What Days Are the Powerball Drawings? Lottery Drawing Days & Times Explained

If you have ever bought a ticket and then wondered exactly when the numbers get pulled, you are not alone — “what days are the Powerball drawings” and “when is the next lottery drawing” are two of the most searched lottery questions there are. The short version: Powerball draws three nights a week, Mega Millions draws two nights a week, and both happen at a fixed clock time in the evening, U.S. Eastern Time, regardless of where you live. The part that trips people up is translating that fixed Eastern time into their own time zone, and knowing exactly when ticket sales stop so they are not left buying a ticket for the wrong drawing.

This guide lays out the standard weekly schedule for the two national games, walks through the time-zone math so you know your local cutoff, and covers what happens around holidays, rollovers, and delayed draws. It also links out to the deeper how-to guides on each game. And once you know when the numbers drop, the free Lottery Calculator is the tool to reach for right after — it turns any advertised jackpot into a realistic after-tax number in seconds.

Quick answer: the weekly schedule

Here is the schedule in one place, because it is the single fact most people searching this topic actually want. Both national games broadcast their live drawing in the evening, U.S. Eastern Time, and both games sell tickets right up until shortly before that broadcast.

Those two rows answer “what day is Powerball lottery,” “what day is Mega Millions lottery drawing,” and “what time is the lottery drawing tonight” for the two biggest U.S. games. The sections below unpack each game individually, work through the time-zone conversion, and cover the daily state games that run on a completely different schedule.

It helps to picture the week as a whole rather than memorizing two separate schedules. Counting from Sunday, a national-game player has a live drawing to watch on Monday (Powerball), Tuesday (Mega Millions), Wednesday (Powerball), Friday (Mega Millions), and Saturday (Powerball) — five nights out of seven, with Thursday and Sunday as the only quiet nights on the multi-state calendar. Keeping that weekly rhythm in mind is usually easier than trying to remember each game’s days in isolation.

Powerball drawing days and time

Powerball draws three nights a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. The live drawing airs at 10:59 p.m. Eastern Time, which means it is broadcast late evening on the East Coast and considerably earlier in local clock time out west. This schedule has been consistent for years and is the one detail that answers “what days are the Powerball lottery drawings” directly.

Ticket sales for that night’s drawing close before the draw itself, typically around an hour beforehand, though the exact cutoff is set by each state lottery and can be earlier in some jurisdictions. If you are buying a Powerball ticket on a drawing night, do not wait until the last few minutes — go earlier in the evening so you are not turned away at a register that has already stopped selling for that draw. For the full rules on how the game itself works, see how to play Powerball.

Mega Millions drawing days and time

Mega Millions draws two nights a week: Tuesday and Friday. Its live drawing airs at 11:00 p.m. Eastern Time, one minute after Powerball’s usual slot, which is a coincidence of scheduling rather than anything meaningful. This is the direct answer to “when is Mega Millions lottery drawing” and “what day is Mega Millions lottery drawing.”

Just like Powerball, ticket sales for a given Mega Millions drawing stop before the draw airs, and the exact minute varies from state to state. Between the two games, a national player effectively has a drawing to watch five nights out of seven — Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday — with Thursday and Sunday as the only nights with no national drawing. See how to play Mega Millions for the complete rules, prize tiers, and the Megaplier add-on.

Converting Eastern Time to your time zone

The reason “what time is the lottery drawing tonight” gets searched so often is that both draw times are quoted in Eastern Time, and most of the country is not in the Eastern time zone. If you are watching from the Central, Mountain, or Pacific zones, the drawing happens earlier by your own clock, not at the same 10:59 or 11:00 mark.

Hawaii’s offset shifts relative to the mainland because Hawaii does not observe daylight saving time while most of the continental U.S. does, so the exact hour gap changes twice a year. If you live in Hawaii, Arizona (which also skips daylight saving in most of the state), or near a time-zone boundary, it is worth double-checking the current offset rather than assuming it is fixed year-round. Everywhere else, the simple subtraction above holds steady.

Ticket sales cutoff times

Knowing the draw time only gets you halfway there, because you cannot buy a ticket for tonight’s drawing right up until the moment the balls drop. Every state lottery sets its own sales cutoff, and it is almost always earlier than the draw itself — commonly somewhere between 45 minutes and two hours before, depending on the state and sometimes the specific retailer’s connection to the terminal network.

This matters more than people expect. If you walk into a store at 10:45 p.m. Eastern hoping to get a Powerball ticket in before the 10:59 draw, many states will have already closed sales for that drawing, and your purchase will simply roll into the next scheduled drawing instead. That is not a store error; it is how the system is built to give the operator time to close out sales and validate the draw. The lottery ticket cutoff times guide breaks down typical cutoff windows in more detail and by game.

How the live drawing actually works

Both Powerball and Mega Millions use mechanical ball-draw machines, not computer-generated numbers, specifically so the process is physically observable and auditable. Numbered balls are mixed and drawn one at a time from separate machines — one for the main numbers, one for the bonus ball (the Powerball or the Mega Ball) — under supervision and often with independent auditors or law enforcement present, and the whole process is recorded on video.

The draw itself takes only a couple of minutes once it begins, but broadcasters typically pad the segment with hosts, a countdown, and sometimes trivia or player features, so the “show” around the actual draw can run several minutes longer than the mechanical drawing itself. If you tune in expecting instant numbers at the top of the hour, know that the balls may not actually drop until a minute or two into the segment.

Where to watch the drawing live

Powerball and Mega Millions drawings are broadcast on a rotating set of local television stations that varies by state, and both games also livestream the drawing on their official websites and official social media channels, so you do not need a specific TV subscription to watch. If your local station does not carry the draw, the official game website is the most reliable fallback.

Many state lottery websites also embed the live stream or post results within moments of the draw finishing, which is often faster and more convenient than hunting for a TV channel. If you are only interested in the numbers rather than the broadcast production, checking the official results page a few minutes after the scheduled draw time is usually the quickest path, and the how to check lottery results guide covers every reliable way to do that.

Official lottery mobile apps have also become one of the most convenient ways to catch a drawing without arranging to be near a television at exactly the right minute. Most state lottery apps push a notification once results are final, and some let you set reminders ahead of a specific drawing so you never have to remember the schedule at all. For anyone who plays regularly, setting up those notifications once is a small habit that removes the entire “when is the drawing” question going forward.

When results are posted online

Official results are typically posted online within a few minutes of the live drawing concluding, once the numbers have been verified. Some state lottery sites and apps update almost instantly after the broadcast, while others take a short verification window before the numbers go live as “official” rather than provisional. Either way, you generally do not need to wait long after the advertised draw time.

It is worth remembering that the official state lottery result is always the authoritative one over anything you may have seen or heard elsewhere, including a live broadcast that had audio trouble or a third-party app with a display glitch. If a number looks off, treat the official state lottery website as the tiebreaker rather than any secondary source.

What if you miss the live drawing

Missing the broadcast is not a problem, because the numbers do not disappear or change — they are published and archived on the official game and state lottery websites, usually with a running history of recent drawings. There is no time pressure to check results the instant they are announced; a ticket is generally good to claim for weeks or months depending on the state’s rules, and checking a day, a week, or even longer after the draw does not affect your prize.

If you want a fast way to check without hunting through a broadcast archive, official lottery apps and websites almost always have a “winning numbers” or “past results” page updated the moment a draw is finalized, and many let you scan a ticket’s barcode directly to see instantly whether it won. See how to check and scan a lottery ticket for the fastest methods.

Daily games and other drawing schedules

Powerball and Mega Millions are the two big multi-state games, but most states also run their own daily numbers games — Pick 3, Pick 4, and similar — along with multi-state games like Cash4Life and Lucky for Life that have entirely separate schedules. Daily games commonly draw once or even twice a day, seven days a week, which is a completely different rhythm from the twice- or three-times-weekly national games.

Because these schedules are set independently by each state and each game, there is no single universal answer for “when is the lottery drawing” beyond Powerball and Mega Millions — you have to check the specific game. The Pick games guide and Keno, Lucky for Life & Cash4Life guide cover the typical schedules for these smaller but frequently drawn games.

Do drawings happen on holidays

Powerball and Mega Millions drawings generally proceed as scheduled even on most U.S. holidays, since the draw nights are fixed calendar days (Monday/Wednesday/Saturday and Tuesday/Friday) rather than tied to a business-day calendar. A holiday falling on a normal drawing night typically does not cancel or move that night’s draw.

That said, individual state lotteries can occasionally adjust hours for retail sales around a holiday, and it is always worth a quick check of your state lottery’s website or app around major holidays if you plan to buy right before a draw, simply because retail hours (not the draw itself) are what is most likely to shift. The national broadcast schedule itself is the more stable part of the equation.

What happens if a drawing is delayed

On rare occasions, a scheduled drawing is delayed by a technical issue, a security or verification concern, or an unrelated broadcast problem. When this happens, the game operators and state lotteries post an announcement, and the draw is typically conducted later the same night once the issue is resolved, then the results are published as usual once finalized.

Delays are uncommon precisely because of how much redundancy and auditing surrounds the process — multiple observers, video recording, and standardized procedures exist specifically to keep drawings on schedule and verifiable. If you ever see a delay announced, the safest move is to check the official game website directly rather than relying on secondhand social media chatter about what happened.

A delay is different from a canceled drawing, which is effectively unheard of for the two national games; the historical pattern is that a draw gets pushed later the same evening, not skipped entirely. If a delay does happen while you are watching, the broadcast or livestream typically announces it directly rather than simply going silent, so the most reliable signal is what the official channel itself says in the moment rather than guessing from a blank screen.

Rollovers and the next drawing

If nobody matches all the numbers for the jackpot, the prize “rolls over” and grows for the next scheduled drawing rather than being paid out at a lower amount. Because the schedule is fixed, a rollover simply means the next drawing on the calendar — the very next Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday for Powerball, or the next Tuesday or Friday for Mega Millions — carries a bigger prize than it would have.

This is why jackpot size and drawing schedule are linked in the public imagination even though they are mechanically separate: the schedule never changes, but a long stretch without a jackpot winner means several consecutive scheduled drawings each add to the pot until someone finally wins. Understanding the drawing calendar therefore also helps you understand why a jackpot you saw quoted last week might be meaningfully different by the time you read this, since another drawing or two has likely happened in between — another reason to always check today’s advertised jackpot in the Lottery Calculator rather than relying on a number you saw a while back.

There is no cap on how many times a jackpot can roll over before someone wins, and long droughts of ten, twenty, or more consecutive drawings without a winner have happened in both games’ history, which is exactly how the largest jackpots on record built up over weeks rather than a single lucky draw. Each rollover is simply the same fixed schedule repeating itself with a growing prize attached, not a special or extended event.

Why times and cutoffs can vary by state

Powerball and Mega Millions are run through the multi-state game operators, but each participating state lottery is still an independent entity that sets its own retail sales cutoff, its own local broadcast arrangements, and sometimes small operational rules, even though the actual draw time and days are standardized nationally. This is why a friend in another state might describe a slightly different cutoff experience even for the same national game.

It is also why some smaller regional or state-only games have their own entirely separate schedules with no relationship to the national draw nights at all. If you regularly play a mix of national and state-specific games, it is worth keeping a simple personal note of each game’s actual draw days rather than assuming they all follow the same weekly pattern. The US state lottery guide is a useful reference for state-by-state specifics.

The state-by-state variation also extends to where you are physically allowed to buy a ticket in the first place, which matters when planning around a drawing you want to catch in person or on the way home from work. A handful of states do not sell Powerball or Mega Millions tickets at all, and rules about buying while traveling through a state you do not live in can be more particular than people assume. The where to buy lottery tickets guide and lottery age and legal rules guide cover those state-line questions if you are ever unsure whether a purchase in a given state is valid ahead of a drawing.

Common scheduling mistakes

Most schedule-related frustration comes down to a handful of repeat mistakes rather than anything unpredictable about the games themselves. Once you know the fixed weekly days, the Eastern-time anchor, and the fact that sales cutoffs run earlier than the draw, almost every “why didn’t my ticket count” or “did I miss it” question resolves itself. The list below covers the ones that come up most often.

Powerball Double Play and other extra drawings

Some players notice an add-on called Double Play offered alongside the regular Powerball ticket in participating states, and it is a common source of confusion about “extra” drawings. Double Play is a separate drawing held immediately after the main Powerball draw, using a second, distinct set of numbers, for players who paid the small additional fee when purchasing their ticket. It does not change when the main drawing happens; it simply adds a second draw right after it, with its own separate prize structure that tops out well below the main jackpot.

Similarly, Mega Millions’ Megaplier and Powerball’s Power Play are not separate drawings at all — they are multipliers applied to the same single drawing’s non-jackpot prizes, drawn as part of the same broadcast. If you are trying to figure out whether you need to watch for a second set of numbers, the distinction is simple: Double Play is genuinely an extra draw with its own numbers, while Power Play and Megaplier are just a multiplier value revealed alongside the main numbers, not an additional drawing. Neither add-on changes the core weekly schedule covered earlier in this guide, though it is worth running any Double Play or multiplier prize through the Lottery Calculator too, since those payouts are taxed the same way a regular prize is.

Does daylight saving time change the draw time?

The advertised draw time is fixed relative to whatever clock time is currently in effect in the Eastern zone, so when the country shifts to or from daylight saving time, the Eastern clock time for the drawing does not move — it is still 10:59 p.m. or 11:00 p.m. Eastern by the clock on the wall, whether that wall is currently on standard or daylight time. What can shift is the gap between Eastern and your own zone, if your area handles the daylight-saving transition differently or not at all.

This is most noticeable for Arizona, which (outside the Navajo Nation) does not observe daylight saving time, and for Hawaii, which never observes it. For most of the year those areas sit at a normal fixed offset from Eastern, but for a few weeks around the spring-forward and fall-back transitions, the effective gap to Eastern time can be an hour different than usual until the rest of the country catches up. If you live in one of those areas, it is worth double-checking the current local draw time near a clock-change weekend rather than assuming last month’s offset still applies.

Why these specific days and times

The three-nights-a-week rhythm for Powerball and two-nights-a-week rhythm for Mega Millions were not chosen at random; they reflect years of coordination among the many state lotteries that jointly run each multi-state game, balancing player interest, broadcast logistics, and the operational need to process results and start selling for the next drawing promptly. The late-evening Eastern time slot is set so the draw can be broadcast after most local news programming across the country’s time zones, giving stations a consistent evening slot to carry it.

The schedule has shifted at points in each game’s history — Powerball, for example, added a third weekly drawing after previously running twice a week, a change made to keep jackpots growing at a more predictable pace and give players more frequent chances to play. Because these are deliberate, occasionally-revisited decisions by the governing multi-state associations rather than fixed forever, it is always worth treating “three nights” and “two nights” as the current standard rather than an immutable rule, and checking the official schedule page if you have not played in a long while.

How to confirm your exact local schedule

Because the draw days and headline time are standardized but the cutoff and retail specifics are not, the most reliable habit is to bookmark your own state lottery’s official website or app rather than relying purely on general guides like this one. State lottery sites almost always list their specific in-store and online sales cutoff times alongside the national draw schedule.

If you play through an official lottery app rather than in person, the app itself typically enforces the cutoff automatically and will simply refuse or defer a purchase attempted too late, which removes the guesswork entirely. Buying tickets online is legal and available in a growing number of states; see buying lottery tickets online for which states currently allow it and how the cutoff timing typically works through those channels.

After the draw: what to do next

Once a drawing has happened and results are posted, the next step is simply checking your ticket against the official numbers, ideally through your state lottery’s app or website scan feature rather than manual comparison, which is easy to get wrong under excitement or tiredness late at night. If you have not won, the ticket is done, and the next scheduled drawing is already on the calendar for you to plan around.

If you have won a prize, the process from there depends on the size of the win — small prizes are often payable at any retailer, while larger prizes require a visit to a lottery claim center and identity verification. The how to claim lottery winnings guide walks through the exact steps and typical timelines, and for anything life-changing, what to do if you win the lottery covers the first smart moves before you do anything else.

Even a non-winning ticket is often worth a second look before you throw it away, since many state lotteries run second-chance drawings that let you enter tickets that did not win a cash prize into a separate promotional drawing at no additional cost. Entering costs nothing beyond the ticket you already bought, so it is a small, genuinely free way to squeeze extra value out of a purchase you have already made. See how second-chance lotteries work for the details on entering and what the prizes typically look like.

Lottery drawing days and times: frequently asked questions