Eighth Biggest Powerball Jackpot Of All Time Won in Illinois

The Night of the Draw

The winning numbers for the big draw on Wednesday, August 12, were 4-26-66-67-69 and 9 for the Powerball Number. If you added Power Play, the multiplier was 2X. There were almost 3.3 million winners across the USA and the UK, suggesting a big turnout for the draw – for comparison, draws with a lower jackpot ($100 million, let's say, tend to have around 300,000 prize-winners). Besides the jackpot win, which we'll get on to next, there were four Match 5 million-dollar prize winners in Arizona, California, Florida, and North Carolina, with a fifth Match 5 winner in Massachusetts using Power Play to boost their win to $2 million.

Only one player managed to match all six numbers in this draw, a ticket sold in Illinois. There are no winner details yet, but it's early days and more details will be coming out over the next week, and when the winner comes to claim their prize. Big Illinois Lottery winners can opt to remain anonymous, but even if they do, state lotteries will often release anonymous statements from the winner.

Illinois hasn't really seen its fair share of Powerball jackpot winners, with just three since the game launched in 1992. For comparison, neighboring Indiana and Missouri hold the top two spots with 40 and 32 winners respectively, despite Illinois having twice as many residents as Indiana and Missouri (12.7 million for IL, and 6-7 million each for IN and MO).

 

The Powerball Jackpot: Any records broken?

Although a billion-dollar jackpot is always exciting, this one hasn’t broken any records. It's the eighth biggest Powerball jackpot ever, just $4 million short of the next biggest jackpot: $1.08 billion won in July 2023 by a sole player in LA, California.

Although this jackpot had rolled up for 44 draws, it didn't quite beat the record for 'most Powerball jackpot rolls', which is 46. This record was set by a jackpot that started on September 8 and was won on December 22, 2025.

Despite the newly added UK showing a strong interest in playing Powerball, there is yet to be a Match 5 winner in Britain. The prizes in the UK aren't the same as the US, so winners in that category would be taking home £1 million tax-free, equivalent to $1.3 million. The UK Powerball jackpot was advertised as £543 million, which would have been over twice the value of the biggest jackpot ever won in Britain, and substantially larger than the biggest prize ever won in Europe. Better luck next time!

 

What next for lottery fans?

The jackpots for America's big two lotteries are both pretty low at the moment: $90 million for Mega Millions and the starting $20 million for Powerball. To keep things interesting for players, the 10X Powerball Power Play multiplier has been added to the multiplier draw pool and will remain there until the jackpot passes the $150 million mark.

Meanwhile, over in Britain, the Powerball starting jackpot is £10 million, compared to the current EuroMillions (formerly their biggest lottery) jackpot of £24 million – still a very low jackpot for this game, as it starts at £14 million and can reach over £200 million. EuroMillions tickets are substantially cheaper than UK Powerball tickets, and the odds of winning the jackpot are twice as good as Powerball, so we'd expect UK fans to tune out for the next few draws to play EuroMillions instead.

Depending on your state laws, you might be able to take part in EuroMillions and other international games online! Check out the Tickets Page for more details.