Illinois iLottery awards $1m to one lucky winner at the start of year

• Jackpots start dropping early in Illinois, with a lucky person scooping $1m from the iLottery’s Lucky Day Lotto
• A total of 32,000 winning tickets were identified for the Sunday draw of the game
• Illinois is one of the states with the strongest lottery traditions

The New Year has already started in a big way for the Illinois Lottery, with an iLotttery player scooping up a massive $1,000,000 jackpot. A person won the Sunday draw of the Lucky Day Lotto prize, matching all five winning numbers that night - 19, 28, 0, 40, and 42.

Winning tickets drop all over the state this Sunday

While 32,000 winning tickets were purchased in total, only one person held the grand prize. Whoever the winner may be, they now have a year to claim the reward from the date of the draw.

The Illinois Lottery has habitually minted big winners, with the lottery incentivizing people to play by offering thousands of prizes per game for almost every single draw. In 2025 alone, the Lucky Day Lotto sold 10.7m winning tickets and paid out a total of $67.3m in prizes.

The lottery has been going strong in Illinois, with big winners announced nearly every other week. In October, a person won $1m from a scratch-off ticket.

That same month, another player scooped up $3m from the Mega Millions, and a third player, identified by the lottery as Jessie, got a $10 Holiday Bucks ticket to win a $500,000 payday.

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