Approved to $500,000: Queensland Certifies RaffleLink's New Draw Program
On 25 August, Queensland’s Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation approved RaffleLink Draw Program v2 — the software that selects winners on our platform — for use in Queensland raffles with a largest prize of up to $500,000 and gross ticket sales of up to $1,000,000, across Categories 1, 2 and 3. The approval number is 309508, and the letter is public: read it here.
If you run smaller raffles, nothing changes for you, and that’s rather the point: the same certified draw now runs everything from a $2,000 school raffle to a half-million-dollar prize home lottery. Here’s what the approval is, and why it matters if Queensland is in your plans.
Why Queensland certifies draw software at all
Queensland regulates charitable raffles under the Charitable and Non-Profit Gaming Act 1999. Once a raffle’s gross ticket sales exceed $50,000 it becomes a Category 3 game, which requires a licence, and if the winners are drawn electronically rather than pulled from a barrel, the drawing software itself must be approved by the regulator.
That approval is not a form you fill in. OLGR reviews the source code of the draw program and assesses it against the Random Number Generator Minimum Technical Requirements v1.5, the same standard framework applied to gaming systems. The regulator then approves the program to specific parameters: the largest prize value and the maximum gross ticket sales it may be used for.
Those parameters are the ceiling on what you can run. A platform whose draw is approved to $60,000 in prizes cannot draw your $200,000 prize raffle in Queensland, no matter what its website says.
What was approved
Our previous approval dated from 2019 and covered prizes up to $60,000 with gross ticket sales up to $100,000. Draw Program v2 was reviewed by OLGR over July and August 2026 and approved on 25 August with new parameters:
| Parameter | 2019 approval | Draw Program v2 |
|---|---|---|
| Largest prize value | $60,000 | $500,000 |
| Maximum gross ticket sales | $100,000 | $1,000,000 |
That’s roughly eight times the prize ceiling and ten times the sales ceiling, and to our knowledge it makes RaffleLink one of the only raffle platforms in Australia certified to draw at this scale.
What makes an electronic draw trustworthy
A barrel draw earns trust by being watched — everyone in the room sees the hand go in. An electronic draw has to earn it another way, and that’s what this kind of review tests.
There is one piece of draw software on RaffleLink, and every electronic draw in every state runs through it. Queensland’s regulator read its source code. Before a regulated draw runs, the platform checks that the code about to execute is identical to the version that was approved, and stops if it isn’t. The result is then sealed so it can’t be quietly changed afterwards, and the winning numbers go on your public results page for any ticket holder to check.
In short: the draw is random, the randomness is certified, and nobody, including us, can lean on the outcome. That’s true of a $500,000 prize home and your $2,000 school raffle alike, because there’s only one draw program.
What this means for your raffle
Running a large Queensland raffle: the draw side of your compliance is handled. You’ll still need the Category 3 licence for the raffle itself — our guide to applying for a Queensland Category 3 licence walks through the process, and we help organisers with the application. But the question the application asks about how winners will be selected now has a certified answer up to a $500,000 prize, and OLGR already holds the paperwork.
Drawing by hand: unaffected. A barrel draw at your event doesn’t use draw software, and Queensland doesn’t require certification for it. The approval matters when you want the draw done electronically — which, at thousands of tickets, most organisers do.
Outside Queensland: other states don’t put charitable raffle draw software through a source-code review the way Queensland does, which makes this the most demanding scrutiny our draw faces — and every raffle on the platform gets the same draw it certified. If a supporter ever asks how they can trust an online draw, the letter above is a good answer.
Planning a raffle above $50,000 in Queensland? Get in touch — we’ve helped organisers through the Category 3 licence process and can tell you quickly what your raffle will need.
