NJ Lottery: Games, Online Tickets via Courier, Results and the Pension Fund

The New Jersey Lottery ("NJ Lottery") has been drawing since 1970 — one of America's original state lotteries — and it is unusual on two counts. First, its profits do not fund education directly: since 2017 the lottery has been legally dedicated to New Jersey's public-employee pension system, contributing over $1 billion a year to the retirement funds of teachers, police and firefighters. Second, New Jersey was the first state to formally regulate lottery courier apps, which is why buying a Jersey ticket from your phone is legal here while whole neighboring states still say no.

New Jersey Lottery draw games

Game	Price per play	Drawings
Powerball	$2 (Power Play +$1, Double Play +$1)	Mon, Wed, Sat · 10:59 pm ET
Mega Millions	$5 (multiplier included)	Tue, Fri · 11:00 pm ET
Cash4Life	$2	Daily · 9:00 pm ET
Pick-6	$2 (with Double Play)	Mon, Thu
Jersey Cash 5	$2 (with XTRA)	Nightly
Pick-3 / Pick-4	from $0.50	Twice daily (midday and evening)
Cash Pop	from $1	Multiple draws daily
Quick Draw	from $1	Every few minutes

Pick-6 is the home-state jackpot game — a classic six-number lotto drawn Monday and Thursday whose jackpots regularly climb into the tens of millions, and Jersey Cash 5 jackpots roll nightly until hit. The midday/evening Pick-3 and Pick-4 cadence is the search-box staple: two chances a day, 364 days a year.

Can you buy NJ Lottery tickets online?

Yes — through a courier, not from the state itself. The NJ Lottery does not run its own online store, but New Jersey pioneered the registered-courier model: Jackpocket, the state's first registered lottery courier, buys an official retail ticket on your order, scans it front and back, and locks the serial number to your account. Courier-bought tickets have already paid out Pick-6 jackpots in the millions, so the model is battle-tested. You must be 18+ and physically in New Jersey when ordering. How couriers differ from official state platforms and messenger sites is explained in our guide to buying lottery tickets online.

NJ Lottery results and winning numbers

Winning numbers for the state games — Pick-3, Pick-4, Jersey Cash 5, Pick-6, Cash Pop, Quick Draw — are published by the New Jersey Lottery on njlottery.com after every drawing, and that is the authoritative place to check them; we deliberately do not republish daily-game numbers we cannot verify against a feed. For the two multi-state giants we keep complete archives of our own: every Powerball drawing with prize breakdowns, and every Mega Millions drawing likewise.

Where the money goes: the pension lottery

New Jersey rewired its lottery in 2017 with the Lottery Enterprise Contribution Act, dedicating the entire enterprise to the state pension system for 30 years. It is the only major US lottery whose beneficiary is a retirement fund rather than education or a general fund — a fact worth knowing because it explains why the lottery is run as hard-nosed a business as any in the state.

Taxes on New Jersey Lottery prizes

New Jersey is gentler than most withholding states at the low end and tougher at the top: lottery winnings of $10,000 or less are exempt from New Jersey income tax entirely. Above that, the state withholds 5% on prizes between $10,001 and $500,000 and 8% on anything larger, on top of the 24% federal withholding on prizes over $5,000. Run a Jersey win through our lottery tax calculator.

How New Jersey compares

The courier model puts New Jersey between the two poles of US lottery law: more open than retail-only Maryland or ban-everything Texas, less integrated than Virginia or Georgia, where the state itself sells online. Neighboring Massachusetts just leapfrogged everyone with its July 2026 iLottery launch. The full picture is in our US lottery overview.