10 New US Millionaires in 2026: Why New Year’s Day Is Prime Lottery Time

Most of us think about resolutions and setting future goals or plans for the New Year, but for a lucky few, they can bin their plans and start 2026 with a bang. On January 1, 2026, America created 10 more millionaires, with 10 separate lottery winning tickets worth around $1 million or just under. How about that? While the rest of us were recovering from New Years eve, or eating lentils, or hitting the overcrowded gyms, these lucky 10 can now kick off the year with a bang.

Sure, it can be explained by a larger volume of players flocking to the lotteries at year’s end, which is something not exclusive to North America. It seems a custom as old as these lotteries themselves. And the lotteries know this, so they often increase the prizes and create promotions to bolster the sales uplift. It begs the question – are these lotteries worth taking a crack at, or is it just a product of sold-out raffles and operators dishing out extra jackpots?

A Look at 2026’s New Millionaires

The lottery winners were spread out across 3 states, with 5 winners in Virginia, 3 in Georgia, and 2 in Minnesota. If you count New Year’s Eve, there was also a winning ticket in Washington that snatched around $1 million as well. US Powerball players were not as fortunate, with no major jackpots, but there were dozens of cases of 3rd to 5th tier winners getting prizes from $100 up to $50,000.

But for those ten, the gambling superstition of good luck brought by New Year’s has paid off. Let’s just hope they didn’t eat chicken, clean their houses, throw anything out, or do any of the other superstitions that would supposedly lose their good fortune.

Virginia NY Millionaire Raffle

Virginia boasted the most winners, with five people winning $1 million prizes in the special Virginia New Year’s Millionaire Raffle. Tickets cost $20 a pop, which is ten times more than you would pay for the standard Power Ball ($2) and five times more than the Power Play and Double Play double tickets ($4).

There was a 1 in 125,000 shot at winning the top jackpot, and the Millionaire Raffle also had 2nd and 3rd tier prizes of $100,000 and $500, respectively. The winning lottery tickets were: 038045, 155852, 300593, 556789, 606487. The raffle results were displayed on the Virginia Lottery official site.

Georgia Millionaire

The Georgia Lottery’s Georgia Millionaire is a first-of-its-kind scratchcard game. It has instant cash prizes of $10,000 and a special second chance drawing with a top jackpot prize of $1 million. Any player who didn’t hit the instant cash prize on their card could enter the second chance drawing for a shot at a $1 million jackpot. These tickets were sold across all Georgia Lottery retailers, and the second chance drawing was announced as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Day.

The 5 winning tickets were reported in College Park, Grovetown and Lawrenceville, and they were congratulated by the CEO and President of the Georgia Lottery, Gretchen Corbin.

Minnesota Millionaire Raffle

Another New Year’s special, the Millionaire Raffle tickets went on sale back in October, and sold out in just 2 weeks. It was the fastest sellout in the game’s history, and a total of 20,000 people won prizes. Two lucky players won $1 million prizes, with a further winning $100,000, another five winning $25,000, and forty taking home $20,000. The Millionaire Raffle in Minnesota, which has been around since 2006, is one of the most popular lottery products around, and given that 2026 is its 20th anniversary, the operators wanted to celebrate the occasion.

A total of 1 million tickets were sold, and the winners bought their tickets at Coon Rapids at Holiday Stationstores, and in International Falls at Forestland Sales. The businesses also received a $5,000 bonus for selling winning tickets.

Uptick in Lottery Ticket Sales and Events

It is the kind of fairytale we all dream of, and there is something about New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day that is incredibly appealing to players. It is not founded on any reason; it is just another one of those classic gambler’s superstitions. But these wins are not one-offs. Not by any means.

Operators know that these two days are the most reliable in the lottery calendar and that they get momentous media coverage. In previous years, state lotteries and providers have held millionaire raffles, limited ticket games, and even made enhanced prize pools to land right at the turn of the year. Alongside New Year’s Day (and Eve), lottery providers tend to focus on the holiday seasons, dishing out more games and products at Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. The volume of lottery ticket buyers during these seasons increases significantly, and it is prime time for lottery runners to create more games and crank up jackpots.

This spike in activity can also happen by itself, most notably when a Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot climbs beyond a certain threshold, and ticket sales will continue to grow until the jackpot is won and resets.

Separating Fact from the Fiction

A 2024 study suggested that around 68% of Americans buy holiday lottery tickets, with a similar percentage buying more tickets specifically at the end of the year. On average, individuals spend around $77 on holiday lottery tickets. The hype is not purely formed by the notion of new beginnings. Sure, the hope and possibly gambler’s conceit that this is the luckiest time of the year may pave the way for unfounded optimism with these New Year lotteries. And having more winning tickets bolsters that sentiment.

But behind the rising feeling of optimism, there is a more cynical reason why we have so many more winners and seemingly greater prizes up for grabs at that special time of year.

Lottery operators also push holiday products hard, marketing aggressively to increase the appetite and hype of gambling. You will find more New Year’s scratchers, lottery games, raffles, extra draws and larger jackpots emerge. And raffles like the Minnesota one, that have been going for years, become part of the gambling culture in those communities. They don’t need to chase foot traffic as much because they have the visibility and can sell a million tickets in the space of 2 weeks quite comfortably.

The cycle grows as more people want to get in on the action, and lottery operators dish out more games, more prizes (through complex tiers and frameworks), and introduce catchy mechanisms like the second draws for non winning tickets. The new lottery games are also heavily promoted and marketed to ensure players are kept informed and the products can sell out quickly.

So it is no surprise that you get more winners. There are more games to enter, and more money is being pumped into the system.

Is It Worth Taking Up the Tradition?

The non-partisan answer is sure, so long as you play within your means and don’t take the lotteries too seriously. Don’t be surprised if next year there are more winners, or potentially even larger prizes, these New Year’s lotteries tend to just grow with each passing year.

But if you are contemplating the odds and want to take a serious gamble, then it is perhaps better to avoid New Year’s lotteries. The Virginia New Year’s Millionaire Raffle cost $20 per ticket, and the Minnesota Millionaire Raffle and Georgia Millionaire both cost $10 per ticket. Just looking at Virginia, where the odds were posted, you had a 1 in 125,000 shot of winning. If this were a sports bet, where juice is applied (and considering it is around 5%), then you should be getting $2,375,000 for your $20 ticket, not just $1 million. If there were no juice on that bet, it would be $2.5 million.

This is often the case with lottery products, as jackpots are so high that they can afford to increase the house edge significantly. The New Year’s lottery products are no different, except for the fact that they are in high demand, are only available for short periods of time, and they tend to cost more than your average scratcher or Powerball ticket.

A Lighthearted Gamble with Audacious Opportunities

It is a fun venture in itself, as it can provide that extra little hit of dopamine, or thrill of waiting for the New Year. But if you were to open a spreadsheet and do some risk management, you will find that in most cases, it is best to go with the 1 in 292.2 million shot in the Powerball, or a simple scratchcard or non festive lottery. Still, we all have our own gambling rituals and traditions, and all it takes is one visit from Lady Luck to change your fortunes.

However, if you do win, be sure to take precautions and don’t end up burning through all your money. There are plenty of examples of people going bust after winning the lottery, with a high percentage declaring bankruptcy after a few years of hitting the big time. So be careful, and play the games for fun.