Powerball Jackpot Reaches $1.6B, Breaking Lottery Record

The Powerball jackpot that started rolling three months ago will become the largest lottery prize ever won– if someone wins the grand prize on Saturday, November 5. Game officials increased the Powerball jackpot estimate Friday morning to a record $1.6 billion.

The chance of a single ticket hitting this jackpot is only about 1 in 292 million, game officials report. And odds like that are the main reason Saturday’s drawing will possibly be the 40th without a jackpot winner since August 3, when a ticket in Pennsylvania matched all six numbers drawn for $206.9 million.

If no one wins Saturday s jackpot, it will tie the game record for consecutive drawings without a grand prize winner. The longest jackpot run in Powerball history ended on Oct. 4, 2021, when a ticket in California won a $699.8 million jackpot on the 41st drawing.

Of course, that $1.6 billion is pretax money, as any accountant will point out. (It’s also pre-accountant, for that matter.) Furthermore, you ll get that pretax amount as an annuity spread over three decades. The upfront cash option — which most jackpot winners choose — for this drawing is $782.4 million. And that’s still pretax and pre-accountant.

These days, the annuity option is bigger than it previously was, relative to the cash option, due to higher interest rates that facilitate larger annuitized prizes, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball.

Saturday’s estimated jackpot surpassed the world-record amount previously set by Powerball in 2016 when tickets in California, Florida, and Tennessee won a $1.586 billion jackpot.

The next Powerball drawing will take place at the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee at 10:59 p.m. ET on Saturday, November 5. Ticket sale cut-off times vary by jurisdiction but typically occur 1-2 hours before the scheduled drawing.

Powerball tickets are $2 per play. Tickets are sold in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands.