National Lottery down: app and website down across UK amid global IT outage as users unable to access results

Thousands of users reported being unable to access the National Lottery website or app to find out Friday’s (July 19) results or to buy a ticket ahead of Saturday (July 20) night’s Lotto draw.

According to Downdetector, customers started reporting issues for both the National Lottery website and app from 8 pm on Friday, with more than 2,800 users reporting access complaints on Saturday.

The incident comes after a global IT outage on Friday caused by a failed software update caused Microsoft systems around the world to crash leading to widespread disruption impacting transport, travel, infrastructure, healthcare and the media.

IT experts have warned that it could take weeks for systems to recover, with George Kurtz, chief executive of CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company behind the update saying in a statement that he was “deeply sorry”.

Kurtz explained this was not “a security incident or cyber attack”, and that a defect in a “single content update for Windows hosts” was behind the mass disruption.

On Friday evening, National Lottery confirmed on a post on X that “some players” were “having issues accessing our website and app.”

In updated replies to customer’s comments on X on Saturday (July 20) afternoon, they confirmed that their website and app was now, “back online”, explaining to one frustrated user, “If you continue to experience access issues, please re-load and try again. Thanks for your patience and sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

However, some customers still seem to be having issues accessing the website, with one user commenting: “No it’s not fixed & no resetting it doesn’t work. Fire the work experience kid & hire a techy. Also be honest with your customers & pin a tweet that you still haven’t fully resolved the issue. It’s not difficult.” Whilst another added: “It’s still flipping down the website and app! What’s going on…”