If you have lost a winning lottery ticket, you may still be able to claim any prizes it won, but as you have no physical proof that you purchased a winning entry the claim will be subject to very rigorous security checks. The National Lottery is not obliged to pay out on a lost lottery ticket, but if you make your claim within 30 days of the winning draw it will still be considered.
For tickets that are torn or are otherwise illegible, see the Damaged Lottery Tickets page.
The claim period for a National Lottery prize is 180 days from the winning draw, but with a missing ticket there is a much earlier deadline - you must report what has happened by 5.00pm on the 30th day after the relevant date.
If you miss this cut-off point, your claim will not be considered. The only way you could be paid beyond this time would be to find the winning ticket before the 180-day limit.
For any lost ticket claim to be investigated, you must contact the National Lottery and provide the following information. It must be sufficiently detailed that lottery officials would have enough to work with if they conducted a search of their own database, which captures when each entry is submitted from every terminal across the UK.
You can submit your appeal by post to the National Lottery's Player Services Department at PO Box 287, Watford, WD18 9TT, or by emailing lostticketnotice@national-lottery.co.uk.
The National Lottery will investigate these claims at its discretion, based on the details provided, and could choose to pay you the prize money the ticket would have been due.