Big Powerball changes will mean lots more Lotto winners - what's the catch?

If you’re one to grab a Lotto ticket and throw on Powerball - things are about to look different.

Lotto NZ is giving its Powerball game a major overhaul for the first time in nearly 20 years, promising more winners, bigger jackpots, and a fresh twist on the way it works.

Powerball is going from 10 balls in the draw to 14. Doesn’t sound huge, but it actually opens the door to a brand new prize division and more chances to win every week.

With a new Division 8, Lotto reckons this could boost weekly winners by around 30%, taking the number of players scoring a prize from roughly 47,000 to 62,000 each draw.

Jackpots are also said to benefit, with starting prizes jumping from $4 million to $5 million, and the maximum jackpot going from $50 million to a whopping $60 million.

“As New Zealand’s population grows and changes, it naturally affects the odds in the game. Since the last update, there are 1.1 million more Kiwis, so it makes sense to keep the games modern and relevant for players," Jason Delamore, CEO at Lotto New Zealand told rova.

“We’ve made tweaks to the game in 2007, 2010, 2015 and 2017, so the current gap since the last update has been longer than usual."

There is a bit of a catch though.

While more people might be seeing more small prizes across the board, the top Division 1 prize will be trickier to hit!

You're odds will go from being 1 in 38.4 million to about 1 in 53.7 million - so you'll be wanting to wish extra hard on your lucky stars to hit the big jackpot.

"The easiest way to think about it is how often Division 1 is won on average. With these changes, it goes from roughly once every three weeks to about once every three and a half weeks. So that’s the change in simpler, easier-to-understand terms," Delamore said.

The biggest win in and amongst all of these changes is that forking out for a ticket each week won't be changing.

Delamore added that ticket pricing will "remain the exact same".

Lotto NZ says the changes are all about keeping the game exciting, especially with its 40th birthday coming up next year.

The updated Powerball is expected to roll out in the second half of 2026, with more details - including the official launch date - still to come.

Image sourced via Lotto NZ