Apr 17, 2026
For most people, cashing in a jackpot-winning lottery ticket would be their highest priority. But someone out there doesn't agree: according to the Texas Department of Licensing & Regulation, a winning lottery ticket with a $78 million prize (1) is still unclaimed after five months.
The ticket, which will earn its bearer over $43 million after tax, will only be redeemable until May 14. After that, the ticket expires and its owner is out tens of millions of dollars.
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While it's rare for lottery tickets with such big prizes to expire before they're redeemed it's not unheard of, and less valuable tickets stay unclaimed all the time. Here's what to know about the lottery ticket in question, as well as how it fits into the bigger picture of unclaimed winning tickets.
The lottery ticket holder should act quickly to get their prize
The winning ticket was bought in Brownsville, Texas, at a shop called Gordon's Bait & Tackle. It was announced on November 15, 2025, and the ticket holder has 180 days to claim it before it expires.
To claim the $43 million, the ticket owner will need to call the Texas Lottery and make an appointment, then show the physical ticket in person at the Texas Lottery headquarters in Austin. The ticket owner will go through a verification process (2), which includes providing ID.
If the ticket owner loses their ticket, they're most likely out of luck. They can report the loss to the Texas Lottery (3), but that doesn't mean that the lost ticket will be honored.
If the ticket remains unclaimed, all that money goes back to the state. The Texas Lottery says that lottery profits go on to fund various state programs, including the Foundation School Fund and the Fund for Veteran's Assistance. The Texas lottery has made over $42 billion in revenue as of its April 9 press release.
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Not redeeming lottery tickets is more common than you think
This isn't the only time it took a while for a jackpot winner to claim their prize. In November 2022, a Californian named Edwin Castro won $2.04 billion dollars from a Powerball jackpot (4), becoming the largest jackpot winner in U.S. history. He didn't cash in his prize until February 2023, three months after winning.
Every year, states make money off of people not claiming their winning lottery tickets — although unclaimed winnings aren't generally from big tickets like this one. Carolyn Becker, spokesperson of the California Lottery, says that California lottery winners don't claim $40 to $50 million of winnings each year (5) on average. She says this can come from winners not realizing they won or from winners losing their ticket before it can be claimed.
Victor Matheson, an economics professor (6), says that prizes worth about 1% of the lottery revenue each year expire before they're claimed. That percentage might seem small, but it's still over $1 billion. The biggest unclaimed prize was from 2023, when a prize worth $197 million went unredeemed.
If you're someone who regularly buys lottery tickets, make sure to check them even if you don't think they're winners. You could still win a secondary prize, which could still be quite sizable.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.
Texas Lottery (1),(2),(3); CNN (4),(6); NBC Los Angeles (5)
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Kit Pulliam is a DC-based financial journalist with over five years of experience writing, editing, and fact-checking financial content. They've covered a wide variety of financial topics, including banking, taxes, budgeting, investing, politics, the economy, and government policy.
