Virginia Lottery: Games, Online Tickets, Results and Where the Money Goes

The Virginia Lottery is the state-run operator behind every legal lottery game in Virginia. Created by voter referendum in 1987, it sold its first ticket in September 1988, and since 1999 every dollar of profit — more than $1 billion in a typical recent year — has gone to K-12 public education in Virginia. It runs the full menu of draw games from Powerball and Mega Millions down to twice-daily Pick games, and it is one of the few US lotteries that sells draw-game tickets online through its own website and app, which it has done since 2020.

Virginia Lottery draw games

These are the draw games currently on sale, with base prices and draw schedules from the operator:

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
Bank a Million	$2	Wed, Sat
Cash 5 with EZ Match	$1	Twice daily (day and night)
Pick 3 / Pick 4 / Pick 5	from $0.50	Twice daily (day and night)

Bank a Million is a Virginia exclusive worth knowing about: the jackpot is advertised as $1 million after taxes — the lottery grosses the prize up so the winner banks the full million, a structure no multi-state game offers. Beyond the draw games, the lottery also sells scratchers at retail and runs online-only instant games for account holders.

Can you buy Virginia Lottery tickets online?

Yes — and directly from the state, which is rarer than most players assume. The Virginia Lottery has sold draw-game tickets through valottery.com and its mobile app since 2020: you register, verify your age (18+), and buy at face value with your entry recorded against your account. You must be physically inside Virginia when you purchase (geolocation is checked), but you do not need to be a resident. The full walkthrough — cutoffs, deposit limits, claiming — is in our step-by-step guide to buying Powerball tickets online in Virginia.

Results of the Virginia Lottery drawings

Winning numbers for the state-only games — Cash 5, the Pick games, Bank a Million — are published by the Virginia Lottery itself minutes after each drawing, and valottery.com 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 do maintain full results archives: every Powerball drawing is on our results hub with prize breakdowns, and Mega Millions likewise, both updated after each draw night.

Where the money goes

Virginia is unusually transparent about the other side of the ledger. By law, all Virginia Lottery profits fund K-12 public education, a constitutional earmark approved by voters in 2000 — the annual transfer to the state's Literary Fund and school budgets is published in the lottery's yearly report. Retail and online play both feed the same fund.

Taxes on Virginia Lottery prizes

Virginia withholds on wins the way most states do: prizes above $600 are reported, and on any prize over $5,000 the lottery withholds 24% federal tax plus 4% Virginia state tax before paying out. What lands in your account is therefore about 72% of the advertised prize at most tiers, before your final tax return trues it up. Run your own numbers in our lottery tax calculator.

How Virginia compares with its neighbors

State lines matter a great deal in US lottery law. Next door, West Virginia only launched online draw-game sales in late 2025, and North Carolina sells online through its own NC Online Play platform. Further afield the picture ranges from Georgia, an online pioneer since 2012, to Texas, where online and courier sales are now banned outright. Our overview of the US lottery system explains how the state-by-state patchwork fits together.