A Look Back at the 2025 Holiday Season
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Patricia McQueen
Published February 17, 2026
For most lotteries, the season for giving is the most important time of the year. It’s not surprising, therefore, that they spend considerable time and energy planning their holiday instant ticket lineups. These games have to be attractive to everyone – current players, new players, and gift recipients.
North American lotteries reported offering a total of 252 holiday and winter seasonal instant games in 2025, up from 241 the previous year. We note that winter seasonal games may not always be accounted for in this annual roundup, or may have different treatment from year to year, so any game counts here should be considered approximate.
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The $5 price point widened its lead for the holidays, with 58 such games this past season, up from 53 the year before. Next were $2 games, with 47 (up from 44), and $10 games, with 45 (up one after three years at 44). The $1 price point remained steady, with 43 such games in both the 2025 and 2024 holiday seasons, following erosion in previous years. The $3 price point is used by fewer lotteries, with 23 games offered in 2025 across 21 lotteries. They are most popular in Canada, with two each offered in British Columbia and Ontario.
Two lotteries added back a $1 holiday game after dropping the price point a year ago, another dropped its $1 game, and still another cut back from two $1 games to just one. All in all, nine lotteries did not offer games at that price point in 2025: Atlantic Lottery, Loto-Québec, and lotteries in Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, New York, Ontario, Oregon and Puerto Rico.
Five lotteries dropped a holiday game at the $10 price point, while six lotteries added one.
All these movements are pretty common, as lotteries closely examine their local market conditions and mix of games. Those conditions can easily change in the months between initial planning and final launch.
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At the high end of the spectrum, only one lottery introduced a $50 game with its holiday lineup, the first at that price point for the holidays since Atlantic Lottery offered a $50 multi-game pack in 2018. The Kentucky Lottery launched the $50 Instant Millionaire with its suite of seven holiday/seasonal games last October.
There were five lotteries with a $30 game this past season, up one from the year before with Pennsylvania rejoining this group that also includes Georgia, Ohio, Oregon and WCLC.
There were two fewer $20 games than the previous year, with 24 launched. Arizona, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Virginia added the price point while California, Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, Vermont and Washington each dropped a $20 game.
As noted, Kentucky brought in a $50 game (instead of offering two $20 games as in the previous year), and California became the only U.S. lottery to launch a $25 holiday game in recent years with Celebrate 2026; the $25 price point has been popular for Atlantic Lottery as a gift pack and for Loto-Québec as its premium Célébration ticket.
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Family games remain popular, and lotteries often run a family every other season to keep things fresh. For the holiday season, they help brand awareness with a unified look at a time when attracting new players is paramount. Offering only a family of games were Connecticut (Holiday Cash times X), Florida (Holiday Cash), Georgia (Jingle Jumbo Bucks), Maine (Holiday) and Nebraska (Merry Money times X). Holiday portfolios of mostly family games were offered in Louisiana (Home for the Holidays), Massachusetts (Winter Winnings), and New Mexico (Merry Money times X). Montana offered a three-game family with a common “cash box” graphic, although they weren’t as closely-imaged as more typical families, with different names and colors.
Blowout or loaded-prize games are popular year-round, but continue to be an important tool during the holidays. Games with top prizes that are redeemable at retail are also strategically used by lotteries to make gift-giving especially easy. Pulsing is another strategy that keeps games viable through the seasons.
One strategy that doesn’t rely on game design itself is used each holiday season by the Oregon Lottery. Helping to spread holiday cheer in an unusual way, the team visits retailers to “surprise and delight” customers by giving way $2 holiday tickets. “Seeing the pure delight on their faces when they realize it’s a genuine gift – no strings attached, just the excitement of a potential win – is truly heartwarming. It’s moments like these that make me deeply grateful for my job and the chance to spread a little happiness,” said Shelena Hunter, an Oregon Lottery account manager.
The Pennsylvania Lottery had an extra reason to celebrate the holidays. Profit margin relief in July 2025 provided the ability to increase payouts on instant games. All seven holiday games received a payout boost, from 2.25% to 5.00%, and the prize structures were designed to create as many winning experiences as possible within the churn tiers. In fact, there were 1.4 million more winning experiences in the 2025 holiday games compared to the 2024 games. You’ll find more details about the marketing campaign (“More Winners. Higher Payout.”) used to spread the word in the Pennsylvania response in this holiday roundup. That campaign is ongoing with new game launches this year.
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Read On for Holiday Insights
We asked streamlined and new questions for our holiday review this past season. An important new question asked if lotteries have strategies to keep new players interested after being attracted by holiday games for the first time, or those who received tickets as gifts. There were a number of good ideas along these lines, so be sure to read through all the responses.
A two-part additional question, prompted by suggestions from lotteries, garnered no actual responses, but several lotteries expressed interest in the topics. We asked if they use any holiday-only retailers, brought in exclusively for the season. We also asked if they ever work with a business that wants to purchase a large volume of tickets to use as gifts for their employees and customers. A couple of lotteries commented that some of their retailers may work directly with such a company to sell tickets for this purpose, but responding lotteries have not (yet) pursued holiday-only retailers. One or both of these ideas may be worth pursuing in the future.
As always, we thank everyone at the participating lotteries for providing responses integral to the success of this annual review – the communications, product and marketing professionals who candidly share their experiences during the season. They are not acknowledged individually among the following responses, but they are very much appreciated.
