All-time ranking · both games · 605 jackpots
The largest U.S. lottery jackpots ever won
Ranked by finalized cash — the prize pool itself, the money each winner could actually take. Jackpots without a finalized cash figure are listed unranked, at the end. Nominal dollars — each jackpot as its year stated it.
339 of 605 jackpots have a finalized cash figure — earlier drawings often published only the annuity headline. The rest are still listed, marked “not finalized,” after the ranked set.
Final cash = the finalized prize pool — the lump sum, the money itself. Final annuity = the finalized 30-year headline, a derived figure: what that pool could buy in securities priced when the operator bought them. It moves with interest rates, independent of the pool. Kept, est. = the finalized cash after the 37% top federal bracket applied through the full 2026 schedule, plus the winning state’s final rate on winnings; local taxes are excluded. Multi-state splits: even shares, each share taxed in its own state, summed — the total all winners kept, not any one winner’s. “Not finalized” marks figures the game never published — absent in the source, not zero. Where a kept figure is withheld entirely, the row says why.
What the data says
Findings
n = 605 · both games · 1992–2026Each claim is computed from the full dataset at build; its method is under the claim.
Concentration
Every one of the twenty largest jackpots by finalized annuity came after October 2015 — the month Powerball lengthened its odds.
Count of the top 20 by finalized annuity with a draw date after 2015-10-04, over the full 605-jackpot set. There is no exception.
The headline gap
The headline inflated; the pool did not shrink. Since 2022 the same cash pool has funded a 30-year headline about 2.01× its size — against 1.81× across the full dataset. Interest rates price the headline, not the prize.
Mean of finalized annuity ÷ finalized cash, weighted equally per jackpot, over the 339 jackpots with both figures finalized. Post-2022 subset: 61 jackpots. The annuity is what the pool buys in 30-year securities at that year’s rates, so the ratio moves with rates while the pool stays the pool.
Where they land
California has produced 13 of the 50 largest jackpots by finalized annuity.
Winning-state counts over the top 50 by finalized annuity; a split drawing counts once for each state that sold a winning ticket. Draws whose winning state is not established are excluded from the count, not from the ranking.
Doubling time
The record finalized annuity has doubled roughly every 7.0 years since 2002.
Log-linear fit on the running maximum of finalized annuity, 2002–2026 (25 annual maxima). R² = 0.91. The endpoints are $315M and $2.04B; end to end those alone imply a doubling every 8.9 years — the fit is faster because it follows every step between them, not just the two ends. Records before the 2002 big-game consolidation are excluded as a different product.
What winners kept
Across the top 100 by finalized annuity, the median winner kept an estimated 32.4% of that headline — roughly one-third of the 30-year figure the game stood behind.
Kept ÷ finalized annuity, median over the 76 of the top 100 that carry a kept figure. Kept is finalized cash after the 2026 federal brackets and the winning state’s rate, from the same engine the state pages use. Splits: even shares, each taxed in its own state, summed. Local taxes excluded. Advertised figures are not used here.
If you want tonight’s number made concrete: what this jackpot would pay after tax in your state →
Estimates for entertainment purposes, not tax advice. Rates from public sources; your actual outcome depends on your full tax situation. Sources: operator per-draw records, cross-checked against each state lottery’s published results; where the two disagree the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved silently. Kept-after-tax estimates use today’s rates, not the rates of the year the jackpot was won, and your own bill depends on your full return. State rates verified against official state sources on July 13, 2026. None of this is investment advice. Someday does not sell lottery tickets and is not affiliated with Powerball, Mega Millions, or any state lottery.