Santa can deliver the best Christmas gift to someone on the nice list this year: the $1.7 billion Powerball jackpot.
The winning numbers of the largest Biggest Powerball jackpot in history chosen in Wednesday’s draw were: 4, 25, 31, 52 and 59 with Powerball 19.
The jackpot is the second largest in the game this year after 46 consecutive drawings without a winner.
A $1.787 million Powerball jackpot won in September by two tickets in Missouri and Texas was the second-largest prize in U.S. lottery history.
In this July 18, 2023, file photo, Powerball game tickets are shown at a convenience store in Los Angeles.
Mario Tama/Getty Images, FILE
If no one wins, the next draw will be on Saturday, December 27.
The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in more than 292 million. according to Powerball.
Customers line up to buy lottery tickets on December 1, 2025 in Hawthorne, California.
Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Tim Chartier, a professor of mathematics and computer science at Davidson College, compares trying to win the Powerball jackpot to those odds of selecting a specific second over a nine-year span and then trying to guess that specific second. He told ABC News that buying more tickets increases a player’s chances of winning, but only marginally.
“If you buy 100 tickets, it’s true that you actually multiply your chances of winning by 100,” Chartier said, but he also noted that “buying 100 tickets is like having only 100 guesses to guess that second in a nine-year span, so it’s still not very likely.”
An employee displays Powerball lottery tickets at a convenience store on December 19, 2025 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Powerball winners can choose between a lump sum cash payment of $781.3 million or an annualized prize of the full amount that would be paid in annual payments. Both amounts are before taxes.
To win the jackpot, players must purchase a $2 Powerball ticket and select five white numbers between 1 and 69 and one red Powerball number between 1 and 26. The prize grows until someone matches all five white numbers in any order and the red Powerball.
You can see the drawing. live in the Powerball website.
Top 10 Powerball Jackpots and Winning States
1. $2.04 billion – November 7, 2022 – California
2. $1.787 billion – September 6, 2025 – Missouri, Texas
3. $1,765 million – October 11, 2023 – California
4. $1.7 billion (current estimated jackpot)
5. $1,586 billion – January 13, 2016 – California, Florida, Tennessee
6. $1.326 billion – April 6, 2024 – Oregon
7. $1.08 billion – July 19, 2023 – California
8. $842.4 million – January 1, 2024 – Michigan
9. $768.4 million – March 27, 2019 – Wisconsin
10. $758.7 million – August 23, 2017 – Massachusetts
