Illinois Lottery Player Wins $1.04 Billion Powerball Jackpot, Eighth-Largest Ever

An Illinois lottery player hit Wednesday night’s Powerball jackpot of $1.04 billion, the eighth-largest in Powerball history and the second-largest lottery prize ever won in Illinois. The winning ticket was purchased at Hy-Vee Gas in Quincy, Illinois, a small city along the Mississippi River near the Missouri border.

The ticket matched all six numbers drawn Wednesday night — 4, 26, 66, 67, 69, and Powerball 9 — to claim the grand prize outright, with no other winning tickets sold nationwide. The jackpot is the largest Powerball prize won anywhere in the country so far in 2026, and it snaps a lengthy stretch of rollovers that had pushed the pot from its $20 million starting point all the way past the billion-dollar mark.

A Big Payday for the Retailer, Too

Hy-Vee Gas in Quincy will collect a $500,000 bonus from the Illinois Lottery for selling the jackpot-winning ticket, a standard incentive lotteries use to reward retailers when a massive prize is claimed at their location. It’s the kind of windfall that can put a small-town gas station on the map overnight, and it follows a familiar pattern in Powerball history — many of the game’s biggest jackpots have been claimed at unassuming convenience stores and gas stations rather than big-city retailers.

The jackpot itself remains unclaimed as of now. Under Illinois Lottery rules, the ticket holder has one year from the drawing date to come forward and claim the prize. Lottery officials are urging whoever is holding the ticket to sign the back of it immediately and store it somewhere secure until they’re ready to step forward — standard advice for the holder of any prize this size, since an unsigned ticket can complicate ownership claims.

Illinois Lottery Director Praises the Win

“This is an exciting day for Illinois,” Illinois Lottery Director Harold Mays said in a statement. “We’re thrilled for the winner and the retailer that sold the winning ticket. Beyond celebrating this incredible win, every Powerball ticket purchased during this jackpot run also helped generate funding for Illinois public schools, demonstrating how the Lottery continues to benefit communities across the state.”

That funding angle is a meaningful part of the story. Since the current jackpot run began on May 4, Illinois players purchased more than $53.8 million worth of Powerball tickets, generating in excess of $21.5 million for the state’s Common School Fund, which supports K-12 public education across Illinois. The longer a jackpot rolls without a winner, the more ticket sales — and school funding — it tends to generate, and this run was no exception.

Where It Ranks Among Powerball’s Biggest Wins

At $1.04 billion, Wednesday’s jackpot slots in as the eighth-largest in Powerball’s history, behind marquee jackpots like the record $2.04 billion won in California in November 2022, the $1.787 billion split between Missouri and Texas tickets in September 2025, and the $1.765 billion California jackpot from October 2023. It’s also only the second time Illinois has produced a lottery jackpot of this magnitude, trailing just one other prize in state history.

For sports and casino bettors who track odds and long-shot payouts for a living, jackpots like this are a useful reminder of just how rare a true long-shot hit is — Powerball’s odds of matching all six numbers sit at roughly 1 in 292 million per ticket. Anyone looking to chase a similar life-changing payout with better odds might find more favorable long-term value browsing casino game options or checking out the latest social casinos promotions instead.

With the Illinois ticket still unclaimed, all eyes now turn to whether the winner comes forward publicly or opts to remain anonymous, as several recent billion-dollar jackpot winners have chosen to do.