No Powerball Winner Wednesday: Jackpot Rolls to an Estimated $600 Million for Saturday

By The News Desk, Previously

October 15, 2026

Wednesday night's numbers — 3, 34, 37, 42, 46 and Powerball 20 — matched no ticket in full, so the jackpot rolls for a 27th straight drawing. One Minnesota ticket did match all five white balls with the Power Play for $2 million.

Check the ticket twice — then check it again on Saturday. No ticket matched all six numbers in Wednesday night's Powerball drawing, USA Today reported, which means the jackpot that has been building since August rolls once more: an estimated $600 million, with a cash option of $246 million, for Saturday night's drawing, according to the Akron Beacon Journal. It is a familiar rhythm now — three drawings a week, three near-misses a week — but the pot has reached the size where the line at the gas station counter starts forming on its own.

The Numbers, and the One Ticket That Came Close

The winning numbers drawn Wednesday night were 3, 34, 37, 42, 46, with the Powerball 20 and a Power Play multiplier of 3x — figures reported consistently by USA Today, the Asbury Park Press and the Detroit Free Press. The jackpot on offer Wednesday had been estimated at $562 million ahead of the drawing, with a cash option of about $230 million.

Nobody hit all six. But somebody in Minnesota came within one red ball of the whole thing: a ticket sold in that state matched all five white balls and had the Power Play added, which doubles the standard $1 million match-five prize to $2 million, the Beacon Journal reported. No ticket matched the five white balls without the Power Play for the flat $1 million prize, according to results tallied after the drawing — a clean sweep of near-misses underneath the headline rollover.

Twenty-Seven Drawings and Counting

The current run dates to the middle of summer. The jackpot was last won on August 12, when a player in Illinois claimed an estimated $1.04 billion prize, USA Today reported — one of the largest in the game's history. Powerball then reset and has rolled ever since, through the drawing we previewed earlier this week in our look at Wednesday's $562 million drawing. Wednesday's miss was the 27th consecutive drawing without a jackpot winner.

That kind of streak is how jackpots get from large to absurd. Each rollover adds tens of millions, each headline pulls in casual players who only buy when the number gets silly, and their tickets thicken the pot further. At an estimated $600 million, Saturday's prize already sits in the tier where office pools organise themselves and every convenience store in 45 states becomes a minor tourist attraction. One more roll on Saturday and Monday's drawing starts pushing toward the game's all-time table.

Where $600 Million Sits in Powerball History

For scale: the largest Powerball jackpot ever won was $2.04 billion, taken by a California ticket in November 2022, according to USA Today's running list of the game's biggest prizes. A $1.817 billion prize followed in Arkansas on Christmas Eve 2025, and a $1.787 billion pot was split between Missouri and Texas in September 2025. Wednesday's pot is nowhere near those records yet — but every jackpot on that list started exactly where this one is tonight, as a midweek rollover that refused to stop.

The cash option tells the more honest story of the prize's size. Saturday's winner, if there is one, can take the $600 million as an annuity paid over decades or as a lump sum estimated at $246 million before taxes. Most winners in the game's history have taken the cash. It is also worth the standard reminder that the advertised figure is the annuity value, and that federal and state taxes will take a significant share of either route.

And If Nobody Wins Saturday, Either

There is a second jackpot quietly growing in the game's shadow. The Mega Millions jackpot stood at an estimated $403 million, with a cash option of $162 million, ahead of its next drawing on Friday, the Bergen Record reported — meaning this weekend offers back-to-back drawings worth a combined billion dollars in advertised prizes. Two games, two nights, one news cycle: lottery officials call weekends like this one the sport's Super Bowl, and retailers tend to agree around Saturday evening.

Should Saturday produce a winner, the practical machinery is well rehearsed. Jackpot winners choose between the annuity — the advertised figure, paid in annual instalments over three decades — and the cash option, and must claim within the window their state allows, which varies. Federal taxes apply either way, and most states tax winnings on top. None of that, of course, is likely to be at the front of anyone's mind at 10:59 p.m. on Saturday. The numbers come out, the country checks its tickets in unison, and by Sunday morning either somebody's life has changed completely or the pot rolls toward Monday at a size that starts bending the news agenda around itself.

How Saturday Works

Powerball drawings are held every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. Eastern. A ticket costs $2; for $1 more, the Power Play multiplies non-jackpot prizes — the feature that turned Minnesota's $1 million ticket into $2 million on Wednesday. Players pick five numbers from 1 to 69 and one Powerball from 1 to 26, or take a computer-generated quick pick. Sales cutoffs vary by state, generally an hour or two before the drawing.

The odds of matching all six numbers are roughly 1 in 292 million, a figure that has never once stopped anyone, including, statistically, most of the people reading this. Saturday night at 10:59 p.m. Eastern, the machine spins again. Until then, the biggest number in American life this week is an estimate with a dollar sign — and it is still growing. The drawing also features in our overnight wrap of the day's major stories.

One final piece of housekeeping for Wednesday's players: a ticket does not have to hit the jackpot to be worth money. Every prize tier below the top was paying out on Wednesday night, down to the $4 for matching the Powerball alone — trebled to $12 for Power Play holders by the 3x multiplier. Tens of thousands of tickets won something small on Wednesday; the Minnesota ticket won something life-altering; and roughly 292 million-to-one worth of tickets won the right to try again on Saturday, when the pot will be bigger, the lines will be longer, and the estimate on the sign will start with a six.