Here’s an oldie-but-goodie question that just came our way from a man asking about the breakdown of the money for every $1 spent on lottery tickets in Iowa. It goes to show that even though we can recite the details from memory here the lottery, it can be completely new information to someone else! We keep a chart showing the details involved on our website. For every $1 spent on lottery tickets in Iowa, the money flows into four categories. The biggest is prizes. Without prizes to players, there obviously wouldn’t be a lottery for long! Prizes are followed by proceeds to state programs, comm ..read more

If you claimed an Iowa Lottery prize of more than $600 in calendar year 2023, we’ll send a form to you later this month that you’ll need as you file your income taxes. The document that most winners will receive is the W-2G form. It lists the total prize amount won along with any federal and state withholdings applied to the prize. (Lottery winners who aren’t U.S. citizens receive a document called Form 1042S.) If you claimed multiple Iowa Lottery prizes of more than $600 in 2023, you’ll receive multiple forms from us, one for each prize claimed. The deadline for all W-2G forms to be mailed is ..read more

One huge Powerball® prize was claimed this week, and we're still waiting to hear from the winner of a second multimillion-dollar prize! Danny Buckelew of Treynor stopped by lottery headquarters yesterday to claim his $2 million Powerball prize. He matched all five white balls in the drawing on Oct. 7, 2023, and was just one number away from winning that night's $1.4 billion jackpot! Buckelew bought his easy-pick ticket at Casey's, 403 Stephans St. in Tiffin. The winning numbers in the Oct. 7 drawing were 47-54-57-60-65 and Powerball 19. The Power Play number was 3. Meanwhile, another $2 milli ..read more

Tomorrow is an event we look forward to every year for the opportunity to interact with those who have given so much for our country. It’s the annual Veterans Day at the Capitol event. Tomorrow morning, our state’s veterans and their families will gather at the Statehouse in Des Moines to talk with Iowa lawmakers and advocate for ideas to help support the veterans community. The lottery will have a booth at the event to provide information about the proceeds that we raise for the Iowa Veterans Trust Fund. We’ll add lottery fun to the day by giving away some lottery prize packs in contests we’l ..read more

There may be snow and icy temperatures on the horizon, but a big lottery win is sure to warm you up! It's been great fun getting to meet some of our Million Dollar Holiday winners today, including Heidi Olsen of Allison and Renee Stanbrough of Nashua. Heidi won the $500,000 top prize in Wednesday's drawing, while Renee took home a $100,000 prize in the same promotion. Heidi found out she was a winner when she checked her email last night. She quickly called for her husband, Gabe, who thought from her alarmed tone of voice that something bad happened. "It was really crazy, exciting and surreal ..read more

We helped a lottery player this week who had gone to a store where his prize couldn’t be paid. Ultimately, he was able to claim his $200 in winnings, and I’ll share the same details here that we provided to him. The Iowa Lottery requires that its retailers pay prizes of up to $100. We ask that they pay prizes of up to $600, but not all stores keep that amount of cash on hand. And we understand the reasons why. Safety is a top priority in retail locations for staff and customers, with available cash routinely kept at a minimum, especially during business hours after dark. If the retail locatio ..read more

The new scratch games hitting stores this week here in Iowa include a special series of tickets that may catch your eye for how much they look alike. And we meant to do that. Through the years, we’ve occasionally released what we call a “Family of Games.” The latest are the “Luck” games beginning distribution today. Maybe think of them as S-M-L-XL! The $1 Luck game is red, the $2 Luck game has green tickets, the $5 Luck game is blue, and the $10 Luck game has purple tickets. Players have told us that they like the fun of a set of games, and we have fun coming up with ideas to try. The top priz ..read more

With the New Year’s holiday weekend almost upon us, we’re looking back at the number of lottery prizes claimed in 2023 here in Iowa, and the total is impressive! So far in calendar year 2023, Iowa Lottery players have claimed: 375 prizes of $25,000 or more. 243 prizes of $50,000 or more. 129 prizes of $100,000 or more. 41 prizes of $250,000 or more. 11 prizes of $500,000 or more. 6 prizes of $1 million or more. 3 prizes of $2 million or more.             (That’s not a cumulative total, it’s a list that breaks down the categories as the prize amounts climb h ..read more

With the long holiday weekend behind us, our holiday-themed scratch games are on the clock, as the saying goes. A player reached out to us today to ask how long our holiday games will be available. The short answer is that we’ve got a new round of games scheduled to hit the market on Jan. 3. It may take a few days after that for all the holiday tickets to be replaced in stores by the new games, but just know that the change-out is coming! So if you want a ticket in one of our holiday-themed games, buy it in the next few days! You have a little more time than that to enter any nonwinning ticket ..read more

The unusual news about unclaimed prizes continues here in Iowa. We now have TWO unclaimed prizes of $2 million each, both in the Powerball® game. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time the Iowa Lottery has seen two unclaimed prizes of $2 million at the same time. You’ll recall that back in September, a $1 million Mega Millions® prize won in Ames expired without being claimed. We rolled the money from that prize into our annual holiday promotion that’s underway now. Both of the $2 million unclaimed prizes have been out there for awhile. The first was won in Tiffin in the Powerball ..read more