Updated October 26, 2026.
Powerball is a multi-state draw game sold by participating U.S. lotteries. A play costs $2 in most places. You pick five white-ball numbers from 1 through 69 and one red Powerball from 1 through 26, or you let the terminal pick them. This page is a plain-language account of the rules, the prize tiers, and the add-on drawings. It is general information from the official game pages, not a suggestion to buy a ticket and not a promise about any result.
LotteryMigo does not sell tickets and cannot tell you whether a ticket won. Check numbers on the lottery site for the jurisdiction that sold the ticket, and claim any prize there. Rules, prices, and claim deadlines are set by that lottery.
What a play contains
The white balls and the Powerball are drawn from separate machines. Order does not matter on the white balls: 4, 5, 15, 19, 55 is the same result as those five numbers in any other order. The red ball is its own number. Matching the red ball is a different event from matching a white ball with the same numeral.
On powerball.com, the base price is $2 per play. The same page says Idaho and Montana bundle Power Play with the ticket, so the minimum price in those two states is $3. A retailer terminal can also issue a quick pick. A quick pick uses the same matrix as numbers you mark yourself. It does not improve the chance of a prize, and it does not worsen it.
Drawings are held Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. Eastern Time. The Powerball media center says the drawings are broadcast from the Florida Lottery Draw Studio in Tallahassee and are also livestreamed on powerball.com. Sales cut-off times are earlier than the drawing and differ by jurisdiction, often by an hour or two. A ticket bought after the local cutoff is for a later drawing.
The media center lists current sales in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and says more than half of ticket-sale proceeds stay in the jurisdiction that sold the ticket. It also says sales were scheduled to expand to the United Kingdom beginning July 21, 2026. If you are outside a U.S. lottery jurisdiction, confirm on powerball.com whether tickets are actually sold where you are. Messages offering to buy Powerball tickets for you from abroad are a separate problem, covered in the scam guide.
The jackpot
The advertised jackpot starts at $20 million and grows until someone matches all five white balls and the red Powerball. That starting figure is the annuity amount, the one in the headlines. The cash figure printed beside it is smaller. Both numbers on the official site are before federal and jurisdictional taxes.
A jackpot winner chooses an annuity or a lump sum. Powerball describes the annuity as 30 graduated payments over 29 years. The lump sum is a single payment. If more than one ticket matches all six numbers, those tickets split the jackpot. The lump sum, annuity, and taxes page goes further into what those choices mean, including what the IRS says about reporting lottery income. Nothing there is personal tax advice.
Nine prize tiers
The Powerball prize chart lists nine ways to win on a $2 play. Lower-tier prizes are set cash amounts, except in California, where the chart says payouts are pari-mutuel and depend on sales and the number of winners. California players should read the California Lottery’s own Powerball page before treating the national chart as their prize.
| Match | Base prize | Odds |
|---|---|---|
| 5 white balls + Powerball | Jackpot | 1 in 292,201,338 |
| 5 white balls | $1,000,000 | 1 in 11,688,053.52 |
| 4 white balls + Powerball | $50,000 | 1 in 913,129.18 |
| 4 white balls | $100 | 1 in 36,525.17 |
| 3 white balls + Powerball | $100 | 1 in 14,494.11 |
| 3 white balls | $7 | 1 in 579.76 |
| 2 white balls + Powerball | $7 | 1 in 701.33 |
| 1 white ball + Powerball | $4 | 1 in 91.98 |
| Powerball only | $4 | 1 in 38.32 |
The chart’s overall chance of any prize is 1 in 24.87. The media center rounds the same idea to about 1 in 24.9. Those are the odds of winning something, including the $4 prizes. They are a different number from the jackpot odds. Matching only the red ball is the most common prize on the chart, at about 1 in 38.32, and it pays $4 on a $2 play before any Power Play multiplication.
The jackpot odds are the count of possible tickets. Choosing 5 white balls out of 69 can be done in 11,238,513 ways. Each of those lines can pair with any of 26 red balls, so the full matrix contains 11,238,513 × 26 = 292,201,338 combinations. One of them matches the drawing. The odds guide explains why buying a second ticket doubles a very small chance and still leaves it very small.
Power Play
Power Play is an optional extra dollar per play in jurisdictions where it is sold separately. It multiplies non-jackpot prizes by 2, 3, 4, 5, or 10. It does not multiply the jackpot. The Match 5 prize with Power Play is always $2 million, whatever multiplier is drawn. That exception is on the prize chart and in Powerball’s own descriptions of the feature: five white balls without the red ball become $2 million with Power Play, not $2 million times the drawn multiplier.
The 10× multiplier is used only when the advertised jackpot is $150 million or less. When 10× is in the drawing, the prize chart gives these odds: 10× is 1 in 43, 5× is 2 in 43, 4× is 3 in 43, 3× is 13 in 43, and 2× is 24 in 43. When the jackpot is above $150 million, the 10× ball is out and the chart uses a 42-ball set: 5× is 2 in 42, 4× is 3 in 42, 3× is 13 in 42, and 2× is 24 in 42. The 2× outcome is the most common in both sets.
With 10× in play, the chart’s multiplied examples include $50,000 becoming $500,000, $100 becoming $1,000, $7 becoming $70, and $4 becoming $40. Those are the fixed prizes on the national chart. California’s pari-mutuel prizes can differ.
Double Play
Double Play is a second optional dollar in participating jurisdictions. It enters the same numbers into a separate drawing held after Powerball. Powerball describes a top cash prize of $10 million and eight additional cash prizes. It is not the Powerball jackpot, and it is not available everywhere. The selling lottery’s site is the place to confirm whether Double Play is offered at that retailer.
How LotteryMigo counts Powerball
The frequency pages use the New York Open Data Powerball file, dataset d6yy-54nr. In that file, October 7, 2015 is the first drawing with a white ball above 59, and from that drawing forward the red ball stays in 1 through 26. That is the current matrix, 5/69 plus 1/26. Earlier rows in the same file use a smaller white-ball field, and some of them use a red-ball field that runs past 26, up to 39. A single all-time count mixes those games.
Each Powerball number page therefore shows two counts when they differ: appearances in the current matrix, and appearances in the full file. White balls 60 through 69 do not appear before that October 2015 drawing, so their two counts match. A long gap on those pages is a count of drawings since the last hit. It does not change the 5-in-69 chance that a given white ball is drawn next. The hot, cold, and overdue guide is the longer version of that point.
Recent drawings are listed on the Powerball results page. The home page chart uses the full loaded file, which is why it can disagree with a current-matrix rank.
Sources
- Powerball home — price, matrix, draw nights, annuity shape, Power Play, and Double Play.
- Powerball prize chart — tier prizes, odds, overall odds, and Power Play probabilities.
- Powerball media center — starting jackpot, where tickets are sold, and the Tallahassee draw studio.
- NY Open Data, Powerball — the draw archive behind the statistics on this site.
Game rules can change. Before you rely on a price or a prize, read the current page at powerball.com or your state lottery.