The Biggest Powerball Jackpots in History

The prizes that stopped the country

Powerball has produced more billion-dollar prizes than any other lottery on earth. The list below is not a marketing summary — every figure is the published annuitised jackpot from the drawing in question, before taxes and before any split between winning tickets.

What makes the list interesting is how recent most of it is. Six of the ten biggest Powerball jackpots have been won since 2022, and one of them was won in August 2026, when a single ticket sold in Illinois took $1.040 billion after 44 consecutive drawings without a winner.

The ten biggest Powerball jackpots

The stories behind the biggest wins

$2.04 billion — California, November 2022

The largest lottery prize ever won anywhere. A single ticket bought at a service station in Altadena, California, matched all six numbers after a run of 40 drawings without a jackpot. The winner, Edwin Castro, came forward in February 2023 and took the cash option, worth about $997.6 million before taxes. California does not allow lottery winners to remain anonymous, which is why his name is public while most big winners in other states are not.

$1.817 billion — Arkansas, Christmas Eve 2025

The second-largest Powerball jackpot in history was won on December 24, 2025 by a single ticket in Arkansas — a state that had never produced a prize anywhere near that size. The winner claimed in January 2026 and chose the cash option, and stayed anonymous, which Arkansas law permits.

$1.787 billion — Missouri and Texas, September 2025

Two tickets split the third-biggest jackpot ever: one sold in Missouri and one in Texas. This is the scenario every player should understand — when more than one ticket matches all six numbers, the jackpot is divided equally. Two winners of a $1.787 billion jackpot take roughly $893.5 million each in annuity terms, and less than half that as cash.

$1.765 billion — California, October 2023

A ticket sold at a market in Frazier Park, California, won the fourth-largest Powerball jackpot. The prize was claimed in 2024 by a group of players, a reminder that pooled tickets are behind a meaningful share of the biggest wins.

$1.586 billion — three states, January 2016

The jackpot that made billion-dollar lotteries a mainstream story. Three tickets — sold in California, Florida and Tennessee — split the prize, each worth about $528.8 million in annuity terms. The Tennessee winners, John and Lisa Robinson, went public within days; the California winners, Marvin and Mae Acosta, waited nearly six months before claiming, and spent the time working with financial advisers.

$1.326 billion — Oregon, April 2024

Oregon's first billion-dollar jackpot, from a single ticket sold in Portland. It was claimed by a winner who chose to split the prize with a friend who had contributed to the ticket purchase — an arrangement worth having in writing before the numbers are drawn, not after.

$1.08 billion — California, July 2023

A ticket sold at a small neighbourhood market in Los Angeles won $1.08 billion, the seventh-largest Powerball jackpot. The shop that sold it reportedly received a $1 million retailer bonus, which is standard practice for selling a jackpot-winning ticket in California.

$1.040 billion — Illinois, August 2026

The newest entry on the list, and the largest Powerball prize won in 2026. A single ticket sold in Quincy, Illinois, matched 4-26-66-67-69 plus Powerball 9 on Wednesday, August 12, after 44 drawings without a winner. The cash value was $450.5 million, and more than 3 million tickets won a smaller cash prize in the same drawing. The jackpot then reset to $20 million.

What the biggest jackpots have in common

• They are recent. Billion-dollar jackpots were essentially impossible before 2016 and are now a near-annual event, because the games were redesigned to make the top prize harder to hit and therefore slower to reset.
• California dominates. Four of the ten biggest Powerball jackpots were won in California, which sells enormous volume, allows no anonymity, and pays pari-mutuel prizes on some secondary tiers.
• Long rollover runs. The $1.040 billion jackpot of 2026 took 44 consecutive drawings to build. Long runs are what create the headlines.
• Big prizes get split. Two of the ten biggest Powerball jackpots were shared by multiple winning tickets, which is exactly what you would expect when tens of millions of tickets are sold per drawing.
• They are advertised as annuities. Every number on the list is the 30-payment value. The cash option is typically 40–50% of it, and taxes take a large bite of that.

How long can a jackpot run go?

A jackpot rolls over whenever no ticket matches all six numbers. With 292,201,338 possible combinations, the number of tickets sold each drawing determines how likely a winner is — and sales climb as the jackpot grows and the story gets more coverage. That feedback loop is why runs of 30, 40 or more drawings happen, and why the record prizes cluster at the end of long runs.

The player base matters too: Powerball ticket sales expanded to the United Kingdom in July 2026, which the game expects to accelerate jackpot growth in future runs. For a US player, that does not change your odds of matching six numbers — but it may mean more players sharing a jackpot when it finally lands.

What a billion-dollar jackpot means for your ticket

Nothing, mathematically. Your chance of winning is 1 in 292,201,338 whether the jackpot is $20 million or $2 billion — the prize pool does not change the number of combinations. A huge jackpot does attract far more players, which makes a split prize more likely, and the tax bill on a record win is measured in hundreds of millions.

So enjoy the spectacle: it is genuinely fun to watch a jackpot climb towards a billion. Just keep the ticket in the entertainment column, set your budget before the run starts rather than at drawing number 40, and remember that the story you are reading about is the one ticket in 292 million — not the plan.

If you want to play along, generate a line for the next drawing in the Powerball generator, and see how your numbers compare with three decades of published results in the Powerball statistics section.