Ethiopian National Lottery Review 2026: Games, Tickets, Results and Online Play in Ethiopia

The consumer-facing platform is ethiolottery.et, while the Ethiopian Lottery Service also maintains a separate institutional website at els.gov.et. The EthioLottery website identifies the service as Ethiopian Lottery Service and states that its digital platform is powered by TAMCON Software Solutions.

This review looks at what Ethiopian players can actually verify today: who operates the lottery, its legal status, games and ticket prices, online purchasing, results, payments, withdrawals, responsible gambling tools and the strengths and weaknesses of the website.

The current lottery catalogue displays the 100 Million Lottery at 100 ETB per single ticket and the Weekly Lottery at 20 ETB per ticket. It also lists 6/49 and 5/90, but the public catalogue does not show verified prices next to those two games.

The lottery is operated by the Ethiopian Lottery Service (ELS).

ELS's institutional website traces the organisation to Ethiopia's establishment of a state lottery under Proclamation No. 183 in 1954 E.C. Its stated purpose includes generating revenue from lottery activities that can contribute to economic and social development.

The Ministry of Justice also maintains the National Lottery Administration Re-establishment Proclamation in its legal database. Proclamation No. 510/2006 gave the former National Lottery Administration powers including operating lotteries, paying prizes, announcing winning numbers and supervising lottery activities.

Is Ethiopian Lottery officially licensed and regulated?

For players, the most important point is that Ethiopian Lottery Service is an official Ethiopian public lottery organisation, not an offshore lottery website using Ethiopian branding.

There is, however, an important regulatory distinction.

Older ELS legislation and the organisation's own institutional history describe the lottery administration as having both operating and regulatory responsibilities. More recent federal legislation assigns powers including issuing lottery permits, supervising lottery activity, suspending or revoking permits and controlling illegal lottery operations to Ethiopia's Ministry of Revenue.

At the time of this review, the main EthioLottery catalogue advertises four draw-based products:

The results archive also demonstrates that ELS runs or has recently run additional special and seasonal draws. Published result categories include the 60 Million Lottery, Tinsae Lottery, 50 Million Lottery, Tombola Lottery, Enqutatash Lottery and Special Luck Lottery.

This means the exact selection of lotteries can change during the year. Ethiopian players should therefore check the current catalogue rather than assuming that a previous special lottery is still on sale.

Instant and digital games

EthioLottery now goes beyond conventional draw tickets. The site advertises digital scratch/instant games and other online games including titles such as Fast Keno, Classic Keno, Flamingo and Mini Roulette.

One currently indexed scratch game, for example, costs 5 ETB per play and awards an instant prize when the required matching amounts are revealed.

For LotteryBet.et readers interested specifically in national lottery draws rather than casino-style or RNG games, it is worth separating these products: instant and virtual games behave differently from traditional draw lotteries and may have different prize mechanics.

Buying online through EthioLottery

Yes. Lottery tickets can now be purchased online, so the Ethiopian National Lottery is no longer a physical-ticket-only service.

The site's published purchase instructions show the following process:

• 1Choose the active lottery.
• 2Select your lottery number or use the site's Easy Pick option where available.
• 3Add the selection and proceed to checkout.
• 4Confirm payment.
• 5After successful payment, receive confirmation by SMS.
• 6Download the digital ticket from the platform.

The official instructions for recent draw products explicitly describe this digital checkout and downloadable-ticket process.

The platform's Terms also state that entries can be submitted through official channels including the website, app or approved persons/entities, and that a lottery entry is only valid after full payment has been received and confirmed.

Account registration

The website supports account registration and login. Its FAQ shows that accounts use a mobile number and OTP functionality for access and password recovery.

The current Terms list an active mobile number as mandatory and state that an active mobile-money account is required for electronic withdrawals.

Can you still buy tickets offline?

ELS legislation and the current digital Terms recognise sales through approved persons or entities, and there are additional authorised distribution channels.

For example, Cooperative Bank of Oromia announced in January 2026 that, in cooperation with ELS and TAMCON, customers could access digital lottery sales through Coopbank branches and the Coopay E-birr mobile wallet.

However, the EthioLottery website does not currently provide a clear nationwide public directory of conventional lottery retailers that we could verify. Players looking for a particular physical sales point should therefore confirm it directly with ELS rather than relying on an unofficial retailer list.

The two prices that can currently be verified clearly from the official homepage are:

• ✓100 Million Lottery: 100 ETB per ticket
• ✓Weekly Lottery: 20 ETB per ticket

The site also advertises instant games from 5 ETB and 10 ETB, depending on the game.

At the time of research, we could not verify a current public ticket price for 6/49 or 5/90 from the main catalogue. Because lottery pricing can change, LotteryBet.et should not publish an assumed price for those games.

This is one area where the EthioLottery website could be clearer.

The platform's Terms say draw-based lottery purchases generally close one hour before the draw unless otherwise stated, and individual lottery pages can display a countdown to their closing/draw cycle.

However, we could not verify a single current public timetable clearly listing the exact weekday and time for every active lottery.

The Weekly Lottery is, as its name suggests, a recurring product, while large special lotteries such as the 100 Million Lottery operate with their own scheduled draw dates.

The headline prize currently promoted is the 100 Million Birr Lottery, and the Weekly Lottery is promoted around a 1,000,000 ETB weekly prize position in its site artwork.

Beyond the headline numbers, each lottery has its own prize structure, and the website supports publishing a prize list per game — the 100 Million Lottery card, for example, links to its own Prize List.

Because prize breakdowns are game-specific and can change between draws, players should always open the current prize list of the specific lottery they are entering rather than relying on a previous draw's structure or a social-media summary.

Historic and special draws in the results archive — such as the 60 Million and 50 Million lotteries — show that ELS regularly rotates large seasonal jackpots throughout the year.

Results are published online through the EthioLottery results section. The archive currently includes result categories such as:

• 60 Million Lottery
• Tinsae Lottery
• 50 Million Lottery
• Tombola Lottery
• Enqutatash Lottery
• Special Luck Lottery

For each draw, the winning entries are published with the draw date, and account holders can also check their tickets against the published outcomes after logging in.

This is a genuine improvement over the traditional experience, where players depended on radio announcements, newspapers or visiting a sales point to confirm a win.

The claim process depends on how the ticket was bought and how large the prize is.

For digital play, winnings are credited to the player's EthioLottery account balance, and the current withdrawal policy is unusually specific.

TeleBirr withdrawal rules

• ✓Withdrawals from the digital platform are currently made through TeleBirr only.
• ✓The minimum withdrawal is 100 ETB.
• ✓The maximum withdrawal is 2,000 ETB within 24 hours.
• ✓The TeleBirr account used must be registered in the player's own name.
• ✓Withdrawal requests are processed to the linked mobile-money account after in-platform confirmation.

The obvious question is what happens with a large prize, since a jackpot cannot realistically be withdrawn at 2,000 ETB per day.

The Terms address this by providing that ELS can apply additional verification and a separate payout procedure for major prizes, including identity confirmation, and that large winnings can be handled outside the standard small-withdrawal flow.

For funding play and receiving digital winnings, the two channels that can be confirmed today are:

• ✓TeleBirr — referenced directly in the withdrawal policy and mobile-money requirements of the current Terms.
• ✓Coopay E-birr and Coopbank channels — announced through the Cooperative Bank of Oromia partnership for digital lottery access.

The Terms require an active mobile-money account in the player's own name for electronic transactions, which effectively anchors the digital experience to Ethiopian mobile money rather than international cards or e-wallets.

Players should treat any other "payment method" advertised outside the official platform — especially transfers to personal numbers arranged through social media — as a red flag rather than a convenience.

The EthioLottery website is a modern, mobile-friendly platform with English and Amharic language support. From the main navigation, players can access:

Account creation, ticket purchase and results checking all work through a clean card-based interface, and the site loads quickly on mobile connections.

Areas where the website needs improvement

The main weaknesses are informational rather than technical. Prices for 6/49 and 5/90 are not clearly displayed in the public catalogue, a complete draw timetable for all active games is not published in one place, and there is no verified public directory of physical retailers.

These gaps do not affect legitimacy, but they force players to open individual game pages — or contact support — for details that an official lottery site could publish centrally.

EthioLottery publishes real, verifiable support channels:

The FAQ section answers the most common account, ticket and withdrawal questions, and the Help & Support area routes issues such as payment problems to the support team.

For an official state lottery, this is a reasonable support setup — though response-time commitments are not published, so players with urgent payment issues should use the phone line first.

Yes — with the standard precautions that apply to any online account holding money. The trust signals are strong:

• ✓State ownership: ELS is Ethiopia's official lottery organisation with a documented legal history since 1954 E.C.
• ✓Institutional presence: a separate government website at els.gov.et alongside the consumer platform.
• ✓Published Terms: ticket validity, payment confirmation and withdrawal rules are written down, not improvised.
• ✓Named technology partner: the platform is powered by TAMCON Software Solutions.
• ✓Bank partnerships: the Coopbank/Coopay distribution agreement was announced publicly.
• ✓Real support channels: a working phone line, email and Telegram presence.

The practical risks for players are not about the operator's legitimacy but about impersonation and process mistakes: fake social-media pages selling "tickets", payments sent to personal numbers, unconfirmed payments that never register a ticket, and shared OTP codes.

Participation is restricted to players aged 18 or older, and the platform's responsible-play commitments describe several concrete tools:

• ✓Deposit limits that players can set on their own accounts.
• ✓Session reminders during longer play sessions.
• ✓Self-exclusion options for players who want to stop.
• ✓Support routing for players who ask for help with their play.

A lottery ticket should be bought with money the player can afford to lose. Chasing losses — buying more tickets to "win back" previous spending — is the single most damaging pattern in lottery play, and no draw schedule or number strategy changes the underlying odds.

For Ethiopian players, the convenience gains are real: accounts, digital tickets, published results and mobile-money withdrawals replace a purely physical process. The 20 ETB Weekly Lottery keeps the entry price accessible, and the 100 Million Birr Lottery provides the headline jackpot.

The caution is about transparency of details rather than trust in the operator: unverified 6/49 and 5/90 prices, the absence of a consolidated draw timetable, the tight 2,000 ETB daily digital withdrawal cap and the missing retailer directory all force players to double-check individual game pages before spending.

The safest approach is also the simplest: buy only through the official website, app or announced partners, confirm every payment, read the current prize list of the specific draw you are entering, and keep expectations grounded in how lotteries actually work.

18+ only. Lottery play should be entertainment, not a source of income.

Visit EthioLottery