California Powerball (October 2026)
The short version
California pays every Powerball and Mega Millions tier pari-mutuel, so the fixed prizes in the national chart are not what a California ticket wins — and it is the only state that sells no Power Play. At the jackpot standing after the October 7, 2026 draw, the jackpot alone is worth about $0.65 of a $2 ticket. We do not add the lower tiers to that here, because in California they are not the published amounts and we do not yet hold California's own per-draw payouts.
What is different in California
- Ticket price
- $2 a line, all in
- The $2 base ticket, and nothing to add to it.
- Power Play
- Not sold here
- California pays pari-mutuel, and a multiplier cannot be promised against a prize pool that is a fixed share of sales.
- Double Play
- Not sold here
- One of the 18 jurisdictions that do not offer it; the other 30 do.
- Prize structure
- Pari-mutuel
- Every tier is split among that draw's California winners instead of paying a set amount, so the $4, $7, $100, $50,000 and $1,000,000 in the national chart are not what a California ticket wins.
- State withholding
- None
- Has income tax but exempts California Lottery prizes. Federal withholding of 24% applies on top, everywhere.
- Minimum age
- 18
- California State Lottery's own rule. Five jurisdictions set it higher.
Rules read from powerball.com and California State Lottery on 2026-09-22. Withholding rates and the calculator.
What the extra dollar actually buys
Every lottery advertises the add-ons and none of them prices them. They are priceable: the ball pool is published, the prize multiples are published, and neither depends on anything we have to estimate. So here is what a dollar buys in California, next to what the base ticket's non-jackpot prizes are worth per dollar — and the order may surprise you.
| Where the dollar goes | On sale in California? | Returns per $1 | How exact |
|---|---|---|---|
| The base ticket, below the jackpot | Always — it is the ticket | 16c | Exact. Fixed prizes, published odds. |
| Power Play (+$1) | Not sold here | 46c–50c | Exact. The range is the 10× ball, which is only in the drum below a $150 million jackpot. |
| Double Play (+$1) | Not sold here | 53c | Exact, and the only one with no jackpot in it at all. |
Read the column again: the add-ons return roughly three times what the base ticket's own prize table does. That is not an argument for buying them — every row is still a loss, and the base ticket's missing value is in the jackpot, which the add-ons mostly do not touch. It is an argument that "Power Play is a rip-off, just buy more lines" is the opposite of what the arithmetic says. None of it applies in California, where neither add-on is sold and the prizes are not fixed in the first place.
Power Play multiplies everything except two tiers: the jackpot, which it never touches, and Match 5, which goes from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 on a 2× and stays at $2,000,000 on a 10×. Pricing it as mean multiplier × prize table — which is what every explainer does — overstates it by more than half.
What a California ticket is worth right now
The advertised jackpot is $516 million. The cash value is about $212 million, because the headline is a 30-year annuity and nobody takes it. At that jackpot our sales model puts the chance of having to share a win at enough that a winning ticket is worth 89% of the prize on average rather than all of it. California withholds nothing, so only the federal 24% comes off. What a California winner keeps after tax, beside every other state.
These figures are the jackpot term only. Everywhere else we would add what the lower tiers return — $0.32 per ticket — but those are the fixed national amounts and California does not pay them; its tiers are split among its own winners and move every draw. California State Lottery publishes the actual amount each tier paid, draw by draw, and until we hold that history there is no honest California figure to add, so we add nothing rather than borrow a number from the other 47 jurisdictions. The national chart is on the Powerball page.
Hot and cold numbers
The drawing is national, so the frequencies are too — there is no California hot number, only a Powerball one. Over 1,417 draws of the current 5/69 + 1/26 matrix, 21 has come up most (127 times against 103 expected) and 51 has waited longest, 57 draws.
21 has come up most often, 127 times. Each number averages about 103 over 1,417 draws, and whichever number happens to lead normally finishes around 23 ahead. 21 is 24 ahead, so this is an ordinary spread rather than a streak. 13 has come up least, 77 times.
California's own draw games
Powerball is the same everywhere. These are not — California State Lottery runs them, and we hold their full history.
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Daily · 362 draws on file
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Daily · 182 draws on file
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Daily · 182 draws on file
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Wednesday · Saturday · 106 draws on file
All California lottery results →
California Powerball questions
- Can you buy Power Play in California?
- No. California is the only jurisdiction that does not sell Power Play, because its prizes are pari-mutuel — a fixed share of sales — and a multiplier cannot be guaranteed against a pool that has not been counted yet.
- Is Double Play available in California?
- No. 30 of the 48 Powerball lotteries offer Double Play and California is not one of them, so a California ticket tops out at $2 a line. powerball.com publishes the list, and says more lotteries may add it later.
- How much tax does California take from a Powerball win?
- California withholds nothing — has income tax but exempts california lottery prizes. The 24% federal withholding still applies, and your federal bill is settled at filing. The calculator does the arithmetic.
- Are Powerball prizes in California the same as the national prize chart?
- No, and this is the difference that catches people out. California pays every tier pari-mutuel: the money for each tier is split among that draw's California winners, so the $4, $7, $100, $50,000 and $1,000,000 in the chart on powerball.com are what a ticket in the other 47 jurisdictions wins, not what a California ticket wins. The actual amounts move draw by draw with sales.
- How old do you have to be to play Powerball in California?
- 18. California State Lottery sets it, and a winning ticket has to be claimed in the jurisdiction where it was bought.
- Where were the California Powerball numbers drawn?
- In Tallahassee, Florida, like every Powerball drawing — one drawing serves all 48 jurisdictions. The numbers on this page are the same numbers as everywhere else; what the page adds is what they are worth to a California ticket. The national analysis is here.
Where these facts come from
The winning numbers are cross-checked against more than one official source before they go up —
every source and every correction is listed. The
California-specific rules were read from
powerball.com and
California State Lottery on 2026-09-22, and
bao draws jurisdictions re-reads the published lists on every run and fails if
either has moved. How the expected values are computed.