Powerball Jackpot Nears $1 Billion: How Close It Is to History

Powerball is back in the headlines for the reason it always ends up there: a jackpot too big to describe without the word "historic." For tonight's drawing, the number has surged to $1 billion, after Saturday's drawing once again produced no jackpot winner.

43 drawings without a winner: the streak that inflated the jackpot

Nobody has matched all six Powerball numbers in 43 consecutive drawings. Each of those drawings has pushed the jackpot higher and higher, turning it into one of the largest in the game's history. To put it in perspective: this jackpot is now among the 10 largest ever awarded by Powerball, a club that only a handful of numbers have entered in more than three decades of drawings.

A jackpot growing faster than usual

What makes this streak especially striking is the pace: in just two weeks, the jackpot has gone from around $600 million to touching the psychological $1 billion mark. Every drawing without a winner adds tens of millions at once, and the higher the number climbs, the more attention it draws, the more tickets get sold, and the faster it keeps growing. It's a snowball effect that only stops once someone finally wins.

What's coming tonight

Tonight's drawing is set to take place, and if nobody matches the full combination, the jackpot will keep climbing into even more historic territory ahead of the next drawing. If someone does win, they'll join a very short list of people who, across more than 30 years of Powerball, have seen a jackpot of this exact size come in.