Powerball Jackpot Reaches $810 Million for New Year’s Day Drawing

The Powerball jackpot has swelled to an estimated $810 million, the fifth-largest sum on record, after evading a winner again on Saturday. 

The next drawing, the 35th since the last jackpot winner, is on New Year’s Day. The chances of winning the top prize are 1 in 292,201,338, according to Powerball's website.

Jackpot winners can choose to get a one-time lump sum payment that amounts to a little over half the total ($408.9 million for the New Year’s drawing) or take the full amount in annual payments over the course of three decades.

The top prizes in lotteries like Powerball and Mega Millions have become progressively larger in recent years, in part because of inflation, but also because they’ve made it more difficult to win, according to Nerdwallet. The jackpot gets bigger if no one wins.

Six of the 10 largest Powerball jackpots have been since 2021, including the last one — the second-largest at $1.765 billion — in October. The largest in history was $2.04 billion in November 2022.The lottery’s top prize surpassed $700 million following a Christmas Day drawing, and reached an estimated $786 million for the last drawing.