A ticket to the world’s biggest lottery jackpot – worth up to £1 billion – goes on sale in the UK this week for the first time. From Tuesday 21 July, UK players can buy a £4 National Lottery Powerball ticket and compete with US players for a shared jackpot that currently stands at $416 million (£311 million) and can balloon into the billions. The first draw is on Thursday 23 July.
Powerball is an American lottery game that has been running in the US since 1992. For the first time, it is being operated outside the US by Allwyn, the company that runs the UK National Lottery. UK players pick five main numbers from 1 to 69 and one Powerball number from 1 to 26, or choose a Lucky Dip. The jackpot starts at £12 million and has no upper limit – it can grow into the hundreds of millions or even billions. However, winners do not get the money as a lump sum: the prize is paid out over 30 years.
“Powerball launches in the UK: £4 tickets, billion-pound jackpots paid over 30 years, and worse odds than the National Lottery.”
Allwyn recently completed a £450 million tech upgrade to the National Lottery, moving 18 million player records and more than three billion historical transactions onto new platforms. This launch follows the biggest overhaul of the draw-based Lotto game since 1994, which from June 7 gave players two chances to win for every £2 ticket and is expected to more than double the number of Lotto millionaires from about 140 a year to around 345.
The UK version of Powerball has two extra prize tiers not available in the US: a fixed £8 prize for matching two main numbers, and a fixed £1 million for matching five main numbers. Other UK prize tiers vary depending on the balls drawn and the number of winners. Overall odds of winning any prize in the UK are 1 in 14 – compared to 1 in 4.9 for the standard National Lottery draw. But because the jackpot is shared with US players, your odds of winning the top prize are lower than in EuroMillions or the regular Lotto.
For UK readers, the launch means access to a game that can produce jackpots unimaginable in any UK-only lottery. But there are trade-offs: a £4 ticket is twice the price of a Lotto ticket, and the odds of winning are worse. Ben Parker, a senior lecturer in statistics at Brunel University of London, told The Sun: “Your long term fate is almost surely to lose. In the new Powerball you’ll win less often than the Euromillions or the old fashioned National Lottery, but if you do win you’ll win a bigger amount.” As with all National Lottery games, 50p of every £1 goes into the prize pot, while the other 50p supports charities and covers costs. In 2025, total National Lottery sales reached £8.1 billion, generating £1.7 billion for good causes and £967 million in taxes.
Q: How do I play Powerball in the UK? You buy a £4 ticket from any National Lottery retailer or online from Tuesday 21 July. Pick five numbers from 1 to 69 and one Powerball number from 1 to 26, or choose a Lucky Dip. Draws take place on Thursdays. You must be 18 or over.
Q: What are my chances of winning the Powerball jackpot? The overall odds of winning any prize are 1 in 14, but the odds of winning the jackpot are much lower – typically around 1 in 292 million for the US game, and similar for UK players because the jackpot is shared. You can improve your odds slightly by buying more tickets, but only if you can afford to lose the money.
Q: If I win, how do I get the money? The jackpot is paid out over 30 years, not as a lump sum. The first payment is made soon after you claim, then annual payments for 29 more years. If you win a fixed prize like £1 million or £8, you get that amount as a single payment.
What happens next: The first UK Powerball draw is on Thursday 23 July. If the current US jackpot continues to roll, UK players could win it straight away. Allwyn will then run weekly Powerball draws alongside the existing Lotto and EuroMillions games. The game is expected to boost National Lottery sales and good-cause funding, which already exceeded £1.7 billion in 2025.
