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No one has hit the Powerball jackpot since May 2. Forty drawings later, the prize is up to $786 million — the biggest of 2026 and the ninth-largest in the game’s history. Here is where it ranks, how to buy in online, and how the odds stack up against shark bites, meteorites and vending machines.
The Powerball jackpot has climbed to an estimated $786 million for Wednesday night’s drawing, with a cash option worth $341.6 million.
Monday’s drawing came up empty again. The Aug. 3 winning numbers were 8, 30, 41, 48, 54, with red Powerball 4 and a 2x Power Play. That made it 40 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner, a dry spell stretching back to May 2, when tickets in Florida and Texas split a $20 million prize.
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Where the $786M Powerball jackpot ranks all-time
Powerball confirmed the milestone this week: At $786 million, this is the ninth-largest jackpot in the game’s 34-year history.
It slots in just below the $842.4 million won in Michigan on New Year’s Day 2024, and just above the $768.4 million a Wisconsin player took down in March 2019. Its arrival bumps the $758.7 million Massachusetts prize from August 2017 out of the top 10 entirely.
The top of the list still belongs to the $2.04 billion California jackpot from November 2022 — but 2025 did real damage to the record book. An Arkansas player won $1.817 billion on Christmas Eve, the second-largest lottery prize in US history, and tickets in Missouri and Texas split $1.787 billion that September.
Widen the lens to every US lottery game and $786 million lands 19th all-time, held back by two Mega Millions prizes sitting just above it: the $810 million won in Texas in September 2024 and the $803 million claimed in Bradenton, Florida, just eight days ago on July 28.
That Florida ticket is also why tonight’s prize is only the second-largest US lottery win of 2026 so far, even though it is comfortably Powerball’s biggest of the year. Powerball’s four 2026 jackpot winners topped out at $250.8 million.
One more rollover would put this jackpot into the game’s top eight. Two would push it toward $1 billion territory.
What time is Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing?
The drawing is Wednesday, Aug. 5, at 10:59 p.m. EDT in Tallahassee, Florida.
Sales cut-offs vary by jurisdiction and are earlier than most players expect — anywhere from 6:45 p.m. EDT in Washington to 10 p.m. EDT in Georgia, with most states landing between 8:59 and 9:59 p.m. EDT.
If you’re buying, treat early evening as your deadline, not 10:59 p.m.
How to purchase Powerball tickets online across states
Powerball tickets cost $2, plus $1 for Power Play and another $1 for Double Play where offered. (Idaho and Montana bundle Power Play in, so the minimum there is $3.)
The game is sold in 45 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah remain the holdouts. As of July 21, Powerball also went international — the UK National Lottery now sells into the same jackpot pool.
There are two ways to buy tickets via online lottery, and the distinction matters:
- Official state online lottery: Roughly a dozen states plus Washington D.C., let you buy Powerball directly from the state lottery’s own website or app, including Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, West Virginia and D.C. Massachusetts joined the list on July 27, launching iLottery with Powerball and Mega Millions available online to players 21 and older. New York and Maryland offer subscriptions only.
- Courier apps: Services like Jackpocket, Jackpot.com and Lotto.com buy a physical ticket on your behalf and hold it for you. Jackpocket, now owned by DraftKings, operates in 17 jurisdictions. But the courier map has tightened sharply: Texas criminalized online and courier ticket sales outright in 2025, Indiana banned them the same year, and California, Florida, Mississippi, Virginia and Wisconsin all prohibit them by statute. Only New York and New Jersey have full licensing regimes. Courier apps also close orders earlier than state cut-offs, so build in extra time.
Understanding your odds versus crazy real-world events
The odds of matching all six numbers are 1 in 292,201,338. The odds of winning any Powerball prize are a far friendlier 1 in 24.9.
Here is the fun part. Things that are more likely than winning tonight’s jackpot:
- Getting bitten by a shark on a single U.S. beach visit: 1 in 11.5 million, per the International Shark Attack File (roughly 25 times more likely).
- Being killed by a vending machine: The Consumer Product Safety Commission documented 37 deaths from people tipping soda machines. That is about 2.5 times more likely than the jackpot per year.
- Dying in a shark attack over your lifetime: 1 in 4.3 million (67 times more likely).
- Being killed by a meteorite: 1 in 1.6 million lifetime, per Tulane University’s published impact-risk tables (183 times more likely). Widen it to a global-scale asteroid impact and it is 1 in 75,000 (nearly 3,900 times more likely).
- Being dealt a royal flush on your very first five-card hand: 1 in 649,740 (450 times more likely).
- Making the US Olympic team in a given Games: Team USA sent 594 athletes to Paris. Call it 1 in 567,000 (515 times more likely).
- Getting struck by lightning at some point in your life: 1 in 15,300, per the National Weather Service (19,000 times more likely).
- Giving birth to quadruplets or more: 1 in 25,200 births, per the CDC (11,600 times more likely).
- An average golfer making a hole-in-one: 1 in 12,500 per round (23,000 times more likely).
- Being born with an extra finger or toe: Around 1 in 667 births (438,000 times more likely), which says less about polydactyly than it does about Powerball.
Two that go the other way, for perspective:
- Getting struck by lightning twice in your life works out to roughly 1 in 467 million using NWS strike rates — meaning tonight’s jackpot is actually the safer bet. Barely.
- A perfect NCAA Tournament bracket is 1 in 9.2 quintillion. You are about 31.6 billion times more likely to win Powerball than to nail all 63 games.
One important footnote on all of it: Lottery odds are per ticket, while most of these comparisons are lifetime or annual risks. That’s why the lifetime lightning figure looks so dramatic next to the annual one — 1 in 15,300 versus 1 in 1,222,000.
Buying a second ticket doubles your chances, and doubling 1 in 292 million still leaves you with 1 in 146 million.
Then again, someone won $1.817 billion on Christmas Eve. Somebody always eventually does.
