Powerball climbed to $348 million for the Saturday, June 27 drawing after nearly two months without a jackpot winner, putting a $158.3 million cash option on the line for players who wanted a shot at the top prize.
Fernando Cervantes Jr. is reporting the drawing as the kind of night Powerball players circle because the jackpot has kept growing while the game stayed unanswered. The next step was simple: wait for the numbers after the 10:59 p.m. ET drawing and see whether the long roll had finally ended.
The last jackpot win came on May 2, when two tickets split $20 million. Since Powerball launched in 1992, the game has produced hundreds of winners, and the rollovers that push the prize higher are part of why the largest jackpots tend to build over time instead of appearing all at once.
That is also why states such as Indiana, Missouri and Pennsylvania are often mentioned when the jackpot climbs. They are among the most common producers of jackpot tickets, a pattern tied to the game’s wide reach and the way players across 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands keep buying into the same drawing.
Powerball tickets cost $2 per play, and players pick six numbers: five white balls from 1 to 69 and one red Powerball from 1 to 26. A $1 Power Play can raise non-jackpot winnings with a 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X or 10X multiplier, while Quick Pick lets the computer choose the numbers for anyone who does not want to build a ticket by hand.
The gap between a nearly two-month drought and a $348 million prize is the story here. No one had hit the jackpot, but the money kept stacking up anyway, and that left Saturday night as the next real checkpoint for every player who had been watching the run.
said it would post the winning numbers after the drawing, and the result will settle the only question that matters now: whether the jackpot keeps rolling into the next Monday, Wednesday or Saturday night drawing, or whether one ticket finally matches all five white balls and the red Powerball.
