The National Lottery app and website went down across the UK on Friday evening, just hours before Saturday night's draw. Thousands of users reported difficulties accessing results or purchasing tickets, with complaints peaking at over 2,800 on Saturday morning, according to outage tracker Downdetector.
National Lottery initially acknowledged the issue on X, stating: “We are aware that some players are having issues accessing our website and app. Apologies for the inconvenience, our team are currently investigating the issue to find out what has happened.” On Saturday morning, they announced the services were back online, though some users disputed this, describing the situation as “farcical”.
The outage coincided with a global IT disruption caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which crashed Microsoft Windows systems worldwide. This led to flight delays, hospital impacts, and widespread business interruptions. IT experts warned it could take weeks for full recovery.
National Lottery operator Allwyn confirmed that retail services were unaffected and that technical teams were monitoring the situation. The company said: “The National Lottery website and Mobile Apps are available so players are able to purchase tickets and check results.”
Users expressed frustration on social media, with some noting the outage had persisted for many hours despite assurances of a fix. CrowdStrike’s chief executive apologised, stating the incident was not a cyber attack but a defect in a single content update.
