Texas Powerball (October 2026)
The short version
Power Play is on sale in Texas; Double Play is not, so a Texas ticket tops out at $3 a line. At the jackpot standing after the October 3, 2026 draw, one $2 ticket bought in Texas is worth $0.91 — 45 cents on the dollar, and Texas withholds nothing from it.
What is different in Texas
- Ticket price
- $3 a line, all in
- $2 base plus $1 each for Power 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
- Not sold here
- One of the 18 jurisdictions that do not offer it; the other 30 do.
- Prize structure
- Fixed, as the chart
- The published amounts are what you are paid — Texas does not adjust them for sales.
- State withholding
- None
- No income tax. Federal withholding of 24% applies on top, everywhere.
- Minimum age
- 18
- Texas Lottery's own rule. Five jurisdictions set it higher.
Rules read from powerball.com and Texas 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 Texas, 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 Texas? | 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) | 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.
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 Texas ticket is worth right now
The advertised jackpot is $440 million. The cash value is about $188 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 92% of the prize on average rather than all of it. Texas 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 Texas hot number, only a Powerball one. Over 1,415 draws of the current 5/69 + 1/26 matrix, 21 has come up most (126 times against 103 expected) and 51 has waited longest, 55 draws.
21 has come up most often, 126 times. Each number averages about 103 over 1,415 draws, and whichever number happens to lead normally finishes around 23 ahead. 21 is 23 ahead, so this is an ordinary spread rather than a streak. 13 has come up least, 76 times.
Texas's own draw games
Powerball is the same everywhere. These are not — Texas Lottery runs them, and we hold their full history.
-
Daily · 26,148 draws on file
-
Daily · 20,088 draws on file
-
Daily · 17,353 draws on file
-
Daily · 8,873 draws on file
-
Monday · Wednesday · Saturday · 3,804 draws on file
-
Monday · Thursday · 2,649 draws on file
Texas Powerball questions
- Can you buy Power Play in Texas?
- 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 Texas?
- No. 30 of the 48 Powerball lotteries offer Double Play and Texas is not one of them, so a Texas ticket tops out at $3 a line. powerball.com publishes the list, and says more lotteries may add it later.
- How much tax does Texas take from a Powerball win?
- Texas withholds nothing — no income tax. The 24% federal withholding still applies, and your federal bill is settled at filing. The calculator does the arithmetic.
- Are Powerball prizes in Texas the same as the national prize chart?
- Yes. Every prize below the jackpot is a set cash amount in Texas, exactly as the national chart prints it. Only California pays pari-mutuel instead.
- How old do you have to be to play Powerball in Texas?
- 18. Texas Lottery sets it, and a winning ticket has to be claimed in the jurisdiction where it was bought.
- Where were the Texas 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 Texas 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
Texas-specific rules were read from
powerball.com and
Texas 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.