A single ticket in Illinois won a Powerball jackpot of $1.04 billion Wednesday night, the game says. The ticket was purchased at a gas station in the city of Quincy, which is on the Mississippi River about halfway down the Illinois coast.
The winning numbers were 4, 26, 66, 67 and 69, with a Powerball of 9.
The jackpot, which reached the $1 billion mark soon after Monday’s drawing didn’t produce a winner, was the eighth-largest Powerball grand prize ever and 15th $1 billion pot of gold in U.S. lottery history.
The cash value for a lump-sum payment was $450.5 million. Winners can also choose to take their prize in 30 payments over 29 years that increase by 5% per year. Both the lump sum payout and the annuity payout totals are before taxes.
Wednesday’s jackpot was Powerball’s biggest of 2026.
The last time a billion-dollar jackpot was won was in December, when one ticket in Arkansas had all the numbers for a $1.82 billion prize — lotto’s second-largest.
Wednesday’s drawing was the 44th since a Powerball jackpot was won on May 2, when tickets purchased in Florida and Texas split a $20 million prize.
The drawing was the first to possibly have a winner from the U.K., which began selling tickets in late July. Powerball is played in 45 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington, D.C. Tickets are $2 each.
The odds of winning a Powerball jackpot are just 1 in 292.2 million.
