The Powerball jackpot has soared to $1.1 billion, offering a potentially massive windfall just 10 days before Christmas.
This total marks the sixth-largest Powerball jackpot ever and ranks as the 12th-largest lottery prize in U.S. history, including Mega Millions. Monday’s drawing is scheduled for just before 11 p.m. ET. Winners can choose between the annual payout of $1.1 billion or a lump sum of $503.4 million, both before taxes.
The record for the largest U.S. lottery prize remains $2.04 billion, won by a single ticket in California on Nov. 7, 2022. To date, only 13 U.S. lottery jackpots have exceeded $1 billion, with 10 of those occurring since 2021.
No one has claimed the current Powerball prize since Sept. 6, when two tickets in Missouri and Texas split a $1.787 billion jackpot, marking 42 consecutive drawings without a grand prize winner.
Saturday’s numbers, drawn when the jackpot first surpassed $1 billion, were 1, 28, 31, 57, and 58 with a Powerball of 16. While no one matched all the numbers, two tickets sold in Pennsylvania and North Carolina won $2 million each, and five others claimed $1 million each.
Despite the festive timing, the odds of winning the jackpot remain extremely slim—just 1 in 292.2 million—so anyone hoping to snag the billion-dollar prize may want a backup plan.