August 26, 2026
Monday's Powerball draw produced no jackpot winner and not a single Match 5 ticket, yet twelve players still hit the tier below — and for seven of them the Power Play multiplier turned $50,000 into $100,000 apiece. With the top prize rolling again, Wednesday's estimated jackpot climbs to $96 million.
Powerball did what Powerball usually does on a Monday night: it kept its jackpot. Nobody matched all six numbers on 24 August, nobody even managed a Match 5, and the top prize rolled straight over toward a figure that tends to wake up casual players — $96 million for Wednesday. The interesting story, though, is one tier further down the prize table, where a one-dollar add-on quietly doubled seven people's night.
Date: 24 August 2026
Numbers: 3 · 16 · 33 · 38 · 68, Powerball 2
Advertised jackpot: $83 million ($35.5 million cash)
Jackpot winners: none — and no Match 5 tickets either
Match 4 + Powerball: 12 tickets — five at $50,000, seven at $100,000
Power Play multiplier: 2x
Next draw (Wednesday): an estimated $96 million, or $41.2 million as a lump sum
The dollar that made the difference
The tier that paid out on Monday is the one for tickets matching four white balls plus the red Powerball. It carries a fixed $50,000 prize, and twelve players landed on it. Five of them collected exactly that. The other seven collected twice as much.
The only thing separating the two groups was the Power Play option — the optional extra that multiplies non-jackpot prizes by whatever figure is drawn that night. Monday's multiplier came up 2x, so $50,000 became $100,000 for everyone who had ticked the box. Same numbers, same odds, same night: one small decision at the point of purchase, and the payout doubles.
Saturday told a similar story
The pattern repeated itself two draws earlier. Saturday's game also failed to produce a Match 5, leaving the same four-plus-Powerball tier at the top of the payout list. That night the multiplier came in higher — 3x — and three tickets with Power Play active turned the standard $50,000 into $150,000 each.
Back-to-back draws with no Match 5 winner is not especially unusual, but it is what keeps a jackpot climbing at pace. Every rollover pushes the advertised figure up and pulls in the players who only buy when the number is big enough to make the news — which in turn accelerates the next increase.
Coming off a billion-dollar run
The current rollover is starting from a low base for a reason: the jackpot was reset only a handful of draws ago, and it was reset by an enormous win. A player in Illinois took the full $1 billion top prize — the second-largest jackpot ever won in that state, behind only the $1.33 billion claimed there in 2022, and the sixth Powerball jackpot to fall in 2026.
So the run that ended with an Illinois billionaire has already restarted. At $96 million the seventh jackpot of the year is not yet in headline territory by Powerball's own extraordinary standards, but it is close to the psychological $100 million line — the point at which ticket sales historically start climbing sharply.
What Wednesday actually offers
The $96 million figure is the annuity value, paid out in instalments over decades. A winner who would rather have the money now takes $41.2 million before tax instead — the split that every jackpot winner has to weigh, and one that looks very different depending on age, tax residency and what the money is meant to do.
And for everyone who does not match six numbers, which is virtually everyone, the interesting question is the one Monday's twelve players answered two different ways: whether the multiplier is worth the extra dollar. On a 2x night it was worth $50,000 to seven of them.
Prize figures are as announced at the time of writing and remain subject to official verification by the lottery operator; jackpot estimates can change before a draw. Gambling involves risk and isn't for everyone — please play responsibly, set your limits, and if it stops being fun, take a break.
