A lottery ticket sold in Arkansas on Christmas Eve just became the second-largest Powerball prize in U.S. history. The winning numbers—04, 25, 31, 52, 59, and Powerball 19—ended a three-month dry spell that had stretched across 46 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner.
The $1.817 billion prize is the largest Powerball jackpot of 2025, and final ticket sales pushed it higher than initially projected. The last time someone hit all six numbers was September 6, when two players in Missouri and Texas split a $1.787 billion prize.
This marks only the second time Arkansas has produced a Powerball jackpot winner—the first was in 2010. Christmas Eve winnings are rare too; the last Powerball jackpot claimed on Christmas Eve was in 2011, though the game has hit on Christmas Day four times, most recently in 2013.
We're a new kind of news feed.
Regular news is designed to drain you. We're a non-profit built to restore you. Every story we publish is scored for impact, progress, and hope.
Start Your News DetoxThe odds of matching all six numbers sit at 1 in 292.2 million, a long shot designed precisely to let jackpots grow into life-altering sums. Those odds are what keep the prize rolling higher with each drawing when no one wins, building momentum and ticket sales across 45 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
For most players, the appeal is straightforward. Chris Winters, a glass artist from Indianapolis, bought a ticket on a whim that Wednesday. "With the prize so high, I just bought one kind of impulsively. Why not." That same impulse, multiplied across millions of tickets at $2 each, is what turned this jackpot into the second-largest ever.
Lottery officials emphasize that while the jackpot odds are steep, smaller prizes—which have far better odds—still distribute millions across players. The real story here isn't just one winner's sudden fortune, but the quiet math of how long shots and patient accumulation can create moments that feel genuinely extraordinary.
