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Nobody’s touched it since May. Saturday night, the biggest Powerball prize of 2026 goes back on the table.
The Powerball jackpot has climbed to an estimated $707 million for Saturday’s drawing after Wednesday night came and went without a grand-prize winner. That’s the largest Powerball prize on offer all year, and it lands in the middle of a wildly generous stretch for American lottery players.
Take the cash instead of the annuity, and you’re looking at $309.7 million in one lump sum. That’s a smaller number, yes, but it’s also one that lands in your bank account before summer ends instead of trickling in over three decades.
Reasonable people disagree on which is better. Either way, you’re never checking a gas station receipt again.
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What happened in Wednesday’s Powerball drawing
The July 29 numbers came up 30-36-40-42-57, with a red Powerball of 2 and a 2x Power Play. Nobody matched all six.
One player still did well. A ticket sold in Maryland matched all five white balls and missed only the Powerball, good for $1 million. Somewhere in the Old Line State, someone is thrilled and mildly haunted in equal measure.
A bigger pool of players is chasing the prize
Powerball’s jackpots have another reason to grow faster this year: the game expanded to the United Kingdom for the first time in its history.
Ticket sales began there July 21, and UK players have contributed to the jackpot pool ever since, though the ticket price, odds and prize structure for US players haven’t changed.
Mega Millions already paid out
If it feels like the lottery gods have been in a mood lately, that’s because they have. One night before Wednesday’s Powerball miss, a single Mega Millions ticket sold in Florida hit an $803 million jackpot — the third Mega Millions grand prize of 2026 and the 10th-largest in the game’shistory.
The winning ticket, worth $345.5 million in cash, was sold at Wawa in Bradenton, on the Gulf Coast north of Sarasota.
The winning numbers were 34-48-49-59-70, with a gold Mega Ball of 12. Mega Millions has since reset to a comparatively modest $50 million, a reminder of just how large the claimed jackpot was.
The odds of winning, because someone has to say it
Matching all five white balls plus the Powerball is a 1-in-292.2 million proposition. That is not a great number. That hasn’t changed, no matter how long the jackpot has been rolling. Every ticket is its own fresh, gloriously unlikely shot.
How to get a Powerball ticket
Tickets cost $2 (add $1 for Power Play) and are sold in 45 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Sales typically close an hour or two before the drawing, depending on the state, so don’t wait until 10:50 p.m.
Players in a growing number of states can skip the counter entirely and order tickets through online lottery couriers like Jackpocket, which buy the physical ticket on the customer’s behalf and store it digitally. Availability varies by state, so check what’s live locally before Saturday night.
The drawing goes off at 10:59 p.m. ET Saturday, Aug. 1. Good luck out there.
