Bits & Odds

Maine Powerball (September 2026)

Monday · Wednesday · Saturday · $2 a play · Power Play and Double Play on sale here

Latest draw · September 19, 2026 Drawn for all 48 jurisdictions
Advertised jackpot
$271 million
Jackpot odds
1 in 292,201,338
Any prize
1 in 24.87
A line here
$4

The short version

Maine 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 Maine is worth $0.73 — 36 cents on the dollar once Maine's 7.15% withholding comes off the jackpot, against $0.76 before it.

What is different in Maine

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 — Maine does not adjust them for sales.
State withholding
7.15%
Held back before the cheque is written, on top of 24% federal. What you finally owe is settled at filing.

Rules read from powerball.com and Maine 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 Maine, next to what the base ticket's non-jackpot prizes are worth per dollar — and the order may surprise you.

Where the dollar goesOn sale in Maine?Returns per $1How 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 Maine 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. Then Maine withholds 7.15% — about $10 million of that cash value — and the federal 24% comes off on top of that.

Ticket price
$2
up to $4 with add-ons
Worth, before state tax
$0.76
the same in all 48 jurisdictions
Worth in Maine
$0.73
36c on the dollar
Maine keeps
7.15%
of a jackpot cash option

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 Maine 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.

Maine Powerball questions

Can you buy Power Play in Maine?
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 Maine?
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 Maine take from a Powerball win?
Maine withholds 7.15%, on top of the 24% held back federally. On the cash value of the jackpot as it stands now that is about $10 million to the state alone. Withholding is not the final bill — what you actually owe is settled when you file. Run your own number through the calculator.
Are Powerball prizes in Maine the same as the national prize chart?
Yes. Every prize below the jackpot is a set cash amount in Maine, exactly as the national chart prints it. Only California pays pari-mutuel instead.
How old do you have to be to play Powerball in Maine?
Maine State Lottery sets the minimum age and we could not read it off their site on 2026-09-22, so we would rather send you there than guess. Most jurisdictions are 18; Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana and Mississippi are 21 and Nebraska is 19.
Where were the Maine 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 Maine 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 Maine-specific rules were read from powerball.com and Maine 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.