What time are Powerball and Mega Millions drawings, and how late can you buy a ticket?

What time are Powerball and Mega Millions drawings, and how late can you buy a ticket? The drawings themselves happen at the same moment everywhere. The confusion is entirely about the sales cutoff, which every state sets on its own, and which is the number that actually decides whether tonight's ticket is for tonight.

The drawing times, fixed nationwide

Powerball is drawn in Tallahassee, Florida and Mega Millions in Atlanta, Georgia, which is why both run on Eastern time no matter where you play. A player in Los Angeles is watching a drawing that happens at 7:59 in their evening; a player in Boston is up until nearly eleven.

The cutoff is the number that matters

No state sells tickets right up to the drawing, and the reason is a single national deadline that almost nobody mentions. Powerball's pool closes at 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Mega Millions' at 10:45 p.m. Eastern, across every jurisdiction at once. That is the hard ceiling. Each lottery then sets its own cutoff at or slightly before it.

Converted into Eastern time, every state we could verify from its own lottery lands inside a thirty-minute window.

Ten of the sixteen sit exactly on the 10:00 p.m. Eastern pool close. Texas at 9:00 p.m. Central, New Mexico at 8:00 p.m. Mountain and California at 7:00 p.m. Pacific are the same instant, described in four different ways.

The apparent outliers are small margins rather than different rules. Pennsylvania stops a minute early, Michigan two minutes, Maine and Vermont ten, Washington, D.C. and Washington fifteen, and Colorado thirty. Nobody is hours early.

Washington state is the example most often quoted as the country's earliest, at 6:45 p.m. Pacific, and it sounds dramatic only because it is written in Pacific time. It is 9:45 p.m. Eastern, fifteen minutes before the national close and an hour and 15 minutes before the drawing.

The two games can also close at different times in the same state. Georgia stops Powerball sales at 10:00 p.m. Eastern and keeps selling Mega Millions until 10:45 p.m., matching each game's national pool close exactly. 

Missing the cutoff does not waste the ticket

A ticket bought after your state's deadline is not void and not refunded. It is simply entered into the next drawing, and the date printed on the ticket tells you which one.

Online sales have their own, earlier clock

The states that sell draw tickets through official apps and websites close online sales on their own schedule, and it is usually earlier than the retail counter in the same state, sometimes by an hour. An account also needs to be funded before the purchase goes through, which adds its own delay for a first-time buyer racing a deadline. The counter at a gas station is the faster route on drawing night, which is the opposite of what most people assume.

Courier services that buy physical tickets on your behalf close earlier still, because a person has to print the ticket somewhere before that state's retail cutoff. Every layer between you and the terminal moves your personal deadline forward.

Two related clocks people mix up

The sales cutoff is not the claim deadline. Once a drawing happens you have months to come forward, between 90 days and a year depending on the state and the game, and we keep those in how long you have to claim a prize.