The $1.817 Billion Christmas Eve Ticket
The December 24, 2025 Powerball drawing produced a $1.817 billion jackpot — the second-largest in U.S. Powerball history — won on a ticket sold at a Murphy USA gas station in Cabot, Arkansas. On January 22, 2026, the winner stepped forward and chose the $834.9 million lump sum, opting to remain anonymous under Arkansas law. Lottery officials praised the winner for taking a month to hire legal and financial counsel before claiming.
On Christmas Eve 2025, a Quick Pick ticket bought at Murphy USA 7879, a gas station at 208 S. Rockwood in Cabot, Arkansas, matched all five white balls, 4, 25, 31, 52 and 59, plus the Powerball number 19, in a drawing that had gone 47 consecutive rounds without a winner. The jackpot had grown through final ticket sales to $1.817 billion, the second-largest prize in both Powerball history and United States lottery history. The Power Play multiplier that night was 2.
Then, for four weeks, nothing happened. The winner did not come forward, and the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery could only wait. On Thursday, January 22, 2026, the holder of the ticket finally arrived at lottery headquarters in Little Rock and claimed the prize. The winner chose the one-time cash payment of $834.9 million before taxes rather than the annuitized $1.817 billion, and elected to remain anonymous, as Arkansas law allows. Sharon Strong, the lottery's executive director, said she was happy the winner had taken the time to seek legal counsel and financial advice first, exactly as the lottery had recommended.
The gap between the headline and the cheque is the first thing to understand about a jackpot this size. The $1.817 billion figure is the value of 29 years of annuity payments; the lump sum, $834.9 million before taxes, is what the lottery can actually pay out at once. State taxes were withheld at 3.9 percent and federal taxes at 24 percent, so the winner's take-home was far smaller still. The gas station that sold the ticket did well out of the deal too: Murphy USA 7879 received a $50,000 commission for selling the winning ticket, and retailers across Arkansas earned $768,267 in commissions during the record-breaking jackpot cycle, which generated $15,021,939 in cash sales in the state.
The win mattered beyond the winner. The Arkansas Scholarship Lottery exists to raise money for in-state college scholarships, and since 2009 it has sold more than $8 billion in tickets and returned more than $1.5 billion for scholarships, funding more than 822,000 awards through the state Department of Higher Education. As of the end of 2025, the lottery had awarded more than $5.6 billion in prizes to players, paid more than $471 million in retailer commissions and provided more than $190 million in state and federal tax revenue. A jackpot that captures the nation's attention is, for the lottery, also a fundraising event.
The most instructive part of the story is the month of silence. A billion-dollar ticket is a magnet for long-lost relatives, investment pitches, lawsuits and bad decisions made in a hurry, and the Arkansas winner's first move was to do nothing in public at all. Four weeks of quiet counsel, a lawyer, a financial adviser and a claim filed only when the team was in place: that is what a well-handled windfall looks like. The money was life-changing either way, but the month spent preparing for it was the decision that protected it.
The lesson: Before claiming a windfall, assemble the team first — the Arkansas winner's month of quiet counsel was the smartest free money decision made.
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