Powerball jackpot stays dark as $154 million rolls to next Monday draw

ORLANDO, FL — May 26, 2026

No one matched all six numbers in Monday's Powerball drawing, sending the $154 million jackpot forward to the next scheduled draw. The winning numbers were 17, 32, 48, 60, 64, and Powerball 10, with a 2x Power Play multiplier in effect.

The rollover extended what has become a familiar pattern for Powerball in late May: a string of smaller jackpots cycling through the multi-state drawing pool without a grand-prize winner to reset the board. The $154 million figure represents the second-lowest jackpot in Powerball's advertised range this year, underscoring a period of persistent rollovers that have reshaped ticket-buying dynamics and secondary-prize patterns across the participating 45 states.

The numbers in context

The five white balls drawn Monday — 17, 32, 48, 60, 64 — clustered in the upper half of the 1-to-69 range, with three balls (48, 60, 64) falling in the top quartile. This skew toward higher numbers is unremarkable for a single drawing; across millions of tickets, any distribution of five balls from a field of 69 occurs with equal frequency. What matters is what the draw produced at each prize tier.

No player matched the full six-number combination. One player did match five white balls and the Powerball when the Power Play multiplier was engaged, winning $2 million. A second tier of nine players matched five white balls without the Powerball, each collecting $1 million. Below that, the secondary prizes cascaded through the usual distribution: 133 players won $100,000 (matching four white balls plus the Powerball), 329 won $100 (matching four white balls), 8,605 won $7 (matching three white balls plus the Powerball), and so on down to the $4 and $7 tiers.

The Power Play 2x multiplier doubled the non-jackpot winnings for those who selected it, creating a secondary-prize payout structure worth tracking. Of the estimated 58,044 players who matched three white balls on a Power Play ticket, 20,614 chose the multiplier, effectively doubling their $4 payout to $8 per ticket.

A jackpot that isn't growing

The $154 million jackpot heading into Monday's draw reset to an estimated $142 million for the next Powerball event on Wednesday, May 27, with a cash-value option of $62.6 million. The decline reflects how Powerball's annuity structure works: the advertised jackpot represents the 30-year annuity value, but the underlying lump-sum pool shrinks slightly with each rollover because ticket sales feed into the prize fund. When no one wins, the percentage allocated to the jackpot tier carries forward, but the absolute dollar amount of new ticket sales — and thus the prize fund itself — may be smaller.

Monday's result marked the third consecutive drawing without a grand-prize winner. The last Powerball jackpot hit on May 14, when a ticket in California claimed a $88 million prize. That winner took an approximate $42 million cash option, leaving the game to begin its current rollover cycle anew.

The absence of a jackpot winner is not unusual in May. Historically, late spring and early summer see lower ticket sales relative to winter and early fall — patterns that correlate with warmer weather, outdoor activities, and reduced consumer lottery spending. A $154 million jackpot, while substantial, does not trigger the viral marketing or media attention that a $300 million or $400 million jackpot generates. Ticket volume responds accordingly, creating a self-reinforcing cycle: lower sales mean lower prize funds, which means lower advertised jackpots, which means lower ticket volume on the next draw.

Odds and the math behind Monday's silence

The odds of matching all six numbers in Powerball are 1 in 292,201,338. To put that in perspective: if every adult in New York City (roughly 8.3 million people) bought a single Powerball ticket, approximately 28 of them would expect to win the jackpot based purely on frequency. The actual count on Monday was zero.

This is not a sign of bad luck, rigged outcomes, or statistical anomalies. It is the predictable result of probability. Powerball draws 3 times per week — approximately 156 drawings per year across the multi-state network. Over a typical year, the expected number of grand-prize winners falls between zero and two, depending on ticket-sales volumes. Seeing three consecutive drawings without a winner is well within the normal range of outcomes.

The secondary-prize tiers paint a different picture. Matching five white balls (odds: 1 in 11,688,053) produced nine winners on Monday. Matching four white balls and the Powerball (odds: 1 in 913,129) produced 133 winners. These are rare but not shocking outcomes when tens of millions of tickets are in play across participating states.

"The Powerball game is structured to return funds to participating states and their retailers while offering players a range of prize opportunities across multiple tiers," the Multi-State Lottery Association noted in its game-design documentation. Powerball's payout structure allocates roughly 50 percent of ticket sales to the overall prize fund, with approximately 36 percent of that pool directed to the jackpot tier and the remainder divided among secondary prizes.

What comes next

Wednesday's Powerball drawing will offer an estimated $142 million jackpot, or $62.6 million in a lump-sum cash option. That figure assumes ticket sales similar to Monday's volume and no significant surge in public interest. Should a multi-state media event or celebrity mention drive a spike in ticket purchases, the jackpot estimate could rise by Wednesday afternoon — lottery officials revise estimates daily as sales data flows in from retailers across the 45 participating states plus D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The next major threshold for Powerball is $200 million. Historical data shows that jackpots in that range and above generate measurable spikes in ticket sales, particularly among casual players. At $154 million, Monday's draw likely attracted a baseline audience of regular players and a modest portion of occasional ticket buyers. Another two or three rollovers without a winner could push the jackpot well into that more attention-grabbing range — though there is no guarantee. A ticket could win on Wednesday, Wednesday's draw could roll over, or the cycle could extend for weeks.

The last time Powerball saw a jackpot surpass $500 million was in January 2024, when a ticket in Washington claimed a $747.3 million annuity (or $373.8 million cash). That winning ticket came after a 34-draw rollover streak — a reminder that the path from $150 million to $500 million can be swift when ticket sales accelerate across the participating states.

Even at $154 million, a Powerball jackpot offers a fixed prize only in the sense that the annuity amount is locked in at the moment of claim. The actual expected value per ticket remains negative. A $2 ticket yielding a potential $154 million return (30-year annuity, pre-tax) translates to odds of 1 in 292,201,338, which means the mathematical expectation per ticket is approximately $0.53 against a $2 cost. Buying more tickets improves those odds only trivially — a $100 ticket purchase still leaves a player facing the same underlying mathematics. Players should spend only what they can afford to lose.

The next Powerball drawing is scheduled for Wednesday, May 27, 2026, at 10:59 PM ET. Players in all participating states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands can purchase tickets up until the cutoff time, which varies by state but typically falls 1-2 hours before the official drawing.

Sources

• Powerball May 25, 2026 draw results: powerball.com/draw-result
• Multi-State Lottery Association game rules and structure: musl.com/powerball
• Powerball odds and prize structure: powerball.com/games/powerball