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

After 36 consecutive draws without a winner, a colossal $1.73 billion Powerball jackpot was finally won by a lucky California resident on October 11.

With the billion-dollar prize no longer up for grabs, read on to see where it ranked among the largest lottery jackpots in America's history.

All 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 Powerball numbers (6, 14, 25, 33, 46, and 17), with the holders splitting an incredible $632 million jackpot.

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

In 2013, a $648 million jackpot 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.

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

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

Three winning tickets split the $656 million Mega Millions jackpot on March 30, 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. 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. It raises funds for causes such as poverty alleviation, education, animal welfare, and war veterans.

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

Nobody won the Powerball jackpot between June 5 and October 5, 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 Powerball introduced a third weekly draw on August 23, 2021.

On January 20, 2021, one ticket held the numbers to unlock the entire $731.1 million Powerball jackpot, after the prize money had accumulated 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 February 6 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 November 19 the previous year, meaning the prize money had accumulated over almost three months. A long-term 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 just a few days earlier.

Bell had the option of redeeming 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.

On August 23, 2017, Mavis Wanczyk of Chicopee, Massachusetts claimed the entire Powerball jackpot. The then-53-year-old medical center worker had bought five tickets for the draw, three with numbers she had selected and two Quic Pics. 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) 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 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."

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

In July, one lucky winner scored the $1.08 billion Powerball Jackpot, at the time the third-largest prize in Powerball’s history. The unnamed ticket holder had the option of receiving the prize paid out in annual installments or as a one-time lump sum of $558.1 million before taxes.

The winning ticket was sold at the Las Palmitas Mini Market in Los Angeles, California, which received a $1 million bonus.

A whopping $1.337 billion was won by a single ticket 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 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 planned 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 January 13 that a single ticket holder had the winning numbers. 

Following a series of rollovers, the Mega Millions jackpot had grown to the staggering sum of $1.35 billion.

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," he said.

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, a whopping $723.6 million before taxes. Fred Cotreau and Hometown Gas & Grill received $50,000 for selling the winning ticket, and it was reportedly split among employees.

The anonymous winner of the astonishing $1.537 billion jackpot on October 23, 2018, is known only as "the South Carolinian." You could say that karma had something to do with this mysterious winner’s luck. 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 an annuity over a 29-year period.

A lucky lotto player scooped up an eye-watering $1.58 billion Mega Millions jackpot in the August 8 draw, the fourth-largest in US history. Mega Millions jackpot winners are ultra-rare, with the odds of a player having a ticket that matches all six numbers clocking in at 302.6 million to one.

The unnamed winner bought their ticket at a Publix store in Neptune Beach, Florida, and had the juicy lump-sum option of $783.3 million before taxes. However, the winner was in no hurry to claim the prize, and only did so six weeks after the draw had taken place.

Three lucky Powerball players learned they would be sharing the third biggest lottery windfall of all time on January 13 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 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 of the prize six months after the numbers were drawn.

On October 11, one lucky California resident won the mammoth $1.73 billion Powerball jackpot, the second-largest lottery prize in US history.

The odds of clinching the win were an astonishing one in 292.2 million. To put that into perspective, the odds of being struck by lightning within the next year are one in 1.22 million, according to the US National Weather Service.

The anonymous winner must now decide how to claim their prize: they can opt for the full amount in annual installments over a 30-year period,  or receive a lump-sum cash payment of approximately $774.1 million. The ticket was sold at Midway Market & Liquor in Frazier Park and the winning numbers were 22, 24, 40, 52, 64, and the Powerball 10. 

Last November, a Californian man made history when he won America's largest-ever lottery jackpot: a staggering $2.04 billion. The player was later revealed to be Edwin Castro, who had 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 received 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 lump sum. 

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Now take a look at the biggest unclaimed lottery jackpots ever