Powerball jackpot rises to $535 million, up for grabs Saturday evening

The next chance for lottery players to potentially land the over half-billion-dollar Powerball jackpot will come later Saturday.

The up-for-grabs grand prize, for which Powerball will draw at 10:59 p.m. Eastern, had an annuitized pre-tax value of $535 million as of Friday, according to the lottery.

No jackpot winner from Wednesday’s drawing helped boost it $35 million to that level. Its value officially reached the halfway point to $1 billion ahead of that drawing. 

Four smaller winners did arise out of the Wednesday drawing. Two people got $1 million from Match 5, and another two saw $2 million windfalls via the “Power Play(r) feature,” Powerball said.

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The current size of the grand prize, worth $268.2 million as a one-time cash payout, has been increasing for over two months at this point. 

Chances of Powerball players hitting the jackpot are 1-in-292.2-million, according to the lottery. The odds have been that way since 2015, when lottery officials rolled out an updated matrix.

Someone last hit the Powerball jackpot on Oct. 11, landing a whopping $1.765 billion. That grand prize was “the second-largest Powerball jackpot and U.S. lottery jackpot ever won,” Powerball said at the time.

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The only other billion-dollar Powerball jackpot so far this year happened in July. That $1.08 billion windfall went to someone with a winning ticket in California, according to the lottery.

Three other jackets were $162.6 million, 252.6 million and $754.6 million, respectively.

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Last week, Mega Millions saw a pair of tickets match all the white balls and the single gold ball needed to win the then-$394 million jackpot. A Chevron gas station in Encino, California sold both of them, according to the lottery.

Powerball’s $1.765 billion windfall in October appeared to represent the largest jackpot of 2023.