A single Powerball ticket sold at a Hy-Vee gas station in Quincy, Illinois, matched all six numbers, 4, 26, 66, 67, 69, plus a Powerball of 9, to win Wednesday’s $1.04 billion jackpot, the largest Powerball prize won so far in 2026 and the eighth-largest in the game’s history.
The win ends a three-month stretch without a jackpot winner. The winner has a choice between a 30-year graduated annuity worth the full $1.04 billion, or an upfront lump sum of $450.5 million before taxes, the option most winners choose. Illinois doesn’t require winners of $250,000 or more to be publicly identified, so the ticket holder can remain anonymous, and has up to a year from the drawing date to come forward and claim the prize.
Whichever payout option the winner picks, federal withholding immediately takes a substantial cut, 24% is withheld automatically, with more likely owed at tax time since a prize this size lands squarely in the top federal bracket. State taxes apply on top of that. After withholding, a lump-sum winner nets meaningfully less than the advertised jackpot figure, even before any state-level tax.
The odds of matching all six numbers are about 1 in 292.2 million, longer than the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year. That math hasn’t slowed ticket sales: as jackpots have grown into billion-dollar territory in recent years, largely because lottery operators lengthened the odds to let prizes roll over longer, sales tend to spike right along with the headline number.
