How many lottery prizes go unclaimed each year? Colorado Lottery reveals the numbers
Nobody keeps a national count of lottery winners who never collect their winnings. The dollar side can be estimated, and we put it at $1.05 billion to $1.68 billion a year, but a count of winning tickets that expire would require states to publish their unclaimed prizes one by one.
Colorado does. Its lottery posts a running list of draw-game prizes still unclaimed at least 30 days after the drawing, with the amount, the drawing date, and the store that sold each ticket. The list pulled on September 27, 2026, held 3,014 winning tickets totaling $641,320, from drawings between February and late August.
| Game | Unclaimed prizes | Total value | Largest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colorado Lotto+ (including Plus) | 1,643 | $400,180 | $250,000 |
| Mega Millions | 768 | $73,390 | $2,000 |
| Pick 3 | 345 | $40,700 | $2,500 |
| Powerball (including Double Play) | 145 | $82,000 | $50,000 |
| Cash 5 | 78 | $35,400 | $20,000 |
| Millionaire for Life | 34 | $9,500 | $500 |
| Lucky for Life | 1 | $150 | $150 |
| All games | 3,014 | $641,320 |
Most of them are small
Three quarters of the list, 2,258 tickets, are prizes under $100. Another 624 fall between $100 and $499 and 103 between $500 and $999. Only 29 of the expired tickets pay $1,000 or more. The very smallest prizes, such as the $4 and $7 Powerball wins, do not show up on the list at all, so the real number of forgotten tickets is higher.
The deadline to claim a prize in Colorado is 180 days from the drawing. On this list, 307 prizes totaling $31,925 come from drawings at least 150 days old, so they are in their last month. If few of those are claimed in their last weeks, that pace works out to roughly 3,700 Colorado draw-game prizes a year that run out the clock.
A few are not small. As of September 27, three large prizes were still waiting, all with months left.
| Prize | Game | Drawing | Sold at | Claim by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $250,000 | Colorado Lotto+ Plus | July 25, 2026 | 7-Eleven #15203A | January 21, 2027 |
| $50,000 | Powerball | July 11, 2026 | Loaf N Jug #11 | January 7, 2027 |
| $20,000 | Cash 5 | August 18, 2026 | Original Aurora Liquor | February 14, 2027 |
Some do reach the deadline. A $1,090,202 Colorado Lotto+ jackpot, sold at a Berthoud Conoco for the March 28 drawing, expired unclaimed on September 24, and the money went to the lottery's beneficiaries.
Scratch-offs and the bigger picture
Scratch tickets are harder to count because an unclaimed top prize may simply be on a ticket nobody bought. Of 2,130 retired US scratch-off games we tracked, 1,257 ended with at least one top prize never claimed, though some of those tickets may never have been sold.
The last broad count of big expired prizes is old. Research covering state lotteries in the 12 months ending June 2017 found 167 prizes of $1 million or more that went unclaimed in a single year. No one has published an updated figure since. Claim windows range from 90 days to a year depending on the state and the game, and ours are listed in how long you have to claim a prize.
How we did this. The Colorado figures are the full contents of the Colorado Lottery's unclaimed prizes report for all seven draw games, pulled September 27, 2026. The report lists prizes unclaimed 30 to 180 days after their drawing; the smallest prize amount it includes varies by game. The last-month count covers prizes from drawings on or before April 30, 2026. The yearly figure multiplies that month by 12 and assumes few of those tickets are claimed in their final weeks, so it is an estimate. Claim-by dates add 180 days to each drawing date. The 2017 figure is as cited in our unclaimed-money estimate.
Sources
Colorado Lottery: Unclaimed prizes report
Colorado Lottery: Claiming prizes
Colorado Lottery: Colorado Lotto+ $1 million jackpot ticket expires today
Frequently Asked Questions
How many lottery winners never claim their prize?
No national count exists. In Colorado, the lottery lists 3,014 draw-game prizes from February through August 2026 that were still unclaimed as of September 27, and about 300 a month reach their final month without a claim, which works out to an estimated 3,700 a year.
How much lottery prize money goes unclaimed in the US?
An estimated $1.05 billion to $1.68 billion a year, based on the 1% to 1.6% of sales that states such as Michigan have reported going unclaimed. Most of it comes from small prizes, with an occasional expired jackpot adding far more.
Are there big Colorado lottery prizes still unclaimed right now?
Yes. As of September 27, 2026, a $250,000 Colorado Lotto+ Plus prize from July 25, a $50,000 Powerball prize from July 11, and a $20,000 Cash 5 prize from August 18 were all still unclaimed, according to the lottery.
Jessie Jurado is a news writer who covers new scratch-off launches, state lottery guides, taxes on winnings, news, and much more. She joined ScratchCheck in 2026 and writes the site's state-by-state coverage.
