One Powerball player in New Jersey is suddenly very rich. A single ticket sold in the state matched all six numbers in the Wednesday, November 4 drawing and won the $847 million jackpot, lottery officials announced on Thursday. It is the ninth largest jackpot in Powerball history and the 17th largest lottery prize ever won in the United States.
The winning numbers
The winning numbers were 15, 34, 41, 53 and 56, with the red Powerball 21. The Power Play multiplier for the drawing was 2x. The odds of matching all six numbers are 1 in 292,201,338, which makes Wednesday night a rare night even by Powerball standards. The prize had been building for almost three months, ever since a ticket sold in Illinois won $1.04 billion on August 12.
Where the ticket was sold
The New Jersey Lottery said the winning ticket was sold at the Wegmans supermarket on Farm View in Montvale, in Bergen County. The winner has not come forward yet, and the public may never learn their name. New Jersey law allows lottery winners to stay anonymous, so the person holding the ticket can claim the prize without announcing who they are.
What the winner can take home
The winner now faces a pleasant kind of problem. They can take the full $847 million as an annuity, paid in 30 payments over 29 years, or take a single cash payment of $363.1 million, with both figures before taxes. The annuity pays the whole prize, but the money arrives in yearly payments spread across nearly three decades. The cash option pays far less in total, but it is all available at once. Many big jackpot winners choose the cash, even though it pays far less on paper, because it puts the money in their hands right away.
A big night for smaller prizes too
The jackpot winner was not the only person who cashed in on Wednesday. More than 1 million tickets won smaller prizes across the country, and 25 tickets won $50,000 each. Nobody matched all five white balls without the Powerball, so the $1 million Match 5 prize went unclaimed. Anyone holding a ticket from Wednesday should check their numbers carefully, because more than a million tickets won something, even if most prizes were far smaller than the jackpot. The win is also a milestone for the state. This is the 13th time a Powerball jackpot has been won in New Jersey, and at $847 million it is the second largest jackpot win in state history.
The jackpot starts over
With the big prize gone, the Powerball jackpot resets to $20 million for the next drawing on Saturday, November 7. Back in Montvale, meanwhile, one question now hangs over the Wegmans on Farm View: which of its regular shoppers just became one of the richest lottery winners in American history, and will anyone ever find out?
Sources: Powerball, official announcement, November 5, 2026; New Jersey Lottery via NorthJersey.com; USA Today.