DES MOINES, Iowa — Lottery players will have a shot Friday night at the fifth-largest jackpot in U.S. history after no tickets matched all the numbers in the latest drawing of Mega Millions. This latest rollover boosts the multistate game’s top prize, making it the second-largest Powerball jackpot of the year and the eighth-biggest ever in the game’s history. The next Powerball drawing is scheduled for Wednesday, December 3, 2025.
How the Powerball jackpot grew to $775 million
The advertised $775 million annuity prize is the value of the 30-year payment option, though winners can receive it in a lump sum as well; Wednesday’s winner would take home $362.5 million before taxes with that option. The recent jackpot calculation sheets from the state lotteries illustrate how steadily the prize can rise, climbing from a range of mid-$600 million before Thanksgiving to $775 million after a series of rollovers, emphasising just how fast a Powerball jackpot can snowball if no one wins with all six numbers.
Monday’s Dec. 1 numbers were 5, 18, 26, 47 and 59, with a red Powerball of 1 — nobody won the exact combination needed to claim the Powerball jackpot among tickets sold throughout America. Of course, players in California, Georgia and Illinois matched all five white balls to win $1 million each, and tens of thousands of smaller prizes were distributed nationwide.
It’s behind only the grand prize, whose lone winners in Missouri and Texas won nearly $1.8 billion on Sept. 6, 2025 — the second-largest jackpot in U.S. history, according to lottery tracking website LotteryUSA.com, making this week’s Powerball jackpot of an estimated $632 million the second-largest of the year and eighth-biggest in game record books. That previous drawing snapped a streak of more than three months without a jackpot winner, and the latest march toward $775 million started right after those tickets were sold.
This year’s huge prize also overlaps with a recent wave of historic wins. On New Year’s Day 2024, a Michigan lottery club calling itself “The Breakfast Club” came forward with an $842.4 million prize, which was the fifth-largest Powerball jackpot at the time, according to an official Powerball account of winning states. Just three months later, a single ticket in Oregon matched all of those numbers and won a $1.3 billion prize, at the time the fourth-largest jackpot in Powerball’s history, as detailed in Powerball’s $1.3 billion jackpot review, capping off what set the stage for an era when discussing a billion-dollar prize in Powerball has become almost mundane rather than once-in-a-lifetime whisperings.
Despite the Powerball jackpot soaring, the odds of winning it are still astronomical: 1 in 292,201,3 The average Powerball player has a 1 in 24.87 chance of winning any prize, according to the game’s official prize chart. State lottery sites, including that of the North Carolina Education Lottery, explain to players that tickets are $2 each and that drawings take place every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. Eastern time.
Now that the Powerball jackpot has reached $775 million and is expected to rise if there is no winner on Wednesday night, lottery retailers are girding for a wave of last-minute bu
Officials have continued to make the point that a game like this is entertainment, repeating their urging for players to set firm limits and “play responsibly” as they dream up what a life-changing financial windfall might look like. like.
