern:

• Powerball: Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. A $2 play has jackpot odds of 1 in 292,201,338.
• Mega Millions: Tuesday and Friday at 11 p.m. A $5 play, with a multiplier built in, has jackpot odds of 1 in 290,472,336.
• Florida Lotto: Wednesday and Saturday at 11:15 p.m. A $2 play has jackpot odds of 1 in 22,957,480.
• Jackpot Triple Play: Tuesday and Friday at 11:15 p.m.
• Fantasy 5: twice a day, at 1:05 p.m. and 11:15 p.m. A $1 play wins something about once in every 7.58 tries.
• Pick 2, Pick 3, Pick 4 and Pick 5: twice a day, at 1:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m.
• Cash Pop: five draws a day, from 8:45 a.m. to 11:45 p.m.

Plan your purchase around the cutoffs: Powerball and Mega Millions sales stop at 10 p.m. on draw nights, and Florida Lotto at 10:55 p.m. The odds also put the choice in perspective. For the same $2, a Florida Lotto jackpot is nearly 13 times easier to hit than a Powerball jackpot, though the prize is usually far smaller.

Where courier services are allowed to operate, buying lottery tickets online isn’t as simple as it could be in this age of apps and instant gratification. Instead of logging into the lottery sites themselves, players use courier services as stand-ins or proxies, buying tickets through them.

These tickets are then scanned and the images are emailed to your personal account. Some websites even help you collect any winnings, but as noted above, none is open to Florida Lottery players right now.