Lottery jackpots are often life-changing, but the biggest prizes in American lottery history are truly mind-blowing.

As the identity of one lucky winner in Washington is announced, read on as we count down the biggest jackpots ever – and reveal who claimed them if known. All dollar amounts in US dollars. 

The year 2022 got off to a winning start for two lucky lottery ticket holders. On 5 January, two tickets matched all six of the Powerball numbers (6, 14, 25, 33, 46 and 17), enabling the ticket holders to split an incredible $632.6 million jackpot. Powerball claimed that "strong ticket sales" had sent the jackpot skyrocketing above $630 million.

One of the winning tickets was bought in Wisconsin, while the other was bought at a 7-Eleven store in Sacramento, California. Coincidentally, January is apparently one of the most popular months for lottery jackpots, with three of America's top 10 jackpots all having been claimed in the first month of the year. That could certainly cure the January blues...

In 2013, the 10th-biggest lottery jackpot in American history was split between two lucky Mega Millions winners: an anonymous player who purchased their ticket in San Jose, California, and Ira Curry, a 56-year-old who bought her ticket at a Gateway Newstand in Atlanta, Georgia.

While the Californian winner remains a mystery and Curry didn’t show at Atlanta’s lottery announcement, Thuy Nguyen, the owner of Jenny’s Gift Shop where the winning ticket was sold in San Jose, welcomed the publicity, saying "I feel good! I feel good! Come to my store!" in an interview with NBC Bay Area.

Rules differ from state to state, but California’s regulations mean that Nguyen got a $1.5 million slice of the winnings for selling one of the jackpot-winning tickets. He had only taken over the store four months before. 

Three winning tickets split the $656 million Mega Millions jackpot on 30 March 2012, giving each winner a healthy $218.6 million windfall. One winning pair, Merle and Patricia Butler (pictured) from Illinois, told a press conference: "We are just everyday people who have worked hard all our life, who love our family and our city, pay our taxes and try and keep up with all the work that’s involved in owning and maintaining a house." The couple's share was the largest lottery win in Illinois Lottery history.

A group of friends from Maryland known as The Three Amigos laid claim to another portion of the cash after buying 60 tickets between them, while the Kansas Lottery revealed that the third ticket was bought somewhere in the northeast of the state, but the winner remains anonymous.

Lerynne West (pictured) from Redfield, Iowa described her win as “a life-changing moment” when she stepped up to claim half of the $687.8 million Powerball jackpot on 27 October 2018. The 51-year-old had accidentally left the ticket in her sister's pick-up truck, and only when the winner was announced as an Iowan did she go back and retrieve it from her sibling's vehicle.

After winning the jackpot, West set up the Callum Foundation, named after her late grandson who was born prematurely and died after a day, which raises funds for causes such as poverty alleviation, education, animal welfare and war veterans.

The other $343.9 million half of the jackpot went to a mystery Powerball player who picked up the ticket at West Harlem Deli Corp convenience store in New York.

Nobody won the Powerball jackpot between 5 June and 5 October 2021, allowing the winnings to rack up over almost four months. An anonymous Powerball player bought a ticket at a grocery store in Morro Bay, California (pictured). After matching all six numbers, the lucky winner netted a staggering $699.8 million jackpot. 

Not only did the jackpot make history as the seventh-biggest lottery win in America at the time, but it was also the first jackpot won on a Monday night since the Powerball introduced a third weekly draw on 23 August 2021.

On 20 January 2021, one ticket held the numbers to unlock the entire $731.1 million Powerball jackpot, after the prize money had been accumulating for months without a winner. The ticket was bought at Coney Market convenience store in Lonaconing, Maryland, by a member of an anonymous group known as The Power Pack.

The store received a $100,000 bonus for selling the winning ticket. Owner Richard Ravenscroft told The New York Times: "We were surprised and very happy. We don’t know for who, but we are happy for somebody." Maryland is one of only nine states that allow winners to conceal their identities if they land a lottery jackpot. The group took the cash prize of $546.8 million, which left them with an estimated $366 million to split after taxes.

On 6 February this year, Powerball player Becky Bell from Washington state netted $754.6 million with the numbers 05, 11, 22, 23, 69, and the Powerball 07. Bell was the first person to win the jackpot since 19 November last year, meaning the prize money had accumulated over almost three months. A longterm employee of Boeing, she chose to buy a second ticket after seeing that the jackpot totaled $747 million – a number she believed to be a sign, as Boeing had delivered its final 747 jumbo jet just a few days earlier.

Bell could choose to redeem her prize as an immediate cash payment of $407.2 million, or as an annuity distributed in one partial payout with additional payments over the next 29 years, increasing by 5% every year. She chose the cash option, which means she took home a lump sum of $309.5 million after taxes. It's the fifth largest Powerball prize in the lottery game's history.

On 23 August 2017, Mavis Wanczyk of Chicopee, Massachusetts was able to claim the entire Powerball jackpot. The 53-year-old medical center worker had bought five tickets for the draw, three with numbers she had selected and two Quic Pics, and it was one of her number combinations that came up trumps on the night.

Wanczyk’s winning ticket was a mixture of family birthdates and her lucky number four. She opted to take her winnings in one lower lump sum payment of $480.5 million, which amounted to $336.35 million after tax, rather than an annuity.

Just one lucky ticket holder scooped the top prize of $768.4 million on the Powerball lottery in March 2019. Manuel Franco (pictured on the right), who was 24, bought $10-worth of tickets at a Speedway store in New Berlin, Wisconsin. And he had a sense that luck might be on his side: "I honestly felt so lucky that I did look up at the camera [in the store] and I wanted to wink at it cause I just had that lucky feeling."

At a press conference after his win, Franco also said that he wanted to use the money to "help out the world." He added: "I'm sure you'll never see me as like one of the people who went bankrupt or broke or anything like that."

Just two days after the incredible $731.1 million Powerball jackpot was won on 20 January 2021, one Mega Millions ticket matched the numbers needed to bag the lottery’s $1.05 billion top prize. The jackpot had rolled over a record 37 times, growing since 15 September 2020, hence the eye-watering sum.

A four-person syndicate known as the Wolverine FLL Club split a lump sum of $557 million after taxes. They bought the ticket at a Kroger store in the Detroit suburb of Novi in Michigan, with the grocery store chain donating its $50,000 commission to the Food Bank Council of Michigan.

A whopping $1.337 billion was won by a single ticket sold in Des Plaines, Illinois (pictured) in July 2022. The ticket was bought at a Speedway gas station, but the lucky winner wasn't quick to come forward, prompting the Illinois Lottery Director Harold Mays to "encourage everybody to check [their] ticket."

The record-breaking jackpot was originally estimated to max out at $1.28 billion, but the total kept climbing as nobody had won the Mega Millions jackpot since mid-April. Eight weeks after the lottery was drawn, two players who wished to keep their identities anonymous finally claimed the prize, which they reportedly plan to take as a lump sum of $780.6 million split between them. 

Friday the 13th is usually thought to be unlucky, but that certainly wasn't the case for one lottery player earlier this year. After three months of Mega Millions draws failing to produce a winner, it was announced on 13 January that a single ticket holder had the winning numbers. 

Following a number of rollovers, the Mega Millions jackpot had grown to the staggering sum of $1.35 billion, making it the fourth-biggest prize in US lottery history.

For the first time, the winning Mega Millions ticket was purchased in Maine, having been sold at Hometown Gas & Grill (pictured) in the town of Lebanon. Fred Cotreau, the owner, told CNN that he thought the call from the lottery office was a scam at first: "It’s almost incomprehensible to wrap your head around how much it would change somebody’s life, regardless of your status and where you are, to get that kind of payout."

The lucky winner came forward via a limited company, which meant their identity didn't need to be revealed. They chose the lump sum option, meaning they'll get $723.6 million before taxes. Fred Cotreau and Hometown Gas & Grill get $50,000 for selling the winning ticket, which he has reportedly split among employees.

The anonymous winner of the astonishing $1.537 billion jackpot up for grabs on 23 October 2018 is known only as "the South Carolinian." You could say that karma had something to do with this mysterious winner’s luck, as they had allowed a fellow customer to go ahead of them to buy a lottery ticket in the line at a KC Mart convenience store in Simpsonville, South Carolina just before they bought their winning Mega Millions ticket.

It was also the first time that the Palmetto State had profited from such a huge win, and South Carolina claimed $61 million in income taxes from the unidentified winner. The winner opted to take $877.78 million in a cash lump sum rather than the full sum in an annuity over a 29-year period.

Three lucky Powerball players learned they would be sharing what was until recently the biggest lottery windfall of all time on 13 January 2016, when their numbers came up for an incredible $1.584 billion jackpot. The historic event was a cross-state affair, with the winners having bought their tickets in California, Florida, and Tennessee.

Married couple Maureen Smith and David Kaltschmidt from Florida (pictured on the right) set up The Nickel 95 Trust to manage their $327.8 million windfall. Despite the huge win, the couple didn’t make any drastic lifestyle changes, and reportedly still do their grocery shopping at the Publix store where Maureen bought the winning ticket. The couple also still plays the lottery each week, according to a report by the Daily Mail.

Lisa and Johnson Robinson from Munford were Tennessee’s jackpot winners, and Californians Marvin and Mae Acosta claimed the remaining third six months after the numbers were drawn.

Last November, a Californian man made history when he won America's largest-ever lottery jackpot: a staggering $2.04 billion. That player has just been revealed to be Edwin Castro, who matched all six Powerball numbers after purchasing a ticket at Joe's Service Center in Altadena. 

According to state law, Castro's identity had to be made public, but he "respectfully declined" to appear at the news conference. Instead, California Lottery representatives read a statement he shared, in which he said: "As much as I am shocked and ecstatic to have won the Powerball drawing, the real winner is the California Public School system." The school system won a record-breaking $156.3 million that was raised through lottery ticket sales, while Joe Chahayed of Joe's Service Center also received a $1 million windfall for selling the winning ticket.

Castro was able to choose to receive 30 equal payments of roughly $63 million per year or a lump sum of around $929 million. But although the total sum is a new record, CNN has noted that the winners of the 2016 Powerball jackpot actually walked away with a larger cash prize. Recent interest rate hikes have boosted the size of their annuity payments, so the total amount that would be dispensed through those payments is much higher than the cash sum. 

Now take a look at the biggest unclaimed lottery jackpots ever