Christmas Day lottery schedule: Who plays, who pauses?

Before you double-check the oven or tuck gifts under the tree, you might be wondering whether your favorite lottery draw is also taking the day off. Christmas Day lottery schedules aren't one-size-fits-all, and they can vary widely depending on where you live.

While some states pause their regular draw games for the holiday, others keep the numbers rolling as usual. If you're planning to play or check a ticket on December 25, here's how the holiday affects lottery drawings across the country.

Christmas Day lottery schedule

For any lottery drawings on Christmas Day, it all comes down to what each state decides. Some states do pause the regular draw games on Christmas, but some states will keep the drawings going.

Is your state lottery holding lottery drawings on Christmas Day? Let's take a closer look at which states will be taking a holiday break from the lottery:

• Colorado – No drawings for Pick 3 or Cash 5 will be held.
• Delaware – No drawings for Play 3, Play 4, Play 5, or Multi-Win Lotto will be held.
• Louisiana – No drawings for Pick 3, Pick 4, or Pick 5 will be held.
• New Jersey – No drawings for Pick-3, Pick-4, or Jersey Cash 5. The Pick-6 drawing will not be held on Christmas Day, but will be held on December 26 instead.
• South Carolina – No midday drawings for Pick 3, Pick 4, and CASH POP will be held. All other drawings will be held at their normally scheduled times.

If your state is hitting pause on Christmas Day for lottery drawings, don't worry about them being gone long. All regularly scheduled drawings will resume as normal on Friday, December 26.

Does this affect multi-state draw games?

These pauses are for individual states, but what about the multi-state games, like Powerball and Cash4Life? While all eyes are on the $1.7B Powerball jackpot tonight, will there be other multi-state drawings on Christmas Day?

For those multi-state draw games that have drawings normally on a Thursday, then they will be continuing as normal. That means we will have drawings on Christmas Day for the following games:

• Lucky for Life
• Cash4Life
• Gimme 5
• 2by2

Big wins on Christmas Day

While there are no big, multi-state jackpots being drawn on Christmas Day this year, have there ever been any big jackpot wins on this special day?

With the buzz being all about Powerball right now, we did report that there have been one Christmas Eve and three Christmas Day jackpot winners for Powerball players.

According to Powerball, the last Powerball jackpot win that came on Christmas Day was in 2013. For that drawing, it was one ticket in Missouri that won the $71.5 million jackpot.

There has never been a Mega Millions jackpot won on Christmas Day. There have been six Mega Millions drawings that happened to fall on Christmas Day — 2007, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2018, and 2020 — but no players matched all of the winning numbers drawn to win.

Enjoy your Christmas and enjoy playing the lottery, and please remember to play responsibly.