Powerball Is Changing on 13 September 2026

Update 16 September 2026. These changes are now in force. The final draw under the old 10-ball game was Saturday 12 September (draw 2620), and the first draw under the new 14-ball game is Wednesday 16 September, starting at $5 million. Division 1 odds are now about 1 in 53.7 million per line.

I spend most of my time looking at draw results, so a rule change like this one is a big deal: from Sunday 13 September 2026, Powerball stops being the game New Zealanders have played for years.

The headline is simple. Four more balls go into the machine — the pool grows from 1–10 to 1–14. From that one change, everything else follows.

What changes

Why jackpots get bigger

A harder Division 1 means the jackpot rolls for longer before someone strikes it, so the amounts on offer grow. Lotto NZ's own modelling puts the strike rate at roughly once every three and a half weeks, down from about once every three weeks — and when it does land, the average prize will be larger than it is now.

The trade-off is explicit: the same money per line buys a smaller chance at the top prize and a better chance of winning something further down the table.

The new Division 8

Division 8 pays a fixed $12 for matching two Lotto numbers, the Bonus Ball and the Powerball on one line. It's a genuinely new tier, not a reshuffle — Lotto NZ expects around 30% more Powerball winners each week because of it, taking the average from about 47,000 to 62,000.

Two other shifts come with it: Division 7's fixed prize rises from $15 to $20, and average prizes across Divisions 2 to 6 lift by about 45%.

The last draw of the old game

Saturday 12 September is the final draw under the 10-ball format, and it's a Must Be Won draw. If there's no Division 1 winner, the jackpot is shared by winners in the next division down that has winners. That's how the board gets cleared so the new game can start fresh at $5 million on Wednesday 16 September.

Two practical notes if you play:

• Advance tickets stop at 12 September. You can't buy tickets for the new version until the rules go live on 13 September. Lotto, Strike, Keno and Bullseye aren't changing, so those can still be bought ahead.
• Check your subscription. It will keep running, but if your numbers only cover 1–10 you may want to update them. The window to do that and still catch the first new draw is 6:30am Sunday 13 September to 10pm Monday 14 September.

Not just a game change

Lotto NZ has also changed how new MyLotto accounts are set up. From 13 September, every new player has to actively choose a weekly spending limit instead of being assigned the $150 maximum by default. The organisation says it consulted gambling-harm experts, treatment providers and people with lived experience while designing the changes.

That matters more than it might sound. A game that rolls for longer produces bigger headline numbers, and bigger numbers change how people behave — I've written before about how jackpot size drives ticket sales, roughly quadrupling weekly turnover between a $4.5 million and a $40 million jackpot.

What doesn't change

Lotto, Strike and Keno are untouched. The bonus ball stays as it is. The price of a line stays at $0.80. And the fundamental maths doesn't change either: every draw is independent, and no pattern in past results makes any future result more likely.