Somebody in Ontario is sitting on a $40 million lottery ticket, and it dies on 28 October

Somewhere in Ontario there might be a jacket with $40 million in the pocket.

On Tuesday 28 October 2025, a single Lotto Max ticket matched all seven numbers. It was bought at a store in Grey County, a stretch of small towns, ski hills and cottages on Georgian Bay, north-west of Toronto.

Almost a year later, nobody has claimed it. If nobody does by 28 October 2026, the money is gone.

What are the winning numbers?

The numbers are 06, 14, 17, 19, 26, 43 and 45, with bonus number 27.

The ticket was sold by an authorised retailer somewhere in Grey County. That covers Owen Sound, Meaford, The Blue Mountains, Flesherton, Markdale, Durham and Hanover. The lottery has not named the store.

It was Ontario's sixth Lotto Max jackpot of 2025. The other five were won on tickets sold in Etobicoke, Willowdale, Oshawa, Newmarket and Kingston, for prizes between $25 million and $75 million.

Lotto Max tickets are valid for one year from the draw. As of today, the owner has 21 days left.

Photo: Santeri Viinamäki / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Does anyone know who bought it?

No. The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation, OLG, says it does not know the identity of the person or group behind the ticket.

Reports in mid-September said the ticket had seen no action at all. It had not been scanned on the lottery app or checked at a store terminal.

OLG has a theory. Grey County fills up with tourists, skiers and cottagers, and a visitor could easily buy a ticket on a weekend away and never think about it again.

That leaves a few possibilities nobody can rule out. The ticket could be in a drawer. It could have gone through the wash. Or someone could be holding it right now with no idea what it is worth.

Where do people usually find these tickets?

OLG has a list, and it reads like a search of anyone's home. Coat pockets. Handbags, backpacks, wallets and laptop bags. The glove box and the sun visor in the car. Kitchen, bedroom and office drawers.

People really do find them there. In 2017 Jimmie Smith of New Jersey went through a pile of old tickets in a shirt pocket after hearing that a New York jackpot was about to expire. One of them was worth $24.1 million. He found it two days before the deadline.

"I had to stick my head out the window and breathe in some fresh air," he said. "I was in serious doubt."

In May 2026 another New Jersey man pulled a crumpled $5.9 million ticket out of a pair of trousers eight days before it expired. Staff at the shop where he bought it had urged him to look.

Photo: Tony Webster / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

What happens to the money if nobody comes forward?

OLG says the $40 million would be returned to players through future bonus games or promotions. In other words, it goes back into the pot for everyone else.

It has happened before. Canada's biggest unclaimed prize was a $70 million Lotto Max ticket sold in Scarborough, Toronto, for the draw on 28 June 2022.

It expired at 10:30 p.m. on 28 June 2023. By then OLG had taken more than 1,000 calls from people who said they had lost the winning ticket. Not one could prove it.

The UK's record is even bigger. A EuroMillions ticket worth £63.8 million, bought in Hertfordshire in June 2012, was never claimed. The operator had sent vans around the area and even hired a town crier. The money went to good causes.

In the US, a $77.1 million Powerball ticket sold at a truck stop in Tallapoosa, Georgia, in 2011 also went unclaimed.

Can you still claim if you lost the ticket?

Possibly, but it is hard. OLG has a lost ticket form and a phone line, 1-800-387-0098.

Without the ticket itself, the lottery has to be sure the claim is real. In the 2022 case an OLG spokesperson explained that it checks details only the real buyer would know, such as the exact store and what else they bought at the same time.

After the deadline, OLG says it would take "a really good reason", decided case by case. Getting a big institution to hand over money you say is yours is rarely quick, as FNB customers chasing a mystery minus balance have found.

Why is OLG so careful?

Because Ontario's lottery has been burned before. In 2006 the CBC's the fifth estate told the story of Bob Edmonds, a retiree whose shop clerk told him his ticket was a loser. He later saw the clerk and her husband in the newspaper, holding a $250,000 winning ticket.

The scandal that followed led to an Ombudsman's report called A Game of Trust in 2007. It found that store owners and their families had claimed about $100 million in prizes between 1999 and 2006. The head of OLG was fired.

So when someone calls about a $40 million ticket, OLG asks a lot of questions. Huge sums attract inventive liars, from shop counters to a CIA officer who turned fake secret missions into gold bars.

Photo: Hannah Clover / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

How lucky would the owner have to be?

The odds of hitting a Lotto Max jackpot are about 1 in 33.3 million. Whoever holds this ticket has already beaten them.

Now they need a second, smaller piece of luck. They need to hear about it. Psychologists who study chance say lucky people notice things the rest of us walk past, and this is that moment for someone in Ontario.

What should you do right now?

If you bought a Lotto Max ticket anywhere in Grey County in late October 2025, check it. Scan it on the OLG app, or take it to any store terminal.

Then check the places nobody looks. The winter coat you wore that week. The car door pocket. The drawer where receipts go to die.

The numbers again are 06, 14, 17, 19, 26, 43 and 45, bonus 27. Somewhere out there one small slip of paper still matches every one of them. For 21 more days, it is worth $40 million.