The 10 Biggest Powerball Jackpots Ever
Powerball holds the all-time record. Here are its ten largest jackpots:
- $2.04 billion — November 7, 2022 (Altadena, CA)
Edwin Castro won this on a single ticket sold at Joe's Service Center in Altadena. The cash option was $997.6 million before taxes. Castro later bought multiple luxury homes in Los Angeles, including a $25.5 million estate. He went public — most winners don't. - $1.765 billion — October 11, 2023 (California)
A single ticket sold in California claimed this jackpot. The winner chose to remain anonymous, which California law does not technically allow — but a trust structure can shield your identity. - $1.586 billion — January 13, 2016
The jackpot that made "billion-dollar lottery" feel normal for the first time. Three winning tickets split it: one each from California, Florida, and Tennessee. Each ticket was worth roughly $528 million before taxes on the cash option. - $1.326 billion — April 6, 2024 (Portland, OR)
Cheng "Charlie" Saephan, an immigrant from Laos who had been living in the US for about two decades, won this with a ticket purchased in Portland. He was reportedly dealing with cancer at the time. He went public and said he planned to help his family. - $842.4 million — January 1, 2024 (Grand Rapids, MI)
A single ticket sold in Michigan. The winner remained anonymous. - $768.4 million — March 27, 2019 (New Berlin, WI)
Manuel Franco was 24 years old when he won. He went public, said he screamed in his car for about 15 minutes after checking his numbers, and took the cash option of around $477 million before taxes. - $758.7 million — August 23, 2017 (Chicopee, MA)
Mavis Wanczyk called her employer from the lottery office to quit her job before she'd even finished claiming her prize. She took the lump sum — about $480 million before taxes — and went anonymous after her initial press conference. - $731.1 million — January 20, 2021 (Lonoke County, MD)
An anonymous Maryland couple claimed this through a trust. Nothing much is publicly known about them, which is generally how this should go. - $699.8 million — October 4, 2021 (Morro Bay, CA)
A single ticket sold in the coastal California town. Anonymous winner. - $687.8 million — October 27, 2018 (Simpsonville, SC)
South Carolina allows winners to stay anonymous, and this one did. The ticket was worth about $416 million as a cash lump sum before taxes.
The 10 Biggest Mega Millions Jackpots Ever
Mega Millions has produced more jackpots over $1 billion than any other lottery in history. Here's where they all landed:
- $1.602 billion — August 8, 2023 (Neptune Township, NJ)
The ticket was sold in Neptune Township, New Jersey, but the actual winner was anonymous — believed to be in Florida. Florida has no state income tax and allows anonymous claims, which is why you see a lot of big Florida winners even when tickets are sold elsewhere. - $1.537 billion — October 23, 2018 (Simpsonville, SC)
A single ticket, anonymous winner. South Carolina is one of the few states that lets you claim completely anonymously, so very little is known about this person. The cash value was around $877 million before federal taxes. - $1.348 billion — January 13, 2023 (Lebanon, ME)
A ticket sold in a small town in Maine. Anonymous winner. Maine does allow winners to shield their identity, which this person apparently chose to do immediately. - $1.337 billion — July 29, 2022 (Des Plaines, IL)
Sold at a Speedway gas station just outside Chicago. Illinois requires winners to be publicly identified, which complicated things — the winner eventually came forward through a trust, a common workaround. - $1.128 billion — March 26, 2024 (Cottonwood, NJ)
One of the more recent entries on this list. Anonymous winner, claimed through a trust. - $1.050 billion — January 22, 2021 (Novi, MI)
Claimed by a trust called "Wolverine Preferred," which gave nothing away. Michigan requires winners to be publicly identified by name, so the trust name became the official public record. - $656 million — March 30, 2012
Three tickets split this one: winners in Illinois, Kansas, and Maryland. At the time, this was the largest jackpot in Mega Millions history. - $648 million — December 17, 2013
Two tickets split it — one sold in California, one in Georgia. Each share was worth $324 million, or about $173 million as a lump sum before taxes. - $543 million — July 24, 2018 (San Jose, CA)
Won by an 11-person office pool from a technology company in San Jose. They went public, held a press conference, and each person walked away with a post-tax share worth roughly $35 million. - $536 million — July 8, 2016 (Indiana)
A single ticket sold in Indiana. Anonymous winner.
What Do People Actually Do When They Win?
Most winners go anonymous if their state allows it. Of the 20 jackpots above, the majority of winners are completely unknown to the public. The ones who do go public almost always say they regret it within a year — unsolicited loan requests from family, strangers showing up at their homes, and lawsuits tend to follow.
The smartest moves winners make: claim through a trust (so the trust name becomes public, not yours), hire a tax attorney and estate planner before you claim, and don't tell anyone until it's done. If you want to think through what the process looks like, what happens when you win the lottery covers the timeline in detail.
The winners who struggled — and there have been many outside this list — tend to share the same pattern: they claimed publicly, they trusted the wrong people, and they made large financial commitments before understanding the tax implications. Winning $1 billion sounds life-changing until you realize the cash option is roughly 60% of that, then federal taxes take another 37%, and most states take another 5–13% on top. A $1 billion jackpot can net you somewhere around $350–400 million as a lump sum after everything. Still enough. Just less than it sounds.
A few notable human moments from the list: Mavis Wanczyk called her boss to quit before she'd even finished the paperwork. Manuel Franco screamed alone in his car. Charlie Saephan was dealing with cancer when he won. These jackpots land in real people's lives, at random, and the outcomes vary more than you'd expect.
Why Jackpots Keep Getting Bigger
Powerball and Mega Millions both made structural changes in the 2010s that made massive jackpots more likely — and more frequent. Powerball raised its ticket price from $1 to $2 in 2012, then expanded to 44 states, then added more number combinations in 2015 (going from 1-in-175 million odds to 1-in-292 million). Worse odds mean longer jackpot droughts, which means bigger jackpots when someone finally wins.
Mega Millions made a similar change in 2017: they expanded the number pool, dropped the ticket price back to $2, and added cross-sells with Powerball in multi-state agreements. The result was three jackpots over $1 billion in 2018 alone — something that had never happened before in lottery history.
This is worth understanding if you're trying to figure out when to play. The jackpot doesn't get "due" — each draw is independent, and your odds don't improve just because a jackpot has been rolling for 30 draws. What does change is the expected value. When a jackpot is large enough relative to ticket price and the number of expected tickets sold, the math can actually turn positive for the first time. It rarely stays positive for long, because large jackpots attract more players, which increases the chance of multiple winners and drives down your expected share.
Both Powerball and Mega Millions publish their current jackpot amounts and next draw times — that's the best place to check if you're deciding whether to buy a ticket tonight.
The Biggest International Jackpots
US lotteries dominate the top of the all-time list, but the rest of the world has produced some striking numbers too — with some important context on how those numbers work.
El Gordo (Spain) — €2.52 billion total prize pool (2023)
This is the most misunderstood jackpot in the world. The headline number is real, but it's the total prize pool distributed across thousands of ticket shares. The Spanish Christmas lottery doesn't have one winner — it has thousands of them, each receiving a proportional share. The top prize per ticket series in 2023 was €400,000. Still not nothing, but not the same as Powerball's structure.
SuperEnalotto (Italy) — €371 million (2023)
This one is closer to the US model — one ticket, one winner. SuperEnalotto has some of the worst odds in the world (1 in 622 million for the jackpot), which is why it rolls so long and gets so large. It's genuinely comparable to a US mega-jackpot in structure.
EuroMillions — €230 million cap
The pan-European lottery that runs across nine countries has a hard cap of €230 million. Once it hits that number, further rollovers go into a second-tier prize instead. This means you won't see EuroMillions headlines of €1 billion, but it also means the cap has been triggered multiple times. Multiple winners have walked away with the full €230 million.
Powerball Australia — AU$200 million (2024)
Australian Powerball (no relation to the US version beyond the name) reached AU$200 million in 2024, the largest jackpot in Australian lottery history. Won by a single ticket.
Mega-Sena (Brazil)
Brazil's national lottery has produced jackpots in the hundreds of millions of reais range. Mega-Sena draws happen twice a week and regularly roll into large multi-draw accumulations.
If you're outside the US and want to play international lotteries, services like theLotter exist specifically for that. US residents cannot purchase international lottery tickets online — that's a matter of federal law, not just policy.
The States Where the Big Wins Happen
California appears more than any other state on the all-time jackpot list. That's not luck — it's population. California sells more lottery tickets than any other state, so winning tickets are statistically more likely to come from there. The same logic applies to Florida, Texas, and New York showing up frequently in multi-state jackpots.
But smaller states punch above their weight occasionally. South Carolina has produced multiple top-10 jackpot winners, partly because SC allows anonymous claims, which may attract purchases from neighboring states. The ticket for the $1.537 billion Mega Millions win was sold in Simpsonville, SC — the same city as a top-10 Powerball jackpot winner. That's either an extraordinary coincidence or a sign that people drive to favorable states to buy their tickets.
Anonymous claim states tend to see higher ticket sales during large jackpots because people who don't want to be identified buy their tickets there. States that allow anonymity include: South Carolina, Maryland, Ohio, Kansas, North Dakota, Delaware, and a handful of others. A few states require full public disclosure regardless — Ohio is somewhere in the middle, and rules change periodically, so it's worth checking your state's current law before you claim.
The ticket sale location doesn't determine your state of residence for tax purposes, though. If you live in a state with income tax and buy your ticket in a state without one, you still owe your home state's income tax on the winnings. The state where the ticket was sold does get a share of lottery revenue — that's separate from the winner's tax situation.
Cash Option vs. Annuity: What the Winners Actually Took
Almost every winner on this list took the cash option. The annuity pays out over 29 years (30 payments) and guarantees you the full advertised jackpot — but most people don't take it. The cash option is typically about 60% of the advertised jackpot, which sounds worse until you factor in investment returns over 29 years.
If you could invest the lump sum at even a modest return, you'd beat the annuity mathematically in most scenarios. The real argument for the annuity is behavioral: it prevents you from making catastrophic financial decisions all at once, gives you a guaranteed income stream for life, and forces a kind of discipline that most sudden millionaires genuinely struggle with.
The $2.04 billion Powerball win — Edwin Castro's — had a cash option of $997.6 million. After federal taxes (37%), that's around $628 million. Most states also take a cut. Castro is in California, which has no lottery withholding but does tax lottery winnings as regular income (13.3% at the top rate), bringing the realistic take-home closer to $420–450 million depending on deductions. Still transformative. Just not $2 billion.
If you want to understand what the process actually looks like from the moment you realize you've won through to receiving your money, what happens when you win the lottery walks through every step. And if you're using lottery courier services to buy your tickets, they'll store your ticket digitally so there's no risk of a physical ticket being lost or damaged — which has happened to winners before.
Should You Play When the Jackpot Is This Big?
The honest answer: jackpot size doesn't change your odds. You have a 1-in-292-million chance of winning Powerball regardless of whether the jackpot is $50 million or $2 billion. What changes is the expected value of your $2 ticket — and at billion-dollar levels, the math actually gets interesting for the first time.
At $2 billion, the cash option is roughly $1.2 billion. After 37% federal tax, that's about $756 million. Divided by 292 million possible outcomes, your expected value per ticket is around $2.59 — slightly above the $2 ticket price, before state taxes and before factoring in the possibility of splitting with another winner. Once you add those, it slips back below breakeven.
But none of that is why people play. People play because $2 buys you the right to think "what if" for a few days, and that has genuine entertainment value for most people. The mistake is playing $100 when you're barely covering bills, not playing $10 when the jackpot hits $1.5 billion and you want to be part of the moment.
Check the current jackpots for Powerball and Mega Millions — draw nights are Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday for Powerball, and Tuesday and Friday for Mega Millions. If the jackpot is in record territory, you'll know. And now you have the full historical list to put it in context.
