How Lottery Drawings Work: Inside Powerball and Mega Millions

A Mega Millions drawing takes less than 60 seconds. Getting ready for it takes about three hours. Between those two numbers is a whole world of vaults, auditors, rehearsal draws and carefully weighed balls. Here’s a look behind the curtain.

Two games, two studios

Powerball draws every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. Eastern. The drawing is broadcast live from the Florida Lottery Draw Studio in Tallahassee and streamed on Powerball.com. The Double Play drawing follows right after, for players in the lotteries that offer it.

The game is run by the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), a nonprofit, government-benefit association owned and operated by its member lotteries.

Mega Millions draws every Tuesday and Friday at 11 p.m. Eastern, at the WSB-TV studio in Atlanta. Mega Millions isn’t a company at all. It’s a consortium of lotteries, and member lotteries share the work, including producing and broadcasting the draw show.

The machines and the balls

Both games still draw physical balls from machines, and the equipment gets a lot of attention.

Powerball’s machines. In September 2020, Powerball debuted new drawing machines: the Halogen II model from Smartplay International, an upgraded version of the gravity-driven machines it already used. At the same time, the balls switched from hard rubber to solid foam, which Powerball called the new industry standard for gravity-driven machines.

Two machines, not one. The white balls and the red Powerball come from separate machines with separate ball sets. Powerball’s results file lists both for every draw. For the September 2, 2026, drawing, it shows white-ball machine 13 with ball set 47, and Powerball machine 15 with ball set 31.

Mega Millions’ equipment. Mega Millions says its drawing machines and ball sets are randomly selected and certified by outside auditors. That certification is there to make sure every number has an equal chance of being drawn.

What about computers? Some games have gone digital. Lotto America, a game sold by 13 U.S. lotteries, switched to a digital draw system in April 2023. It’s a stand-alone machine that isn’t connected to any network, and it was certified by an independent gaming testing lab. Its lotteries said digital and mechanical drawings “produce equally random results.”

Rehearsals before the real thing

Before the cameras roll, the equipment gets test runs.

• Mega Millions: each machine and ball set goes through a series of pre-drawing tests to confirm the results are random.
• Powerball: its results file includes the pre-test draws next to each official one. Before the September 2, 2026, drawing, for example, the file lists four pre-test draws, then the real one. Pre-test numbers don’t count for anything. They’re just a check that everything works.
• Florida Lottery’s own games: ball sets are weighed before and after each drawing to make sure nobody has tampered with them.

Who’s in the room

A drawing is never a solo job.

• Mega Millions: two draw officials who work for the lottery and one member of an independent auditing firm run the tests and conduct and observe the drawing. Only draw officials can get to the equipment, which is kept secure.
• Powerball: official winning numbers are recorded under the observation of an independent accounting firm.
• The Florida building: the Florida Lottery describes how it runs drawings there. Its studio and equipment vault sit in the basement of lottery headquarters, a limited-access building under 24-hour video surveillance. The draw manager is a lottery special agent and certified law enforcement officer. The manager and an independent auditor show up at least 90 minutes early and work through a detailed checklist. For Florida’s own draw games, the machine and ball set are picked at random just before each drawing, and all Florida Lottery drawings are open to the public.

From the studio to your phone

Once the balls drop, results move fast.

• Powerball: you can watch live on TV or Powerball.com, and past draw shows are on Powerball’s YouTube channel. Powerball’s Media Center posts downloadable results files. If any published number ever disagrees with the drawing, the official drawing results win.
• Mega Millions: winning numbers and the official drawing video go up on megamillions.com shortly after each drawing. The number of winners follows once all the lotteries have certified their results.
• Everywhere else: every participating lottery posts the winning numbers on its own site, and many offer email or text alerts.

You can also find the latest numbers on our Powerball and Mega Millions pages, and run your ticket through our ticket checker.

A few fun facts

• Draw day is sales day. Mega Millions says as much as 70% of sales typically happen on the day of the drawing. That’s one reason jackpot estimates can shift at the last minute.
• Powerball’s been around a while. It launched on April 22, 1992, with 15 lotteries. The Monday drawing was added in August 2021, along with Double Play.
• Each drawing starts fresh. Because every drawing is random, the balls have no memory of last week. That’s part of the fun: every draw night is a clean slate.

Want to know how the games themselves work? Read how to play Powerball and how to play Mega Millions.