Delaware Powerball (September 2026)
The short version
Delaware sells Powerball on the standard terms: the national prize chart is what you are paid, and both $1 add-ons are available. At the jackpot standing after the September 16, 2026 draw, one $2 ticket bought in Delaware is worth $0.76 — 38 cents on the dollar, and Delaware withholds nothing from it.
What is different in Delaware
- Ticket price
- $4 a line, all in
- $2 base plus $1 each for Power Play and Double Play.
- Power Play
- On sale — $1
- Multiplies every prize below the jackpot by 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10. We make the extra dollar worth about 46c.
- Double Play
- On sale — $1
- A second drawing of the same numbers, every prize fixed, top prize $10 million. Worth about 53c per dollar — the best-value dollar on the ticket.
- Prize structure
- Fixed, as the chart
- The published amounts are what you are paid — Delaware does not adjust them for sales.
- State withholding
- None
- Exempts lottery prizes from withholding. Federal withholding of 24% applies on top, everywhere.
- Minimum age
- 18
- Delaware Lottery's own rule. Five jurisdictions set it higher.
Rules read from powerball.com and Delaware 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 Delaware, 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 Delaware? | 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) | Yes | 46c–50c | Exact. The range is the 10× ball, which is only in the drum below a $150 million jackpot. |
| Double Play (+$1) | Yes | 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.
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 Delaware ticket is worth right now
The advertised jackpot is $271 million. The cash value is about $136 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 95% of the prize on average rather than all of it. Delaware withholds nothing, so only the federal 24% comes off.
The withholding only comes off the jackpot term here, not off the whole figure. Nearly all of a ticket's non-jackpot value sits in the $4.00 and $7.00 tiers, which no state withholds on; taxing those too would push the number down in a way that happens to flatter our own conclusion, so we do not. The draw-by-draw chart behind this is on the Powerball page.
Hot and cold numbers
The drawing is national, so the frequencies are too — there is no Delaware hot number, only a Powerball one. Over 1,409 draws of the current 5/69 + 1/26 matrix, 61 has come up most (126 times against 102 expected) and 51 has waited longest, 49 draws.
61 has come up most often, 126 times. Each number averages about 102 over 1,409 draws, and whichever number happens to lead normally finishes around 23 ahead. 61 is 24 ahead, so this is an ordinary spread rather than a streak. 13 has come up least, 76 times.
Delaware Powerball questions
- Can you buy Power Play in Delaware?
- Yes. It costs $1 a play on top of the $2 ticket and multiplies every prize below the jackpot by 2, 3, 4, 5 or 10 — the 10 only when the advertised jackpot is $150 million or less. We price that extra dollar at about 46 cents at a large jackpot and 50 cents when the 10× ball is in the drum.
- Is Double Play available in Delaware?
- Yes. For $1 your numbers go into a second drawing straight after the main one, with its own prize table topping out at $10 million. Every prize in it is fixed and none of them rolls, which makes it the one multi-state bet whose expected value is exact: about 53 cents per dollar. 30 of the 48 lotteries sell it.
- How much tax does Delaware take from a Powerball win?
- Delaware withholds nothing — exempts lottery prizes from withholding. The 24% federal withholding still applies, and your federal bill is settled at filing. The calculator does the arithmetic.
- Are Powerball prizes in Delaware the same as the national prize chart?
- Yes. Every prize below the jackpot is a set cash amount in Delaware, exactly as the national chart prints it. Only California pays pari-mutuel instead.
- How old do you have to be to play Powerball in Delaware?
- 18. Delaware Lottery sets it, and a winning ticket has to be claimed in the jurisdiction where it was bought.
- Where were the Delaware 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 Delaware 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
Delaware-specific rules were read from
powerball.com and
Delaware 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.