UK Powerball Questions and Answers

Powerball draws are held in Florida, USA, every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday night at 10:59 PM. Due to the difference in time zones, that works out at 3:59 AM in the UK every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. If you want to get the results as soon as they come out, you'll need to set your alarm early!

Tickets can be purchased up to 11:55 PM UK-time on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, and round-the-clock any other day. Sales resume once the draw has taken place.

No, the jackpot was not won, so that means there's a $75,000,000 jackpot up for grabs in the next draw.

Powerball is a super simple lottery to understand. Players must select five Main Numbers from 1 to 69, and a Powerball Number from 1 to 26 from a separate set of numbers. Win prizes by matching as many numbers as possible! Read more on our dedicated How to Play page page.

Yes – like other National Lottery games, you can enter your numbers for multiple draw days, and play up to four weeks in advance.

You won't be able to play Powerball using your National Lottery app from outside the UK, but you might still be able to participate using third-party lottery vendors, although this ultimately depends on the laws and regulations of the country you're in. Visit the Tickets Page to find out if you're able to play and, if so, get started with a vendor.

You can win UK Powerball prizes by matching two or more main numbers, or just the Powerball at a minimum. Match all six of your chosen numbers to win the jackpot! You can view all the different prize tiers on the Odds & Prizes page.

The odds of winning any prize playing UK Powerball are 1 in 14, while the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292,201,338. You can check the full list of odds on our Odds & Prizes page.

The Match-2 prize is fixed at £8, and the Match-5 prize is fixed at £1 million. All the prizes in between are variable, depending on the number of tickets sold in the UK for each given draw. You can check the estimated prizes for each of these tiers over on the Odds & Prizes page.

The Powerball jackpot starts at a fixed $20 million, which is about £12 million in our money.

The prize amounts are calculated on pari-mutuel basis, so a percentage of the overall prize fund is allocated to each of the 13 categories and is then split between winners in each category. Go to the Prizes page for more information.

If you win a Powerball prize, your next steps depend on how much you've won, and whether you played online or with a paper ticket at the shops. Online lottery wins are automatically validated, with most prizes paid into your lottery account automatically. For bigger wins, you may need to contact the National Lottery to make arrangements. The lottery will typically notify you of any online winnings, although you shouldn't rely on these!

If you won a prize with a physical paper ticket worth £500 or less, you'll be able to cash in at any National Lottery retailer. If you won more than this, keep your ticket safe and get in touch with the National Lottery to arrange your prize claim. If you lose or destroy your ticket, you'll be unable to claim any prizes.

UK National Lottery prizes are not subject to taxation. However, Powerball is an American game, where lottery winnings are taxed (quite heavily, too). While it is unlikely for a lottery tax to be implemented in the UK, we are yet to receive clarification from Allwyn and the National Lottery as to how they will handle this aspect of taking part in America's Powerball lottery.

You'll need to make your Powerball prize claim within 180 days of the draw you won, otherwise your ticket will expire and can no longer be used.

The biggest Powerball winner, in fact the biggest lottery winner ever, was Edwin Castro. He purchased his Powerball ticket in California and won an incredible $2.04 billion in 2022. For comparison, that's about £1.5 billion in our money as of April 2026.

No, unfortunately, UK Powerball jackpot winners do not get the option to receive the jackpot all at once – the advertised jackpot is instead paid out as an annuity over 30 years. US winners do get the option to receive a one-time cash prize instead of the annuity if they prefer, although this is substantially less than the advertised jackpot value. You can read about that in more detail in the 'Jackpot' section of our Odds & Prizes page.

There is no jackpot cap or maximum number of rollovers in Powerball, so the jackpot just keeps going up for every draw it goes without being won. The amount it goes up by is based on the ticket sales for that draw, so the rate of increase goes up along with the value of the jackpot as more people start to play!

No. Over 30% of UK Powerball ticket sales will be put towards good causes here in Britain, with the majority of the rest making up prize payments and jackpot contributions. The 30% value is in-line with the takings of each of the US state lotteries - there is no US National Lottery, each state operates its own games, with proceeds remaining within the state.

The biggest ever Powerball jackpot was worth approximately £1.5 billion, about eight times larger than the biggest EuroMillions jackpot won in the UK (£195.7 million). However, the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are approximately 1 in 292.2 million compared to EuroMillions's 1 in 139.8 million – that means the Powerball jackpot is over twice as difficult to win!