Lotto Hamburg

Lotto Hamburg is the state lottery company in Hamburg and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. It is a member of the German Lotto and Totoblock and is officially called “LOTTO Hamburg GmbH”. It is one of a total of 16 lottery companies in Germany, each responsible for its own federal state. Around 100 employees work daily for Lotto Hamburg, ensuring transparent, secure and customer‑friendly operation of the state games and maintaining contact with numerous retail outlets. Lotto Hamburg’s portfolio includes the well‑known standard product Lotto 6aus49 with the add‑on lotteries Spiel 77 and Super 6, the annuity lottery Glücksspirale, KENO, plus 5, TOTO, BINGO, the NKL annuity lottery, and various scratch tickets.

How high are Lotto Hamburg’s processing fees?

Please note that you must always submit your entries directly to your state lottery company (i.e., Lotto Hamburg if your primary or permanent residence is in the state of Hamburg). Playing online is usually cheaper — we recommend submitting your entries online, because:

Why pay more for the same service?

See for yourself — below we link to our detailed comparisons that include all online providers: the Lotto 6aus49 price comparison — lotto price comparison, for the European lottery Eurojackpot — Eurojackpot price comparison, for the daily lottery KENO — the corresponding Keno price comparison, and for the popular annuity lottery — the Glücksspirale price comparison, which are updated regularly. Please note that all information is without guarantee of completeness and accuracy; in case of doubt, please verify independently.

back to top

Cut-off times at retail outlets

The Lotto 6aus49 draws of the German Lotto and Totoblock take place on Wednesday at 18:25 and on Saturday at 19:25. Typically, this results in retail cut‑off times on Wednesdays around 17:30–18:00 and on Saturdays around 18:30–19:00. These times vary between federal states because the state lottery administrations set the cut‑off times largely independently. For the online sales point of Lotto Hamburg, the following cut‑off times apply — for Wednesday Lotto: 18:00 and for Saturday Lotto: 19:00.

An annual Glücksspirale ticket is not offered by Lotto Hamburg; however, you can play tickets with a term of up to 8 weeks to reduce the processing fee per draw.

back to top

Prize collection and payout in Hamburg

Until recently, all lottery players in Hamburg had to assert their prize claims within 13 weeks of the draw date (or from the date of last participation for multi‑week tickets) by presenting a valid receipt; otherwise, the prize expired. This very short period had been uniform for all German state lottery companies. Changes in legislation led to the most recent change in the terms in January 2016, effective for draws from Wednesday, 06.01.2016. Now §VII states: “Statutory limitation rules apply to the limitation of claims.” As a rule, players now have up to 3 years (possibly until the end of the respective calendar year) to assert their claims — a significant improvement over the previous 13‑week period. In Hamburg retail outlets, only prizes up to €1,000 are paid out. For higher amounts (practical tip — even for a few hundred euros, a small neighborhood shop may not have enough cash on hand; it’s advisable to ask in advance), a written prize claim must be submitted (available at every lottery outlet). Alternatively, you can visit the headquarters of the state lottery company in person:

Payout can also be made by standard bank transfer. It’s therefore much more convenient to submit your ticket online. Your receipt cannot be lost and the prize is automatically transferred to your bank account. In addition, as seen in the comparison tables, you can benefit from lower processing fees!

back to top

Lotto Hamburg customer card

The LOTTO customer card from Lotto Hamburg is called the Lotto‑Ident‑Card. This card is, of course, free of charge and available at any LOTTO shop in Hamburg. It is particularly useful for ODDSET, TOTO and KENO, where personal identification has been required since 2008 for reasons of problem‑gambling prevention and youth protection. As the name suggests, the Ident‑Card serves player identification; it also offers additional services such as saving your personal lucky numbers and individual prize notifications by email and SMS for larger wins, as well as transferring smaller prizes to your bank account if you have not collected them within four weeks at a LOTTO shop in Hamburg.

back to top

State of Hamburg – lottery history

The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg is the capital of the State of Hamburg and is both a city‑state and a federal state of Germany. With around 1,830,000 inhabitants (as of 2017, source: Federal Statistical Office, destatis.de), Hamburg is Germany’s second‑largest city (after Berlin). The area of this German federal state is about 755.10 km².

For the first time, lotto in Germany was drawn on 11 January 1953 in Berlin — back then as the numbers lottery 5 out of 90. Lotto Hamburg has been part of the German LOTTO Block from the very beginning, established in June 1955 by the following five federal states: Bavaria, Berlin, Hamburg, North Rhine‑Westphalia and Schleswig‑Holstein. Since the agreement of a Lotto Block contract, each state can now conduct the numbers lottery independently. The draw of the winning numbers took place every Saturday and was hosted in rotation by the LOTTO Block partners, each for five weeks. Fittingly, Lotto Hamburg made the start on 9 October 1955: at 16:00 the lotto balls were drawn for the first time in a large drum, then still made of wood and glass. The orphan girl Elvira became the very first “lotto fairy” — and the first number drawn was the “13”! Evaluating the played tickets used to be hard work: in 1955 hundreds of evaluators worked through the night under strict supervision, checking all tickets with a stencil. Today, modern data centers complete this task within just a few minutes. As a rule of thumb for publishing prize payouts: on the next working day — usually Monday for Saturday Lotto and Thursday for Wednesday Lotto — typically between 9:00 and 12:00 (the higher the jackpot, the later the payouts are published).

back to top