California Lottery

To play SuperLotto Plus, you choose 5 numbers from 1 to 47, plus one MEGA number from 1 to 27. Each play costs $1. You can pick your own numbers on a playslip or ask for a Quick Pick to have them chosen at random.

Match all five numbers and the MEGA number to win the jackpot. There are nine prize tiers in total, and you can win the lowest prize by matching just the MEGA number on its own. The jackpot starts at $7 million and rolls over until it’s won, and jackpot winners can choose between a 30-year graduated annuity or a reduced cash lump sum.

Other popular California games include:

Fantasy 5 — pick 5 from 39, drawn nightly, with a starting jackpot around $60,000–$80,000.
Daily 3 & Daily 4 — daily digit games with flexible play styles.
Daily Derby — a novelty mock horse-race game.
Powerball & Mega Millions — multi-state games with jackpots that regularly climb into the hundreds of millions or even billions.

Odds and prizes

SuperLotto Plus has nine prize tiers. Unusually, all California prizes are parimutuel following a state Supreme Court ruling. Prize amounts are shared among winners and vary from draw to draw rather than being fixed. The overall chance of winning any prize is 1 in 23.

For context, California’s multi-state games have much longer odds but far bigger prizes. The Powerball jackpot is about 1 in 292 million and Mega Millions about 1 in 290 million. California is also unique in running all prize tiers of those games on a parimutuel basis, so a “$1 million” second prize can actually pay more (or less) on a California ticket.

Here’s the full breakdown per play of SuperLotto Plus:

California regularly sells the biggest winning tickets in the world. The all-time record is Edwin Castro’s $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot from November 2022, on a ticket bought in Altadena. This the largest lottery prize in history. He took the cash option of just under $1 billion. Less than a year later, in October 2023, another California ticket (sold in Frazier Park) won a $1.765 billion Powerball jackpot, the second-largest ever.

For the home-grown SuperLotto Plus game specifically, the record jackpot was $193 million, drawn on 16 February 2002 and split between three winning tickets. This remains the highest SuperLotto Plus prize to date.

California voters approved a state lottery in November 1984 by passing Proposition 37, the California State Lottery Act, on the promise that it would fund education without new taxes. The Lottery launched in October 1985 with Scratchers, and added a weekly Lotto draw in 1986. The flagship game evolved over the years: from Lotto 6/49 to SuperLotto, and finally to SuperLotto Plus in 2000, with its current 5-from-47-plus-MEGA format.

California joined Mega Millions in 2005 and Powerball in 2013, making it a major player in the giant multi-state jackpots. Today the Lottery is run from Sacramento by a five-member California State Lottery Commission appointed by the Governor.

You buy California Lottery tickets in person:

In-store — from around 23,000 licensed retailers statewide, including supermarkets, convenience stores, liquor stores and gas stations. Fill out a playslip or ask for a Quick Pick.
No online sales — importantly, California does not sell draw-game tickets online or by subscription. Any site claiming to sell official California tickets online is not the state lottery. (A few third-party courier apps buy physical tickets on your behalf, but they aren’t the Lottery itself.)

You must be 18 or older to play.

How to claim a prize

How you claim depends on the amount:

Under $600: collect from any Lottery retailer or from the Lottery directly.
$600 or more: claim from the California Lottery by submitting a claim form with your signed ticket and ID (by mail or at a Lottery District Office).

Almost all prizes must be claimed within 180 days of the draw (the multi-state Mega Millions jackpot is the one exception, with a one-year window). Jackpot winners then have 60 days to choose between the annuity and the cash lump sum. Any prize left unclaimed goes to California’s public schools.

Taxes on winnings

California is one of the more generous US states on lottery tax: the state does not tax California Lottery winnings at all. There’s no state income tax withheld or owed on prizes won on California Lottery games.

Federal tax still applies, however. For prizes over $5,000, the IRS requires 24% federal withholding up front (33% if you don’t provide a taxpayer ID), and the final federal bill can be higher (up to 37%) depending on your total income. In short: no state tax, but federal tax is unavoidable. Big winners should consult a tax professional.

Can you stay anonymous?

No. California is strict about this. The winner’s name and the location where the winning ticket was sold are public record under California law, and the Lottery will release them. Winners cannot claim through a trust or LLC to keep their name secret.
The most famous example is Edwin Castro: even though he asked the Lottery not to release any biographical details and never appeared in public to claim his $2.04 billion prize, his name was still disclosed because California’s public-records law required it. Winners can decline interviews and photos, but they cannot keep their identity fully private.