Wednesday Powerball Jackpot Climbs To $1.2B: What To Know In NY

NEW YORK — How lucky do you feel, New York? The Powerball jackpot for Wednesday night’s drawing climbed to $1.2 billion after no one matched all six numbers drawn Monday. The cash value of the grand prize is $551.7 million.

Numbers were 12, 26, 27, 43, 47 and red Powerball 5. The Power Play multiplier was 2X.

Winning the jackpot — now the third-largest in Powerball history, and the seventh-largest among U.S. lottery jackpots — is sheer luck. The odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 292.2 million. The odds of winning any prize are better, at 1 in 24.9.

Tickets in New York must have been purchased by 10 p.m. to be eligible for Wednesday’s drawing, which will be held at 10:59 p.m. Eastern Time.

A jackpot winner in Wednesday’s drawing may claim the full prize through annualized payments over 30 years or the cash option, or they may take the $551.7 million cash option. In either case, the winnings are taxable.

More than 2.7 million winning tickets were sold across the country for Monday’s drawing, including two $1 million tickets sold in Delaware and Michigan. Two other tickets, sold in New York and South Carolina, matched all five white balls and increased the $1 million prize to $2 million by including the Power Play feature for an additional $1 per play.

Other big wins from Monday night include 70 tickets that won $50,000 prizes and 12 tickets that won $100,000 prizes.

This marks the first time in Powerball game history that back-to-back jackpot cycles have generated billion-dollar grand prizes. The Powerball jackpot was previously won on July 19 in California, when a single ticket won a jackpot worth $1.08 billion. Since then, there have been 32 consecutive drawings without a grand prize winner.

Powerball tickets are $2 per play. Tickets are sold in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Powerball numbers are drawn three times a week — at 10:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays at the Florida Lottery studio in Tallahassee.